Russian Hackers bring down CAF’s Website

Russian hackers forming a group named New World Hackers has said that it was responsible for closing the online site belonging to CAF (Confederation of African Football) the soccer tournament of African Cup of Nations (AFCON) to protest the tournament's play in Gabon. The current year's (2017) Africa Cup of Nations is to be held in Gabon. The website of CAF namely www.cafonline.com had become inaccessible for 5-hrs on 21st January 2017.

The country Gabon follows dictatorship rule. For the Nations Cup tournament on January 22, 2017, Gabon had the honor to be the foremost host after 23-yrs when it was eliminated during Nations Cup's group stage game because of an unimpressive zero-goal tie against Cameroon.

Political tensions inside Gabon are strife even as the country is host to AFCON. The tensions have arisen from the controversies surrounding the re-election of Ali Bongo Ondimba President of Gabon, during August. Albeit the court with constitutional legitimacy has substantiated the re-election, yet because the opposition along with EU is contesting it, there's this unrest. There are regular calls published in opposition newspapers to boycott AFCON.

The 2017 Nations Cup is encountering opposition by certain Gabonese group which's using it for displaying political grievances. According to officials in Gabon, three persons lost their lives because of violent clashes; however, Jean Ping former chairman of African Union and leader of the opposition said that many more people had died.

Communications Director Junior Binyam of CAF's governing body said for BBC Sport that Confederation of African Football had moved to act; however, the body couldn't for sure say that violence wouldn't erupt again.

The servers of CAF too are hacked. As said, the football group's website had become inaccessible prompting an investigation into probable technical fault before declaring the problem was something else. BBC Sport posted this, January 23, 2017.

New World Hackers further asserted on January 22, 2017 that it had shutdown 'Total' the oil company's website too. Total had endorsed sponsorship valuing multi-million dollars in a deal with CAF during 2016.

The Confederation has incorporated certain process called Cloudflare which will scrutinize all visitors for easing the problem.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/26/2017