Four days after Syrian hackers attacked Al Jazeera's websites, the Qatar-based news organization is under cybersiege again.
"We'd like to inform our subscribers that Al Jazeera SMS service has been compromised by hackers who have sent fake news," the satellite news channel said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Bogus reports sent to text-message subscribers said that Qatar's prime minister had been the target of an attack and that the wife of the emir had been wounded.
"The story claiming that the Prime Minister (Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem) has been the target of an assassination attempt in the royal palace is completely false and was a result of hacking of the service," Al Jazeera reported Sunday (Sept. 10).
Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and his prime minister, Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, are distant cousins.
This breach is just the latest in a series of cyberattacks on Al Jazeera and other news organizations as fighting in Syria has flared up.
Al Jazeera's website has been defaced in the name of pro-government hackers on two occasions, one just four days ago.
Earlier this year, Bashar al-Assad's supporters hacked the Twitter accounts of Al Jazeera and Reuters, and a pro-Assad group called the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) compromised the website of Saudi news organization Al Arabiya.