Iranian Cyber Army Hacks Voice of America Websites

The digital arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard has launched a successful cyber attack on the Voice of America, hijacking dozens of sites operated by the government-funded broadcaster.

The group, which calls itself the Iranian Cyber Army, placed a message on VOA's Persian-language news site, demanding an end to U.S. meddling in other nations' affairs.

"Mrs. Clinton, do you want to hear the voice of oppressed nations will from heart of USA?" read the statement, which was displayed in both English and Farsi, according to CNN. "Islamic world doesn't believe USA trickery. We call on you to stop interfering in Islamic countries."

A banner bearing an AK-47 and an Iranian flag was displayed above the text.

The Iranian Cyber Army -- which temporarily disabled Twitter's main site following Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election, and struck China's Baidu search engine in January 2010 -- told Iran's semi-official Fars news agency that it hacked the main VOA site and 95 other pages linked to the broadcast service.

"The U.S. can no longer claim that it is the bellwether of software and cyber technology," said Ali Saeedi Shahroodi, a representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to state-run Press TV. "The hacking of a VOA homepage by the Iranian Cyber Army and leaving a message on the site for the U.S. secretary of state shows the power and capability of the [Islamic Revolution Guards] Corps in the cyber arena."

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VOA acknowledged that a number of its Web pages were hit by hackers and suggested that the cyber attack might have been launched in response to a recent ABC interview with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. During that interview, Clinton noted that the State Department had opened Twitter accounts in Arabic and Farsi.

"We want to be in the mix with this incredible, young, energetic population that is seeking the same rights to express themselves as young people in the United States seek," she said, an apparent reference to the use of social media by young protesters in the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings.

Anti-government protests also took place across Iran on Sunday, organized in part by pro-democracy activists communicating over sites like Twitter and Facebook. Protesters also used a Facebook page to record human rights abuses during Sunday's rally, reports Al-Jazeera. The page detailed how security forces beat demonstrators with chains and batons in the northern city of Rasht and hit peaceful demonstrators with tear gas in the capital Tehran.