Some recent visitors to the Web site of Dos Mundos — a weekly, bilingual Spanish-English Kansas City newspaper — got an eyeful of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel propaganda. Hackers attacked www.dosmundos.com on Jan. 23, replacing its regular content with anti-Israeli slurs and graphic photos of carnage from the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Edward Reyes, general manager of Reyes Media Group, runs the Dos Mundos site and said he doesn’t think the message was directed specifically at Dos Mundos or its readers. Many other sites were apparently defaced in the same manner at the same time. The hackers call themselves "FesH4Ck3rs TEAM" in the message they left. Beyond that, Reyes said, he does not know who they are or where they might be based.

He attributed the hack to a program that seeks out any Web site with a particular inherent vulnerability, then exploits that flaw to post its content.

"From an organizational standpoint, we’re really small. I have to manage the Web site and a lot of other things, so the security updates were not applied in a timely manner, and the site became a victim," Reyes said. "I seriously doubt it was anybody local. Chances are that they were in another country. Somebody had too much time on their hands and developed a program that’s malicious."

Because he does not believe the attack was directed at Dos Mundos in particular, Reyes said, he did not report it to the police.

Right now, visitors to the Dos Mundos site will see the message, "Dos Mundos.com is currently offline for maintenance."

Reyes said he’s building a new site with a different content-management system that should be less vulnerable to hackers. He’s also taking the opportunity to add new features to the site. The finished product should be online in about a week.

DosMundos.com had this place-holding slide on its home page this week.
d the newspaper about the hackers’ message


"A lot more people visit the site than I expected. Most were very shocked," Reyes said. "The pictures were very graphic, and a lot of people were very concerned about what it meant."

One of the biggest inconveniences has been that the online classified system, which lets Dos Mundos’ readers know of job opportunities, has not worked since the hack. Reyes said he is working to restore that and the paper’s business directory. Those features, along with PDF versions of the entire paper for the last three weeks, will go up before the rest of the content, as a service to readers.

Hackers recently hit the Web site of Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth with a similar message. A Morocco-based Islamic group that calls itself "Team Evil" claimed responsibility for that attack. The Christian Science Monitor reported last month that hackers were active in defacing a number of Israeli sites during the Gaza conflict.

Reyes said Dos Mundos has learned from this attack.

"There are a few things we’re adding to make sure there’s more privacy in terms of registration and domain information," he said.

The hacked Web site is "history," Reyes said. "Now, we move forward."

Source: The Jewish Chronicle