"Bye Bye Qadaffi."
With those three words scrawled across Libya's top-level domain registry website, a new hacking group has made its presence and its political stance known.
Calling itself "Electr0n," the hacking group defaced nic.ly, the main website used to administer Libyan domain names, Graham Cluley from the security firm Sophos reported.
The defaced site reads "HACKED By Electr0n," and beneath "bye bye Qadaffi" it says, "Feb 17 Libya," a reference to the day Libyan protesters began their demonstrations, "only to be shot upon by security forces loyal to Colonel Gadaffi," Cluley wrote.
(The ".ly" refers to Libya's country code. Companies which use .ly in their domain name, including the popular website shortening service bit.ly, do not appear to be affected by this hack," Cluley wrote.)
Despite the February stamp on the defaced site, Libyans are still very much embroiled in a dangerous conflict. Libyan rebels said they have captured two sons of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, but Gadhafi remains at large, and his troops continue fighting rebels for control of Tripoli, the country's capital.
The hack also comes just as Libya's Internet seems to be active again; a nationwide blackout shut down service in March, and the subsequent months saw heavily curtailed Web traffic within the country, according to an MSNBC report.
This is yet another instance of hacktivists taking an online stand against oppressive Arab regimes; earlier this month, the high-profile hacking group Anonymous defaced Syria's Ministry of Defense website, offering a message of support to the citizens living under President Bashar al-Assad.
In the past months, government websites in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iran and Bahrain have also been hacked or defaced.
