Dawkins Foundation site hacked by Muslims

April 4, 2013 • 8:20 am

If you go there, you’ll see this. The tab says “hacked by Angelz Co. for Islam.” (This page apparently does not show up in the UK, but it does in the U.S.) Let’s hope they fix it soon.

Picture 1

The English:

Say : O ye that reject Faith! [1] I worship not that which ye worship, [2] Nor will ye worship that which I worship. [3] And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship, [4] Nor will ye worship that which I worship. [5] To you be your Way, and to me mine. [6]

These verses, as one might expect, are from the Qur’an: the 109th sura (chapter). 

Really?  Do atheists ever hack religious sites?

h/t: Kelly Houle

40 thoughts on “Dawkins Foundation site hacked by Muslims”

  5. After their Facebook page got hacked over the weekend, I’m surprised they didn’t add some extra security for their main site.

    That said, of all the messages for the hackers to choose, they went for one that is essentially gibberish. It’s roughly equivalent to saying “I know that you know that I know that you know…”

    1. They may have added extra security. Extra security though is often meaningless if you have a hole you don’t know about or if the hacker has already penetrated the site and installed a backdoor of their own that isn’t found.

  6. Oh dear. Now Richard Dawkins will complain about this and his critics will thus have more evidence of his Islamophobia.

    1. Every act of muslim activism like this is a failure of faith; an unwitting admission of unbelief, made by people who are under cultural pressure to believe in something their rational minds know isn’t true. They presumably think that if they can silence the dissenting voices, such as Dawkins, then this will ease their mental turmoil. What a horrible, embarrasing religion to be born into – I can’t abide Islam at all, but there is a part of me that REALLY feels sorry for Muslims.

  8. Hack not that ye be not hacked, neither shalt thou hack a hacker’s hacking that was hacked of a hackee who had hacked a hacker, and thus space the Prophet Margin.

  9. I like the way that Muslims actively try to convert others to their religion, but when the reverse happens, their response is “Hush now. You’re fine following your religion, I’m fine following mine.” Now that they risk losing members, they’re not so big on conversion. It’s kind of the way that Christians were content to burn us for centuries, now all of a sudden they’re big on “respect.” Nice little game they’re playing.

    I also think Muslims fail to appreciate how turned off many us our by the boastful and bombastic language of the Qur’an. It’s all so very self-important. If it were so profound, would it have to take itself so seriously?

  10. Quote:
    Say : O ye that reject Faith!
    [1] I worship not that which ye worship

    Well, given that we don’t worship, that’s a moot point.

    [2] Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

    Agreed.

    [3] And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,

    See points 1 and 2 above

    [4] Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

    Or indeed the alternatives, see point 2

    [5] To you be your Way, and to me mine.

    Agreed. So why the hack?

    “Do atheists ever hack religious sites”?

    Yes, oh yes.

  12. Does the Foundation have an IT security person on staff? Who does their web hosting?

    (I imagine the answers to these might not want to be publicized, but they should be investigated – “hacks” don’t just happen.)

  13. ah, theists are such good examples on why religion is worthless. They show that even they don’t beleive in their religions that say that one should not steal.

  14. Interesting… Never seen Arabic written like that. Guess this is how you would write Turkish, and they just used the same alphabet. Still, I thought you were only ever suppose to write passage from the Qur’an in Arabic.

  15. If their Facebook page was “hacked”, that means only one thing – someone had the password, which was either stored insecurely somewhere, or consisted of an easy to guess string.

    Which means that same password, or a similarly compromised one, was what allowed the main site to be “hacked”.

    My main point here is that guessing a password is not hacking, and that when you have a lot of exposure, it’s important to use secure passwords. If it’s easy for you to remember, it’s easy for someone else to guess.

    1. From the RDFRS website :

      However, our site has not been compromised, and the person did not gain access to any of our data. Here is what happened:
      The hacker briefly gained access to our name servers, which are hosted with a third party and are not under our control. This way he managed to redirect the domain name “richarddawkins.net” to a different web site. This means that for a brief period of time, you would have seen a different web site in your browser when you wanted to access our site.

    2. “If it’s easy for you to remember, it’s easy for someone else to guess.”

      xkcd.com/936/

      (If this doesn’t work, put http:// in front of it)

      1. Long random phrases aren’t a bad idea, but virtually every system that accepts a password places limits on the size of that password, which makes such phrases rarely usable.

  16. As security advisory: if you are aware that a site has been “hacked” – don’t visit that site until it’s been verified clean. Your malware detection may well not protect you.

    Mike.

    * hacked in quotes becuase most hacks are not really hacks as Thanny indicates.

  17. That quote – “I don’t worship what you worship and vice versa, (repeat several times)” seems to me to be entirely and self-evidently true.
    It seems to be something any atheist could happily agree with.

    So I don’t quite see the point of putting that on a hacked site…

  18. When I saw this, what went thru my mind was:
    About religion:
    “So much said about so little to understand”
    About science:
    “So much to learn about so little understood”
    Religion is a mental disorder, Islam has to be one of the most dangerous!

  19. A point of clarification: the RDF web site was not hacked.

    What happened was that the DNS server, which was not owned by the RDF, was hacked.

    For those not familiar with the technology, the DNS server is what translates the name (www.richarddawkins.net) into an IP address (23.21.239.236) and the IP address is what uniquely identifies the server on the Internet.

    It’s like the difference between putting a bug in Dawkins’ telephone and breaking into the phone book printer and altering the entry for Richard Dawkins to a different telephone number.

    1. Yep. So they pointed it at a spoof page of their own making.

      They could equally well (I guess) have pointed it at, say, a pornsite (though being good Muslims they wouldn’t have the addresses of any such sites, would they? 😉

  21. It’s happening to me in Dublin,Ireland,I have to use a back door method to get to the site at the moment

  22. I’m also being redirected from Sam Harris’s last post,and also your blog on the hack

  23. I still am unable to get the site working. After a partial load there is a “Problem loading page” : “angelzco.kilu.de”.
    I am in the Netherlands and the time is 15:19.
    So maybe there are more DNS-servers hacked.

    Anyways, Islam just go away. Humanity does not need you.

  24. What a poignant and articulate argument for superstition! The antiquated diction really drives it home!

    There’s simply no parodying self-parody.

  25. Ok,it’s down for maintenance at the moment.
    I just noticed that this same group has had a facebook page closed on them recently.
    I think the RDFRS did a story on it,not sure,but it was justifying stoning and other such barbaric nonsense,so,you could say it’s a revenge attack…Now,let’s win!

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