An act of cyber terrorism

Rasika Somarathna

Restored The Army website was restored after a few hours after it was hacked.

Web hackers made inroads into the official website of the Sri Lanka Army, www.army.lk, in the wee hours of yesterday, prompting officials to put a temporary halt to the hosting of the site in the Internet.

While claiming that they would bounce back shortly, the Army Media Unit blamed the LTTE and their proxies for the illegal hacking.

The reputation and popularity of the Army’s official web portal, had seen a steady upward trend in recent times claiming a record number of visitors, specially since the beginning of the ‘humanitarian mission’ in the north.

An Army media press release said its official news wing had been illegally hacked and technically ‘assassinated’ by suspected Tigers or their proxies, by inserting some horrible and gruesome images.

They said this new form of information ‘terrorism’ was a criminal offence that can be subjected to prosecution, according to international legal provisions.

The Army’s official news wing in the net, had depicted the bitter truth behind LTTE terrorism and its ugly atrocities in their correct perspective.

Thus it was a hard pill to swallow for Tiger terrorists and their mouthpieces as it had badly hampered their misinformation campaign, an official at the Army’s Media Unit said.

The Army website editorial board in the release said that they were doing their utmost to get the site back on track at the earliest possible.

The press release said : “We also appeal to our readership to bear with us at this critical moment of our military history, at a time LTTE terrorism is counting its days. We are heartened to receive the flood of inquiries, being directed to us since the moment web ‘terrorists’ intruded into our most popular, www.army.lk. Bear with us we will be back on track as soon as possible”.

Meanwhile, it was reported that website of National News Agency ‘Lankapuvath’ too had been hacked by suspected LTTE hackers yesterday.