Qatar's official news agency was hacked during a blockade

In 2017, Qatar's news agency is a website that is run by the goverment that publishes news in a multitude of languages.
The hackers managed to distrupt relations between Qatar and their neighbors (GCC & egypt), causing the blockade on june 5th 2017,
Due to this the ruler of Qatar Sheikh Tamim was accused of supporting terrorism due to the hackers word with his tongue,
during an investigation cnducted by Al-Jazeera it found that a company in Azerbaijan disguised as an Emirati company who hired contractors to detect breaches in online websites,
which one of them was the Qatari news agency, after the information was handed to the company it was passed over to Saudi intellegence to breach the website.

This wasn't only a politcal effect, it also effected the citizens of Qatar who were largely dependent on the import of product.
This caused Qatar airways which was a great airport to be largely empty due to having to fly around the neighboring countries,
families in the region used to go visit their cousins in the blockading countries however could not visit due to no flights in their territories

Qatar is #down trends on twitter


In 2013, a group of hacktivist syrians who have been known for their support of Bashar Al-Assad shut down the .qa domain which was the main goal of this attack.
They gained access by hacking into the registrar of Qatar's ministry of information and communication, and distrupting these sites for multiple hours,
portals to several goverment official websites and non-goverment websites were down and could not be accessed by people who needed it at the time this meant that news
websites such as Al-Jazeera could not be accessed.
The SEA started posting on twitter during the attacks claiming "Qatar is #down", as well as claiming credit for the attacks.
although it was treated by Qatar's IT as if they could do no harm ,"It was a temporary hitch and the hackers could not do any serious harm" (ictQatar, 2013).

Refrences:

  1. Top-7 Cybersecurity Breaches in Qatar
  2. Qatar state news agency’s hacking linked to Riyadh
  3. Qatar is Down ! Syrian Electronic Army hijacks major Qatar websites
  4. Qatar websites targeted by Syrian hackers