The Confederation of African Football (CAF) website fell victim to a politically targeted hack, rendering the site inactive for five hours.
A Russian group called New World Hackers claimed responsibility and told the BBC it was done “in protest” against Gabon hosting this year’s Africa Cup of Nations.
The games governed by CAF are ongoing in Gabon whose re-election of president, Ali Bongo (originally took power in 2009), was publicly protested following the 2016 disputed presidential elections.
“Gabon is a country of dictatorship,” a member of the group told BBC Sport.
CAF has now increased measures to ensure better security of the website by adding a five-second screening process on all visitors, called a Cloudflare DDos protection service, to mitigate the problem even though, there is still uncertainty over whether it will prevent any further attacks.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”CAF has taken action but we can’t verity 100% it will not happen again,”[/perfectpullquote]
Junior Binyam, the governing body’s communications, told BBC Sport.
“Even CIA servers are hacked.”
The Associated Press also received confirmation via mail that the New World Hackers had “taken down” the CAF website.
In a message written by one of the hackers calling themselves Kapustkiy, the email said,
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”We did this in protest against Gabon.[/perfectpullquote]
“They are running the Africa Cup in a country where the dictator Ali Bongo is killing innocent people.”
At first, it could not be determined whether it was as an unrelated technical glitch or an intentional attack but steps taken by CAF to resolve the problem, took some hours without any succession.
The take down could not be verified but it is believed that the hackers, Kapustkiy, Cyric and Maxie, three Russian residents, used a DDos attack method – where multiple attacks on several systems often with a Trojan virus, are collectively used to attack a single target.
“We 3 from the New World Hackers group are responsible for this,” the purported hacker also wrote.
President Ali Bongo took over the oil-rich country from his father and won the August 2016 re-election by a razor-thin margin after beating opposition leader, Jean Ping.
But Ping denounced the results causing street protests and later clashes with security forces, amounting to violence and death.
Three people were reported dead by Gabonese authorities but the opposition claimed otherwise, saying on social media that the death toll was much higher.
The buildup to the AFCON games caused worry after the opposition called for a boycott and even though the games are underway, protests are being carried out on social media and peacefully in Gabon streets.
The opposition said that at least four people were arrested for calmly protesting against Bongo’s rule during the tournament.
On Sunday, Gabon who host Africa’s prestigious games for the second time in five years, became the first Nations Cup hosts in 23 years, to exit the games in the group stage after a goalless draw against Cameroon ended their progress.
Featured photo: Gabon president, Ali Bongo (L) and CAF president, Issa Hayatou (R) at the 2017Nations Cup. (Gabriel Bouys)
