TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Decentralized international hacktivist group Anonymous on Monday (Nov. 28) hacked into an Iranian Hajj website and posted images of Taiwan's flag, Mahsa Amini, an Iran's pre-revolution flag, as well as criticism of Wikipedia.
That day, an Anonymous representative who goes by the Reddit handle "Allez-opi_omi" notified Taiwan News that the collective had hacked into qazvin.haj.ir, the official website for residents of the Iranian city of Qazvin planning to take part in the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The hack included new pages added to the news section of the website.
Anonymous logo. (Anonymous image)
At the time of publication, the defacement along with the website are still online. Anonymous has also saved an archived version on Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
On the first page (archive) of defacements that appears is the Anonymous logo, followed by the "Taiwan Numbah Wan!" meme. This is a reference to a quote uttered by video game streamer AngryPug in 2015 to antagonize Chinese streamer Em0 during a match in the game H1Z1.
(Anonymous image)
Below the slogan was Taiwan's national flag, followed by the words "Rest in Power Mahsa Amini." The death of Amini on Sept. 16 of this year has sparked widespread protests in Iran because she died under suspicious circumstances after being arrested for not wearing a hijab, with eyewitnesses stating that she was severely beaten by Islamic religious officers and blaming her death on police brutality.
The next image displayed is the state flag of Iran that flew in the nation from 1964 to 1979, before the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution. The flag features a lion holding a sword while standing in front of the sun and is flown by Iranian exile communities as a symbol of opposition to the Islamic Republic.
Mahsa Amini. (Anonymous image)
The second page (archive) of defacements includes the Anonymous logo and a statement about the "defilement of the Wikipedia article." This is a reference to an edit war over the Wikipedia page of Anonymous member Cyber Anakin, and the collective suspects that the sudden, arbitrary edits of the page were part of a Chinese influence operation exploiting existing system biases at Wikipedia.
The hacktivists included an image showing Wikipedia's burgeoning revenue in recent years and accused the organization of "suckering and hoarding up money by pretending that it's under existential danger." They then included an archived link to a request for comment on the appropriateness of the banners used by Wikipedia's December 2022 fundraising campaign.
Pre-revolution flag of Iran. (Anonymous image)
Anonymous accused Wikipedia of having a "growing cancer," and linked to a page by a Wikipedia user who displayed a revenue chart allegedly showing the free online encyclopedia's "runaway spending growth." The hackers accused the encyclopedia of being "dominated by deletionists and policy thumpers," and included a link to a former Wikipedia editor Stephenb, who claimed to halt work for the organization due to "Deletionists."
(Anonymous image)
