Hackers divert al-Jazeera users to US porn and patriot sites

The al-Jazeera website has suffered further attacks from hackers, who hijacked the Arabic news broadcaster's domain name and redirected users to what appears to be an American patriot's website.

Users trying to log onto the al-Jazeera website in the US found a message that read "Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia" beneath a logo of the US flag.

A spokeswoman for al-Jazeera in London said users trying to access the website from the US were also being redirected towards other internet destinations, including porn sites.

In the UK, both al-Jazeera's Arabic and English language websites could not be reached today.

Staff at al-Jazeera's HQ in Doha, Qatar, have been trying to sort out the hacking problems for the past two days, the spokeswoman added.

The hacking of the al-Jazeera websites began on Wednesday and at first it was thought the problem was so-called "denial of service" attacks, when sites are deliberately taken out by unprecedented volumes of traffic.

Salah Al Seddiqui, al-Jazeera's IT manager, said the new problems had started after someone hijacked the domain name and redirected it to another server.

"Our website is working but nobody can see it," Mr Seddiqui said.

The Arabic news service has also moved its data centre from US hosting service DataPipe to a new location in France, according to Mr Seddiqui.

Hackers started attacking the al-Jazeera websites after they carried video footage of US soldiers captured by the Iraqis on Sunday.

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