Website of Iran presidential candidate hacked

Islamic Republic News Agency:

Hackers targeted the website of presidential candidate Ali Larijani Wednesday, defacing his home page which resulted in its subsequent crash, an aide said. READ MORE

The site www.larijani.ir was attacked by "unknown elements during which main contents of the site were hacked and replaced with other sentences and minutes later the site totally crashed," the official in charge of the website announced.

"Ill manners like these unfortunately come in the early days of the electoral campaigning, serving as a warning to the related officials," he added.

Officials at the public relations department of Larijani's electoral headquarters were trying to maintain the site 'as soon as possible', he said.

A message on its home page reads: "The website www.larijani.ir is currently undergoing emergency maintenance. Please try the site again later." The incident came only few hours after campaigning for the June 17 presidential election began. Larijani's electoral headquarters had also to deny reports that he intended to pull out of the race in favor of other candidate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"Unfortunately, this news is mostly being spread in the press by the supporters of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani," it said in a statement, denouncing the report as part of a 'psychological war'.

Larijani is the former head of the state broadcasting, who is running against nine other contenders in the election. ...