Qatar’s Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani issued a public statement today accusing two Muslim nations of hacking the state-run Qatar News Agency(QNA) website and its social media accounts in May last year.
In an interview given to Qatar TV, Al Thani who is also a Deputy Prime Minister said that his country’s law enforcement has enough evidence that two countries were involved in hacking the QNA website last year.
Going further into details, on May 23rd last year, a group of hackers reportedly hacked the website of QNA to post blasphemy content on the platform criticizing US Foreign Policy and attributing the cyber attack on the news agency’s platform to the country’s Emir Sheikh Tamim.
All this activity made Saudi Arabia and UAE take action against the website by blocking the Qatar News Agency and Al Jazeera.
Egypt and Bahrain followed this practice after a week and also chose to cut diplomatic and trade ties with Doha, the capital city of Qatar.
Al Thani sarcastically hinted that two nations which lie on either side of Qatar(Iran and Abu Dhabi ) were responsible for the orchestration of the cyber attack on QNA.
At that time Qatar sought the help of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) to investigate the matter and help find the source of the attack.
US FBI is said to have gathered evidence in November last year against Iran and UAE for launching a cyberattack on QNA. It also submitted a detailed report to Emir in December last year on this issue.
After known the facts on who was behind the attack, the State of Qatar has chosen to take legal action against the two nations.
Details on how the action will be planned and executed on two of the most powerful nations of Middle East will be available shortly.
