Hackers have attacked hundreds of Danish websites in recent days to protest against the publication in Denmark of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, Internet security officials said. The hackers have defaced home pages and websites by replacing them with messages hailing Islam and condemning the cartoons, security and virus analyst Peter Kruse of Danish internet security firm CSIS told AFP. "About 500 Danish websites have been targetted that we know of because of the Mohammed cartoons ... (and) the number continues to rise dramatically," Kruse said.He said the hackers were primarily based in the Middle East and were strategically coordinating their attacks to make them more effective. Small websites with poor security were the primary targets. "These are not skilled hackers, they are what we call scriptkiddies who attack websites with weak security," he said.
Instead of seeing the real home page, visitors to the sites would see a message criticizing Denmark and condemning the publication of the cartoons. Some showed images of Danish flags being burned. One website that was attacked had a message that read: "Respect Our Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) Or U Will See True Muslims Anger."
The problem was relatively easy for the owners of the websites to rectify, though many were being hacked again as soon as they had removed the defacement, Kruse said. Major sites, such as the government website and the site of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper which first printed the cartoons in September, had been under attack but their security was strong enough to ward off any severe problems. "This clearly shows that security on small websites could be better," Kruse said. He said he expected the attacks to continue for two or three weeks, or "until the dispute dies down."