Pinellas recovery center website hacked by Islamic extremists

Bay News 9 ^ | 6/2/15 | Trevor Pettiford

[Impala64ssa]

A Pinellas County recovery center's website was hacked by an Islamic extremist group over the weekend.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that Footprints Beachside Recovery Center was hit and its content replaced with a message supporting very different ideologies.

And it's not the only one.

The web page, claimed to be hacked by a group calling itself El Moujahidin, which had numerous misspellings and sentence fragments, threatened to keep hacking if Muslims are killed.

John Templeton, Jr. had just gotten back from vacation on Sunday when he decided to check in on the company's website.

“Instead of our front page showing, popping up -- this was what on our site for over 24 hours,” Templeton, Jr. said.

It was a cryptic, hacked message calling on the U.S. to stop killing Muslims and threatening to continue hacking sites.

“It was pretty scary," Templeton, Jr. "I thought, is there a reason that they're targeting us?"

John's worked the last eight years building a modest business helping people recover from substance abuse. He never thought it would fall under of all things, a type of cyber-terrorist attack

“We're a family run business,” Templeton said. “We've poured our heart and soul into the business and we're helping a lot of people.”

But according to the FBI, this is a not an isolated incident. In an email, officials tell Bay News 9, there has been an uptick over the last 14 months, mostly by site using Wordpress software.

John says they use that software, but are now taking precautions.

“We're having them look into the back end ways, really try to put up more security and I think there are new protections for the word press programs,” he said. Templeton just hopes this is the only time his company's website will fall victim to another attack. FBI officials say the same hacked message has appeared on several businesses' web pages throughout the country.

Officials say, the best defense if you're using Wordpress, is to keep the security settings updated.

Federal agents are still trying to track down the source of the hacks.

[Impala64ssa]

Of course the muzzrats would want such places to shut down. They need people whose brains are fried from substance abuse to be duped into following the hashish-abusing child molester and strap bombs to themselves believing they got virgins waiting for them in Paradise. Too many sober, straight thinking people out there can negatively impact the ISIS recruiting pool.

[Ken H]

Appears the hackers were targeting Wordpress software rather than websites that offend mohammedans.

An even better way to look at it - what website in the western world doesn't offend mohammedans?

[wildandcrazyrussian]

I had the same thing happen to a small private website I run, and I don’t use Wordpress at all (or in fact any software except plain HTML). I just assume it is a universal attempt to insert their code into any IP address they find anywhere, but without asking for money or anything, so I deleted the code. Nothing I have looked into shows HOW it is possible to infiltrate code into someone else’s non-interactive website so it remains a mystery, although it is theoretically possible that there is some trick to putting malicious code into a “mailto:” entry.

[Slambat]

I wonder how much of this is our own government and it’s
“fear” doctrine.

[Holdem Or Foldem]

72 VIRGINIANS!