Tunisia Accused of Hacking Personal Accounts

12 January 2011 | 03:28 PM ET | Matt Liebowitz, SecurityNewsDaily Staff Writer

International cybersecurity and censorship issues are coming to a boil in Tunisia, where the government is allegedly hacking into the Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo accounts of dissidents and journalists.

Amidst widespread political and economic unrest in the North African country that began in late December, the Tunisian government has begun attacking the social media and e-mail accounts of high-profile protesters, Fast Company’s Neal Ungerleider reports.

Those whose social media profiles have been reportedly compromised by the government include Sofiene Chourabi of al-Tariq al-Jadid, a newspaper affiliated with the Ettajdid Movement, an opposition political party, and Haythem El Mekki, an independent video journalist.

Targeted dissidents had groups and pictures of protests deleted from their Facebook accounts, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Joel Simon, the CPJ’s executive director, outlined the censorship incidents in a Jan. 5 letter to Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

"CPJ research shows that the Tunisian Internet Agency is harvesting passwords and usernames of bloggers, reporters, political activists, and protestors by injecting hidden JavaScript that captures usernames and passwords."

Tunisia’s alleged involvement in cybercensorship came just as the hacktivist group "Anonymous " aligned itself with Tunisian protestors by launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against several Tunisian government websites.

Considering the ethical issues – not to mention the difficulties – in censoring Internet use, it will be very interesting to see how this tenuous issue plays out in Tunisia, and what ramifications it will have on the global state.

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