Tsinghua University in Beijing appeared to have been hacked when their website began playing fundamentalist Islamic Arabic verses from scripture. (Photo : Wikimedia / Steffen Wurzel)
The website of a top Chinese university was reportedly hacked by the Islamic State (IS) in such a way that the propaganda music of the extremist group played on some of the pages of the website, as reported by the Global Times.
On Sunday, some of the Web pages affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing appeared to have been hacked when they began playing fundamentalist Islamic Arabic verses from scripture that said, "God is great, I am unafraid of death, dying a martyr's death is my ultimate goal," according to a Monday report by thepaper.cn.
The hacked page also showed a photo of an IS flag with four hooded fighters on horseback.
A screenshot of the hacked Web page made rounds on social media with the title "Islamic State Hacker." However, the link accompanying it led to a Facebook page that could not be opened.
The home page of the university has remained intact, and the hacked Web pages show unaltered contents.
After the incident, the university shut down its server. Its Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology is investigating the incident.
A weak password on affiliated pages was the likely cause of the incident, according to the report. No evidence has shown that hackers targeted Tsinghua University specifically.
According to a security expert with wooyun.org, a Chinese Internet security monitoring platform, security loopholes and weak passwords are common on Chinese university websites. This could lead to hacks of the entire website and loss of data.
If the hack is in fact confirmed to be from IS, this marks the first time a Chinese university has been hacked by the militant organization. Although in the past there have been cases of overseas hackers attacking Chinese websites.
No organization or person has taken responsibility for the attack.
The hack may have been done by the jihadist group, its supporters or hackers who simply wanted to cause a stir, said Zhu Yongbiao, assistant director of the Institute of Central Asia Studies at Lanzhou University.
"The hacking of China's top university would demonstrate IS' intent to attract public attention, extend its influence and incite panic, if IS is held responsible," said Zhu.
In December, IS released a four-minute song in Putonghua calling on followers of Islam in China to sacrifice themselves for the cause.
