WhatsApp Hackers Kdms Team Highlight 'Unlawful Murder of Palestinians'

The hackers who this week breached the websites of WhatsApp, AVG and Avira have revealed the reasons behind their attack.

In the space of 24 hours a previously unheard of por-Palestinian hacking group claimed responsibility for defacing the websites of five prominent companies including free messaging service WhatsApp, anti-virus company AVG and porn portal RedTube.

All attacks were linked to domain registrar Network Solutions and all attacks were claimed by the group calling themselves Kdms Team.

IBTimes UK got in touch with the hackers, initially using Twitter and then email to find out more about the group. However as the contact told us from the outset, the group's English was not very good and therefore responses to questions were short and lacking in details.

The group comprises four hackers who come from Palestine though it is unclear if the group is actually based in Palestine at the moment.

Unlawfully murdered

The group has three main aims. The first is to "familiarize the whole world with our unlawfully murdered Palestine." The second rather mysterious goal is to show that "there is no full security."

The third and final goal of the Kdms Team hackers is to breach well-known websites in order that the group's message is delivered to as wide an audience as possible.

The group is affiliated with Anonymous, but when asked if it was part of the hacktivist collective, it responded: "We feel bad when people think that Anonymous is a group, its an idea. Everyone can be Anonymous."

No comment

When asked about this week's attacks the group said it couldn't comment on whether or not it had breached the security of Network Solutions in order to deface all websites affected by their attacks. However AVG, the anti-virus company which was one of those affected by Kdms Team's attack, confirmed to IBTimes UK that it was not hacked, but the defacement happened because of a breach at Network Solutions:

"As a result of the AVG domain name system (DNS) registrar yesterday being compromised through provider Network Solutions, AVG customers visiting the website did experience a delay in service which has now been rectified and the AVG.com site is working as normal. The AVG.com site was not hacked."

"The whole world will know"

When asked about future plans, Kdms Team didn't reveal any specific plans, but said that "if we did hack any site we will make sure that the whole world will know."

It is hard to assess exactly what skills the four Kdms Team hackers possess. While the defacement of five websites looks impressive, it was actually a single security breach at Network Solutions which allowed them access.

According to John Herbkersman, the senior director for public communications at Network Solutions parent company Web.com, the secrutiy breach came about as a result of social engineering rather than a highly complex hack.

"It appears that our account used to manage the DNS records registered at Network Solutions has received a fake password-reset request which was honored by the provider," the company wrote on its blog. "Using the new credentials, the cybercriminals have been able to change the entries to point to their DNS servers."

The company added that no malicious code was delivered by the domain to which those visiting the affected websites were re-directed.