Two US Army websites were defaced by hackers who replaced the 404 error pages with political messages. The attackers included explicit insults against President Donald Trump and US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, along with slogans supporting the Kurdish cause. The attack was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Ronald Lovelace, who immediately notified military authorities and Cyberscoop.
Error pages turned into political statements
The compromised pages belong to the Army's Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AIIC) and the Open Innovation Lab (OIL), both established in 2019 and 2020 to advance AI integration and test new software and cyber capabilities. Instead of standard error messages, visitors encountered text such as "FREE KURDISTAN" and "Kurdish sr was here." Another message labeled Trump a "pedophile & thief," likely referencing his ties to financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A vulgar insult also targeted Tom Barrack.
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WordPress vulnerabilities and cloud infrastructure under scrutiny
Lovelace noted that the affected websites run on WordPress and Microsoft cloud infrastructure. Numerous WordPress plugins are frequently exploited by hackers to gain control over sites, although the specific method used here remains unconfirmed. The sites have since been taken offline. This incident echoes other cyberattacks on government websites, such as the recent case of DuckDuckGo integrating uBlock Origin to block YouTube ads, demonstrating how vulnerabilities can be leveraged for various purposes.
The Kurdish people and the perceived US betrayal
The Kurdish people are a stateless ethnic group spanning southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and northern Syria. Historically, the US has allied with Kurds against Saddam Hussein and later ISIS. However, recent US policy under Trump has endorsed Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish areas, fostering a sense of betrayal. The attackers, likely Kurdish sympathizers, aimed to express their anger through these defacements. As detailed on Wikipedia, Kurds have often been used as allies then abandoned, a dynamic that fuels resentment.
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