In solidarity: Hacker defaces university website in support of Kashmiri students

Students insist they are being ‘framed’.

KARACHI:

“Jammu (and) Kashmir is part of Pakistan. We will soon liberate it from India,” read a message on the official website of Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU) after it was defaced temporarily by a Pakistani hacker.

Identifying himself as H4$N4!N H4XOR (Hasnain Haxor), the black hat (hackers who exploits weak links in the system in order to deface or access data are known as ‘black hats’, while those who alert institutions to the vulnerabilities in their system are known as ‘white hats’) said this was an act of ‘revenge’ against the university, which allegedly suspended its Kashmiri students as they celebrated Pakistan’s Asia Cup win against India on Sunday.

‘Hasnain Haxor’ belongs to a group that claimed responsibility for hacking more than 2,000 Indian websites on Republic Day, in what they say was an act of solidarity with the Kashmiris.

Speaking with The Express Tribune via email on Friday, the hacker said he left a news clipping about the students’ suspensions on the defaced site, as well as the message ‘Feel the revenge of Pakistan Haxors Crew. We are sleeping but not dead’. The hacker supplied screenshots of the page – accessible at www.subharti.org, the official webpage for the Meerut-based university – which has since been restored.

However, the Times of India reported on Friday that the Pakistani hackers defaced the wrong website, belonging to Swami Vivekanand University (SVU) in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh instead (accessible via www.svnuniversity.edu.in). The SVSU site was restored later in the day and it could not be confirmed if the SVU website was also hacked.

Additionally, the Times of India wrote on Friday that the suspended students denied charges of cheering on the Pakistan team. “We were watching the match with other students on the university campus,” said one student Mateef Ahmad, while speaking with the Times. “As soon as the match ended and Pakistan won, there were abuses flying around. When we (the Kashmiri) students were moving towards our hostel, they (the non-Kashmiri group) followed us and pelted stones at us, which resulted in the breakage of window panes of our hostel rooms.”

Another student, Shahid Shah, concurred, saying, “We just ran toward our rooms when the fighting erupted. We feared for our lives. We never distributed sweets in the hostel.” Shah said the university was ‘framing’ the students.

The row has escalated as Kashmiri leaders including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and JKLF chief Yasin Malik called for a complete shutdown of the Valley on Friday and condemned the UP police’s actions against the students. Dozens of associations such as the Joint Action Committee of Government Employees’ Union, Kashmir Bar Association and medical groups joined the protest and vowed to fight for the students.

(With additional input from The Times of India)

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2014.