Cyber Incident Victim: Ministry of Interior
Date:
Mar 2014
Location:
Kuwait
Summary
The official website of Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior was compromised and defaced by hacktivists identifying as Shmook Amer and Dr.Hjd, who posted a message urging Kuwaiti authorities to intensify efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict through military intervention. The attackers emphasized the need for concrete actions over rhetoric, citing the humanitarian crisis, and the defacement highlighted vulnerabilities in the government’s cybersecurity posture despite prior international initiatives to bolster regional infrastructure protections. The website was subsequently restored, though archived copies of the defacement remained accessible through third-party platforms.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 2 motives | 1 technique |
| Threat Actor | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 actor | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
In March 2014, the official website of Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior (moi.gov.kw) was compromised and defaced by hackers identifying themselves as Shmook Amer and Dr.Hjd. The attack occurred approximately two months after Kuwait hosted the Second International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria, where Kuwait’s emir pledged $500 million in humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians affected by the ongoing civil war. The hackers replaced the website’s content with a message written in Arabic apologizing for the intrusion while criticizing Kuwait’s response to the Syrian crisis. They specifically urged Middle Eastern nations to unite militarily to address the conflict, emphasizing that "actions are louder than words" according to their defacement message. The incident was documented by cybersecurity monitoring platforms, with HackRead reporting on the attackers’ geopolitical motivations. No technical details regarding the exploitation method or duration of unauthorized access were disclosed in available reports.
The Ministry of Interior restored its website by the time Softpedia published its report on March 30, 2014. Mirrors of the defaced content remained accessible through Google’s cache and Zone-H’s archiving service. The breach raised concerns about Kuwait’s broader cybersecurity posture, with observers noting that the compromise of a high-profile government site suggested systemic vulnerabilities across other state digital assets. This incident occurred five months after a U.S. International Trade Administration delegation visited Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in late 2013, involving 13 American cybersecurity firms offering infrastructure protection solutions to regional authorities. No additional remediation measures, attribution analyses, or post-incident security enhancements by Kuwaiti authorities were detailed in the source material.