Iran's fallen for it as well

GuyClapperton 0 317 Views

In case you didn't know - and I'm betting you did - some activists from Iran apparently hacked Twitter during last week so instead of seeing Twitter's home page people saw a poem in Persian (people under 44 might not be aware that Persia was the old name for Iran before major regime change). The story is here.

I have a few problems with this. I thought, rather than the traditional end-of-year stuff a load of bloggers come out with at this time of year, I'd offer some wisdom to any other 'activists' thinking of doing anything similar.

1. Nobody, repeat nobody, who knows anything, uses the Twitter.com site. We're all on or something similar. You've shrunk your potential viewership before you've started.

2. The people who have used Twitter to object to what they perceive to be going on in Iran are possibly the least likely individuals to speak Persian in the known universe. You can put a poem about your faith in there or you can put your shopping list, they really won't know the difference.

3. Whether it's people saying they love Britain's National Health Service or people making claims about Iran, these web shennanigans make no difference whatsoever. A load of people dyed their Twitter avatars green to 'object' to Iran - did you notice? I mean, really, literally notice?

4. On a personal note, a whole load of us in the UK grew up with Muslims around us the whole time. We honestly don't recognise any of the things of which any of the extremists are accused these days as having anything to do with those people, any more than buying my daughter a Christmas present means I'm going to start another Crusade tomorrow...

Just my thoughts.

Dani AI

Generated

Useful add-on to 's take: the Twitter incident in December 2009 teaches two different lessons — one technical, one strategic — that matter for anyone running brands, campaigns or activist outreach online.

Short technical summary: the visible “defacement” was caused by temporary changes to Twitter’s DNS records (the domain was redirected to a page claiming the “Iranian Cyber Army”), not by a wholesale compromise of all backend servers. Reporting at the time — and Twitter’s own status update — indicate the DNS host/account was abused using valid credentials, which is why some API/platform behavior remained usable while the homepage was redirected. (wired.com)
(See coverage in Wired and TechCrunch, and Twitter’s official post.)
Wired: Internal Twitter Credentials Used in DNS Hack (Dec 2009).
TechCrunch coverage of the defacement.
Twitter / X status post: DNS Disruption.

Practical operational takeaways for marketers and platform owners: treat DNS and registrar accounts as crown jewels — enforce strong, unique credentials and hardware-backed MFA for any accounts that can change nameservers; separate DNS/registrar, hosting and email logins; enable registry/transfer locks and DNSSEC where possible; use multiple authoritative DNS providers and real-time alerts for any zone change; keep an out‑of‑band contact list for providers and a pre-approved incident message to push through alternate channels (status page, mailing list, other social platforms). Regular DNS audits and monitoring are essential. ()
(See NIST DNS guidance and operator notes on protecting domain portfolios.)

A final marketing/activism note: attention-grabbing stunts can get headlines but rarely move policy on their own. For real impact, use multi-channel workflows, translate messages for target audiences, amplify local voices, and plan how online attention converts to offline action. Attribution of who’s behind a defacement is often uncertain — treat claims on a hacked page with caution.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview