Pro-Palestinian group hacks Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor web site

This was the scene on Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor web site Friday morning.

December 12^th, 2014 (InsideCostaRica.com) A Pro-Palestinian group known as AnonGhost hacked Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor web site on Friday, replacing the homepage with an anti-Zionist and anti-Israel message displayed along with a background of jihadi music.

The message reads: “We are the sound of the forgotten people, the freedom fighter in the cyberworld and our main target is Sionisme and israhell, if you are asking why your website got hacked by us, its basically because we want to share our message and show the world who we are, we are not looking for fame but we have a goal to achieve we supporte all hackers teams and we supporte all the freedom mouvement in the world. #OpSaveAlAqsa decided , Expect us!”

AnonGhost is a disparate group of pro-Palestinian hacker-activists based in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, according to the IBTimes UK.  The group defaced a United Nations web site in November following rising tensions surrounding the future of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, and has been fighting an anti-Israel “cyber war” for the past 16 months.

Friday’s attack on Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor was carried out under the banner of “Operation Save Al-Aqsa.”  It is not clear why the group would choose Costa Rica’s labor ministry for an attack, though the attack comes the same day as a controversial decision made by President Solis to lift a Chinchilla-era veto on controversial legislation known as the Labor Procedures Bill and a promise to ban strikes in essential public services.

Despite its name, the group says it is not associated with the well-known hacker group known as Anonymous.  “[…] We don’t have the same goal [as Anonymous] […],” the founder of the group, known as Mauritania Attacker Admin (MAA) told IBTimes UK in July.