Muslim hacktivists target hospitals after fashion label’s ‘offensive’ dress

A religiously motivated hacktivist group has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on Australian hospitals and healthcare centres, with several websites shut down on Friday night.

A garment from label Not A Man's Dream featured the Arabic text for Allah. Picture: Lucas Dawson Photography

A religiously motivated hacktivist group has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on Australian hospitals and healthcare centres, with several websites shut down on Friday night.

It was a continuation of the so-called #OpAustralia attacks ­involving self-identified Muslim hackers from Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Sudan protesting about a dress shown at the Melbourne Fashion Festival which they say was offensive to Islam.

The group, which some reports have suggested has links to Russia, claimed to have been running direct denial of service (DDoS) ­attacks, which overwhelm websites with traffic, disabling them.

The Royal Adelaide Hospital, Burnside Hospital, Calvary Care, and NSW Western Sydney Local Health District websites were down for at least two hours on Friday from about 8pm.

The websites were showing “503 Service Unavailable” messages. The Royal Adelaide Hospital site stated: “The website is ­currently experiencing a high level of traffic.” When contacted, the hospitals knew nothing of the alleged attacks.

The group also claimed to have attacked the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital, but their websites appeared to remain functional.

It also mistakenly shut down an American healthcare website instead of an Australian one with the same name.

Sunshine Coast Airport was also down for a short period on Friday following an attack claimed by a different #OpAustralia hacker group.

#OpAustralia is being monitored by national security agencies in Canberra. Cybersecurity experts say such “killnet” attacks are often ineffective and largely an annoyance.

In a social media post, the hacker group confirmed it was protesting against the Melbourne fashion show.

“The Australian fashion house Not A Man’s Dream did a provocative act against the feelings of Muslims and insulting the Divine Self, by placing words in the Arabic language that contain the name ‘God’ Almighty … during a fashion exhibition held in Melbourne,” a post on social media site Telegram said. “Australia will be violently attacked starting from the coming hours.”

The Not a Man’s Dream fashion brand included a model in a flimsy dress and a headscarf in its Melbourne Fashion Festival runway show. The dress was printed with the word Allah in Arabic.

A video of the show went viral when fashion blogger Mona Khalifa put it online beside a caption about it showing disrespect.

Days after the March 11 show, Muslim hacktivist groups began engaging with each other on the encrypted platform Telegram and called their operation #OpAustralia. They appear to have taken the name from the major hacking group Anonymous, which targeted Australian government sites in 2012.

Hackers linked to the group recently claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack against the Swedish healthcare sector.