Cricket match turns to cyber war

Bangladesh’s lost semi-final against India in the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 seems to have had consequences outside the realm of cricket, as the match appears to have sparked a cyber war between hackers from the two countries The incident began on Thursday night, when the Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) website was hacked by an unknown group, or individual. The hacker posted a gif of Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta in a challenging pose from the Dragon Ball GT anime. After the hacking, the website read “Hacked by Sxtz, Golden Hacker-Kira-StormMA-DLC- SenpaiWeb-NoriLaClasse.” Subsequently, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division website was hacked on Saturday, though on this occasion the hackers chose to remain unidentified. Meanwhile, Bangladeshi hackers also launched cyber attacks on around 100 Indian websites, as a rivalry between hackers in the two countries intensified over the last three days. “Our primary investigation revealed that Indian hackers were involved in the Bangladesh ICT Division website hacking. This was likely in response to a series of Indian websites being hacked from Bangladesh,” said an official of the ICT Division wishing to remain anonymous. Officials from the ICT Division and the BTB said that the exact time when the websites were hacked could not be determined. ICT Division Public Relations Officer (PRO) Abu Nasher said: “We noticed it around 2.30pm. Soon after noticing, an expert ICT team began the operation to recover the website.” The website was recovered within two hours. However, though the website was hacked on Thursday, the Tourism Board authority did not manage to recover its website till Saturday. Despite repeated attempts, Tourism Board CEO Nasir Uddin Ahmed could not be reached by the Dhaka Tribune. Sekander Ali, sports editor of Channel 9, said that a competition between the two countries should have remained limited to sports. “But recently, it has been crossing into unwarranted territory, which is unfortunate for sports lovers,” he said. “We are noticing that the cricket match between Bangladesh and India sparked a cyber war, with confrontations taking place through Facebook statuses. Real cricket lovers and sports organisers never support this type of confrontation. This type of behaviour among cricket supporters is not pleasant for us,” Sekander added.