- WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE
A Surbiton vicar was left gobsmacked and fearing for his church’s quiz night after a mysterious activist hacked into his website and branded it with the words “fuck ISIS”.
Robert Stanier, the vicar at St Mark’s Church, in Surbiton, was first alerted to the bizarre hacking when somebody wishing to attend the pub quiz night called to tell him a “worrying” message had appeared on the website.
When he logged on to the page supposed to be advertising the quiz, he found it had been replaced by the messages “long live to peshmerga” and “fuck ISIS” alongside a Kurdish flag.
The hacker identified himself as MuhmadEmad, a prominent ‘hacktivist’ reported to have taken over numerous sites across Europe last week.
The message that greeted visitors to the church's website
Mr Stanier said: “It was someone just looking about for information about the quiz night and they said there was a rather worrying message on there.
“I just looked and thought ‘goodness me’. My guess is that someone, somewhere, is sat in the Middle East has just kind of Googled churches or something.
The peshmerga is an army of Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq currently fighting the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The army, which co-operates with western powers, played a part in the mission to capture Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War in 2003.
In the Midlands, the activist reportedly hacked into an NHS board, a primary school and pub earlier this week.
Robert Stanier was left bemused by the message when he logged on
Mr Stanier said he is still undecided about whether to contact the police over the bizarre hacking, and is hoping that people who saw the vulgar political message won’t be put off the church’s quiz night.
He added: “I’ve got nothing against them - it’s just really weird.
“It may not have been the best password, but it’s not like anyone was going to hack into us - it’s just a standard pub quiz.”
St Mark’s Church’s quiz night takes place tomorrow at the church, in St Mark’s Hill, at 7pm.
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