Hackers on anti-Egypt spree bury Egyptology journal in the sand
Hackers waging war against Egyptian websites have forced the closure of Egyptological, a journal on Egyptology. Egyptologist Kate Phizackerley, who published the web periodical with Andrea Byrnes, has also closed down her personal blog for the same reason. Egyptological was shut down after it was "targeted by a professional …
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Dontcha lovem
Hackers and "News of the World" readers not much sense between any of them paediatrician->paedophile Egyptology->Egyptian state.
Islamic hackers
These are Islamic hackers. Reassuring that religion is spreading knowledge for the benefit of mankind around the world as per usual.
Re: Islamic hackers
There ain't no stupid quite like religious stupid.
Re: Islamic hackers
Standard practice rewrite history to justify the religion I guess ......
Re: Islamic hackers
The idea that the peoples of those lands were the cradle of civilization long, long, ago, before Islamism rose to plunge them into a neo-dark-age is clearly not approved by the mullahs. Now please excuse me while I step outside to set fire to myself.
Re: Islamic hackers
As someone who holds a degree in classical history (which did wonders for a career) i am not very happy about websites devoted to ancient Egypt scholarship being caught up in modern day political struggles, however unfortunately, Egyptology was controlled by Zahi Hawass, who was closely connected with the Mubarak regime.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/11/237360.html and http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/egypt/111021/history-catches-famous-egyptologist-zahi-hawass . Sadly, Egyptology became smeared by association.
Re: Islamic hackers
Unfortunately, by the time egypt was conquered by the arabs, it was a backwater. The Byzantines were the only civilisation that I know of to successfully manage a transition from mostly urban population to mostly agrarian, ie they went backwards, and successfully so. The late Byzantine empire was a shadow of what we imagine it was.
Alexandria had a tiny population at the time of the conquest to that in previous ages.
In comparison, a couple of hundred years later, it was a centre of learning again, as it had been in centuries past, in an enlightened age overseen by the Caliphs.
In comparison, Europe of the time was pulling itself back together after the repeated collapse of civilisation. petty chiefs, warlords, revolts, summary executions, all in all a very unpleasant place to live.
Now ... we look today? The dominant civilisation of the middle east collapsed not a hundred years ago (the Ottoman empire for those that don't know), which had been decaying for a good while before that, in the same way as Rome did. The place was then forcibly ripped up and redrawn. Is it any wonder that things are still a mess? It took europe hundreds of years to achieve some semblance of stability. Holding the borders as fixed does no-one any favours either.
The above makes no judgement on, or excuses for, the religiously motivated. The reasons for the current issues in the region, are, however much more complex and deeply rooted than this, and we are foolish to forget that.
I believe that using history as a guide is a terrible way to predict the future, however it does provide remarkable insight into why things are the way that they are.
So, that was a really a long way of saying, its better if you really know what you are talking about before making pronouncements that can only be described as ignorant, which is ironic as that's what you are trying to imply of your targets.
Re: Islamic hackers
Thank you for your informative post. It certainly is true that Islam has had past glories, and it also has no monopoly of ignorance. The present day, though, is the moment of glory of Western civilization, which managed to invent the transistor and the vacuum tube before anyone else, but at least some of the rest of the world is catching up quite well.
I got confused by the URL
Although El Reg is by now quite well known for its URL typos, this one was particularly amusing. I thought for a moment that there were hackers keeping websites online when their owners wanted to shut them down:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/23/egyptology_site_forced_online_by_hackers/ forced ONLINE
Re: I got confused by the URL
Methinks the "send corrections" options should have been used for the sake of pedantry, but sometimes mistakes are worth leaving undeclared - purely for their amusement value.
Always the Gentleman
Part of the reason for my reticence is that some, although not all, of the hackers have been polite to us.
So if they start calling her names, the kid gloves are coming off?
Huh?
The article seems to be missing the single most important piece of information, namely the reason claimed by the people behind the assault for disliking the study of ancient Egyptian history.
Re: Huh?
Political reasons ... being how for these folks admitting that Egypt existed before their religion would not be politically correct?
I guess the Pyramids may be a bit of a problem. Then they could just use a Sarah Palin style explanation in that obviously Allah created them when he came into existence in about 500 AD and made them look like they were much older?
Re: Huh?
Generally Egyptians are incredibly proud of their heritage, but some Muslims have problems with it being an amazingly successful polytheistic civilisation that celebrated the human body. Sadly some of these people are senior politicians in the Salafist parties. So far none of them have called for the destruction of archaeological remains, but there have been calls for statues and inscriptions to be covered in wax. This is part of a general attack on Egyptian culture where writers and journalists are coming under increasing attack.
Not to be outdone
Conservative christian hackers in the US have brought down the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art web sites.
Re: Not to be outdone
Only a matter of time!
You forgot Wikipedia from your list. Long live Conservutopiapaedia.
Re: Not to be outdone
Confusing the Metropolitan Museum of Art site with the infamous "Met Art" web site is an easy mistake for those blinded by religious zeal.
Bah!
So these people prevent someone from speaking freely on the web by closing down their website and blog?
This must be a new definition of "polite" that I am unfamiliar with.
Re: Bah!
"So these people prevent someone from speaking freely on the web by closing down their website and blog?...." Yeah, who do they think they are, the Anonyputzs?
Good thing for websites about flour that the FSM would never tolerate this sort of thing.
Truth
The owners of egyotological tried in vain to recover the website which was running WordPress. Hackers gained access to administrator accounts via an exploit
The owners of egyptological failed to patch the security glitch in WordPress
The hackers looked up the website host and managed to plant a backdoor on sitehq,egyptological was hosted on siehq. Sitehq failed to remove such backdoor in to their system, leaving other hosted sites open to attack.
This was not the work of islamists
Hackers threatened to infect the computers of anyone who was associated with egyptological
The group responsible are located in China of which they have taken down big names such as IBM
Why?
Personally looking at why either somebody, or bodies have done something I look for a reason. I can see absolutely no reason that Chinese hackers would attack a web site of Egyptology research.
I think Mike Richards suggestions for why people might attack this web site pretty plausible. Perhaps, assuming that you aren't just trying to suggest that this isn't another piece of albeit mild Islamic activity, you could expand on why a group in China would have any reason at all to hack this site?
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