Hong Kong: Malaysia Airlines officials were struggling on Monday to restore the embattled carrier's website after it was hacked by a group proclaiming support for the militant Islamic State group.
The airline's site was changed, at first displaying a message saying "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail."
Malaysian Airlines is trying to recover from twin disasters last year, including the disappearance of Flight 370, which authorities believed crashed 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off Australia's west coast, and the downing of Flight 17 over Ukraine.
The website was later changed, with a picture of a lizard in a top hat, monocle and tuxedo smoking a pipe replacing the jet. The Islamic State reference was removed and the claim of responsibility changed to "Lizard Squad - Official Cyber Caliphate," with a link to the group's Twitter account.
The airline said in a statement that it was a "temporary glitch" that didn't affect passenger bookings and that the breach had been reported to Malaysia's transport ministry and Internet security agency. It said user data "remains secured" and restoration of the site would take up to 22 hours.
The group, however, tweeted that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.
Malaysian Amy Keh said she made the booking for her mother and two relatives in October to travel from Kuala Lumpur to Taiwan in March.
"I am a bit worried about their security. Now the whole world knows that they will be going to Taipei," said Keh, who logged on Monday to check the itinerary. She said the website looked different and called the airline, which told her of the hacking. However, she only found out later that the travel information was posted online.
She said she'll consult the airline and her relatives, who have not yet been informed, to decide whether to proceed with the trip.
The Lizard Squad group last year claimed it was behind attacks on Sony's online PlayStation network and Microsoft's Xbox site.
In August, it also tweeted to American Airlines that there might be explosives on a plane carrying the president of Sony Online Entertainment, which makes video games, forcing the flight to be diverted.
Malaysia Airlines also said in its statement that its domain name system was "compromised" and users were being redirected to the hacker group's website.
The domain name system translates web addresses typed into browsers into the numbers that computers use to identify and connect with each other on the Internet.
The Islamic State group now holds about a third of both Syria and Iraq, territory it has declared a caliphate. Police in Malaysia detained 43 people last year on suspicion of links to the extremist group, underscoring concerns held by Prime Minister Najib Razak that the spread of Islamic State ideology could lead to conflict in predominantly Muslim Malaysia.
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