Pak arrests hacking group
By Shalini Singh

A few years ago, Indian and Pakistani hacker groups had launched an online war against each other.  Every day, techies from both countries used to logon and bring down or deface websites in each others countries.  By all accounts, the Indian and Pakistani Governments were not involved and this was the work of individuals and hacker groups.

Then on Nov 30, 2008 a statement was published in some blogs that the Indian and Pakistani hackers had made peace and decided not to attack each other.  In a joint statement to Chowrangi.com, PCA (Pakistan Cyber Army),  Zombie_ksa (PAKbugs) and ICW (Indian Cyber Warriors and Hindu Militant Group) said they had made peace as “these groups realized that there is no use of such defacements and they should be instead involved in constructive work. Apart from that, poor defaced organizations suffer from these activities.”  They even apologized for the trouble and inconvenience caused to all.

For the last two years, after the peace pact, such organized cyber attacks had become a thing of the past.

Hacker collective PAKbugs has a national profile in their country and even has a fan following due to their cyber attacks on Pakistan’s enemies.

Now, the Pakistan Government has arrested most of the PAKbugs group.  Propakistani (via AFP) is  reporting

“
Pakistani authorities said Thursday they had traced a gang of hackers and arrested five suspects involved in defacing thousands of domestic and international websites and online fraud.

The "internationally-known hackers" have been picked up in an operation spanning the country over the past few weeks, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) senior officer Mian Idrees told AFP.

"We have unearthed notorious hackers group 'Pakbugs' and arrested five members of this group," he said.

Authorities seized computers and other equipment involved in various cyber crimes, he said.
“

(Techgoss had published the following on May 11, 2009)

PAKbugs hack Google
By Shalini Singh

Over the last few years, Indian and Pakistani hackers have made concentrated, well organized attempts to attack each other.  Late last year, Indian hacking group HMG (Hindu Militant Group) corrupted the website of the Pakistani Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority.  Soon, Pakistani hackers defaced our ONGC website.  And so it went on.  Tit for tat and sometimes more.

Then on Nov 30, 2008 a statement was published in some blogs that the Indian and Pakistani hackers had made peace and decided not to attack each other.  In a joint statement to Chowrangi.com,  PCA (Pakistan Cyber Army),  Zombie_ksa (PAKbugs) and ICW (Indian Cyber Warriors and Hindu Militant Group) said they had made peace as “these groups realized that there is no use of such defacements and they should be instead involved in constructive work. Apart from that, poor defaced organizations suffer from these activities.”  They even apologized for the trouble and inconvenience caused to all.

Since this peace deal between the hackers of arch rivals India and Pakistan, there has been a huge drop in the attacks on civilian websites in both countries.

On Saturday,  PAKbugs hacked into a Moroccan Government site which routes internet traffic around the country.  Anyone who searched for Google Morocco (google.co.ma) was diverted to a web page trumpeting the hacking.

Google scrambled to take remedial action and for some time diverted all queries to Google Morocco to Google USA.

According to Pakistani blogs, PAKbugs is a Saudi Arabia based collective of hackers most of whom are from Pakistan and neighboring countries.

Most Pakistani blogs and commentators urged the hackers to use their skills to secure Pakistan rather than hack other websites. Omer Farooq commented that “these hackers should develop anti-virus programs and make Pakistan proud rather than become the Talibans of the Internet”.  One Pakistani commentator cheekily requested their hackers to leave Google alone and instead try to hack right wing news media organization Fox News.