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Lizard Squad Claims It Hacked Malaysia Airlines Website

he website of Malaysia Airlines was hacked Monday by a group that proclaimed support for ISIS and also vowed to release data stolen from the site.
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HONG KONG — The website of Malaysia Airlines was hacked Monday by a group that proclaimed support for ISIS and also vowed to release data stolen from the site.

The airline's site was down for at least seven hours, replaced by a message from the hacker group, before the company brought it back online by mid-afternoon in Malaysia.

The hackers at first changed the site to display a message saying "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail."

Malaysia Airlines is struggling to recover from twin disasters last year, including the disappearance of Flight 370, which authorities believed crashed 1,100 miles off Australia's west coast, and the downing of Flight 17 over Ukraine.

The hackers later replaced the jet with a picture of a lizard in a top hat, monocle and tuxedo smoking a pipe. The ISIS reference was removed and the claim of responsibility changed to "Lizard Squad - Official Cyber Caliphate," with a link to the group's Twitter account.

The airline said in a statement that it was a "temporary glitch" that didn't affect passenger booking. It said user data "remains secured."

The group, however, tweeted that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.

Image: Malaysia Airlines' hacked website
A computer screen shows Malaysia Airlines' hacked website on Monday.Joshua Paul / AP

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- The Associated Press