‘We thought it was a young lad messing around’ – Kildare GAA respond to apparent hacking of website by Islamic fundamentalists

There's something about this which is all just a little bit Father Ted

Last Sunday, anyone who woke up and checked the official Kildare GAA website would have seen a message in Arabic which translated read: "United Islamic Cyber Force, Jabhatul Nursa Baaqiyah". There was also a song in Arabic as, for some unknown reason, the Kildare GAA website had been targeted by hackers. After a short outage the website was rebooted with no lasting damage done, though Kildare GAA are still at a loss as to why they would have been targeted. https://twitter.com/KildareGAA/status/584684544567160832

"Someone hacked it, we're not too sure who," PRO Henry Barrett told The Examiner. "The hosting company are looking into it at the minute and we're waiting for them to come back to us. It just happened that on Sunday morning there was a blank screen apart from this message.

"Thankfully, we were able to get it up and running but it wasn't good to see on Sunday morning. We don't know whether it was some young lad having a joke or something more serious. I suppose some people got a bit of a laugh out of it but it could be a lot more than just that especially if you consider what was put on the website.

"We don't know why a GAA website would be attacked and that's why we initially thought it might be some young lad messing. We're just going to try and get a bit more information. The main thing is we have the website back up and running."