Israeli students’ site hack makeover calls for end to cyberwar

Israeli students’ site hack makeover calls for end to cyberwar
  • Liam Tung (CSO Online (Australia))
  • — 24 July, 2012 10:07

Students at Tel Aviv’s Habefezer School of Art and Advertising have declared war on ugly site defacements, repackaging and firing back Arab hackers’ anti-Israeli protests with “gorgeous” webpages.

“Hackers, cheer up: If you can’t fight them, Redesign them,” is the message of the The Better Looking Hatred campaign, developed by McCann Digital Israel’s VP of creative, Nir Refuah, copywriter Tal Schweiger, and art director Nir Hersztadt.

The students redesigned 50 defaced sites “!!!Own3d!!!” by Arab hackers, sent them back by email and through hacker forums and have made them available for use in future site defacements.

The design students reject the shoddy design work common to thousands of site defacements by non-Arab and Arab hackers alike that are archived by Zone H.

“All the hacker groups use the same ugly template in their replaced site designs: Black background, photos from Google, bad fonts and low resolution…. so we acted,” Refuah explains on BuzzFeed.

The product the students sent back to the hackers were by contrast "gorgeous" and free to us. "We would like to end all cyber wars. but in the meantime - if you must hack our sites, at least leave something beautiful,” was the message they sent Arab hackers.

None of the student’s designs have been used yet in site defacements, according to a Business Insider report, which posted several more designs here. The Cannes Festival’s Inspiration Room blog has also posted a number of the redesigns.

The student’s message goes beyond defacements and calls for an end to “all cyber wars between Israel and Arab nations”.

However, calling on citizen hackers to end all “cyber wars” might be a message more appropriately directed at governments that are investing in manpower to develop cyber weapons like the US and Israeli built Stuxnet.

Follow @CSO_Australia and sign up to the CSO Australia newsletter.

Comments are now closed.
CSO Corporate Partners
  • Webroot
  • Trend Micro
  • NetIQ
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to CSO, invitation only events, reports & analysis.
CSO Directory

Central Management System

The (CMS) consolidates the management, reporting, & data sharing of Web MPS, Email MPS, File MPS, and Malware Analysis System (MAS) in an easy-to-deploy, network-based appliance.

more »

Submit your own security event

Submit your training courses

Security Awareness Tip

Incident handling is a vast topic, but here are a few tips for you to consider in your incident response. I hope you never have to use them, but the odds are at some point you will and I hope being ready saves you pain (or your job!).


  1. Have an incident response plan.

  2. Pre-define your incident response team 

  3. Define your approach: watch and learn or contain and recover.

  4. Pre-distribute call cards.

  5. Forensic and incident response data capture.

  6. Get your users on-side.

  7. Know how to report crimes and engage law enforcement. 

  8. Practice makes perfect.

For the full breakdown on this article

Security ABC Guides

Warning: Tips for secure mobile holiday shopping

I’m dating myself, but I remember when holiday shopping involved pouring through ads in the Sunday paper, placing actual phone calls from tethered land lines to research product stock and availability, and actually driving places to pick things up. Now, holiday shoppers can do all of that from a smartphone or tablet in a few seconds, but there are some security pitfalls to be aware of.

Read More
more »