Story highlights
Malaysia Airlines website taken down by group calling themselves Cyber Caliphate
But the airline claims its systems were intact and users were instead redirected to hackers' site
The official Malaysia Airlines website has been hacked by a group claiming to support Islamist terror group, ISIS.
On logging into www.malaysiaairlines.com on Monday morning, users were presented with an image of a Malaysia Airlines Airbus and messages that read “404 – Plane Not Found” and “Hacked by Lizard Squad – Official Cyber Caliphate.”
The browser tab also read “ISIS will prevail.”
The Malaysia Airlines homepage later changed to a black background featuring a mocked-up image of a lizard in a top hat complete with monocle. Users were directed to a Twitter page called “@lizardmafia,” which featured a series of largely asinine posts.
The airline, which is currently restructuring itself in the wake of the loss of two of its airliners last year, could not be contacted by telephone.
Hack denied
In a post on its Facebook account, the airline denied its internal servers, which contain passenger information, had been compromised. It said its Domain Name System (DNS) had instead been hijacked, with users redirected to the hackers’ website.
The airline added the issue has now been resolved with its service provider and the system is expected to be fully recovered within 22 hours. The matter has also been reported to Malaysian authorities, it said.
But the hackers, identifying themselves as the Lizard Squad, took to Twitter claiming they had penetrated Malaysia Airlines’ email account and posted a screenshot.
Meanwhile, tweets from the airline’s official account directed users to a separate URL for its online booking service. This link worked as normal.
READ: Malaysia Airlines slashes 6,000 jobs in major restructuring
CNN’s Wilfred Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.