Recently Khalil Shreateh, a white hat hacker from Pakistan, accessed Mark Zuckerberg’s Timeline on Facebook (News - Alert) in order to highlight the vulnerability of the social media platform. Shreateh was trying to capitalize on the company's bounty program after repeated attempts trying to reach the appropriate channels had failed.

Although Shreateh is one of the good guys, this incident points out hackers, black hat or white hat, can come from anywhere. A hacker group from Pakistan calling itself Team Madleets launched a DNS (domain name system) redirect attack that resulted in sending Google (News - Alert) Malaysia visitors to the group's server with a splash screen of their accomplishments before it was taken offline.

According to the Guardian, the group was able to hack into the Malaysia Network Information Centre (MYNIC) and initiate the DNS redirect attack in order to change Google's Malaysian DNS records. The Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) was able to resolve the problem, and the organization identified the group responsible for the attack.

There are 26 nicknames associated with Team Madleets, and this attack was stamped “[!] Struck by 1337.” 1337 is believed to be one of the 26 members.

This was the message left by the hacker allegedly responsible on the Facebook page: "One thing noted by me. I found Malaysian people kind and well behaved. Since Google Malaysia got hacked, I haven't seen even ONE negative comment by them. They seemed to have enjoyed the hack while a few might have not due to some work reasons. Sorry for that then, was just a security alert. No harm done. Loving you guys, Regards 1337."

Although the hack interrupted Google's operations in Malaysia, the group claimed this was not a malicious attack and it was designed to highlight a security flaw. They said they are white hat hackers and their goal is to teach users how to protect themselves.

This is the second attack on Google's address in Malaysia. Earlier this year an attack was perpetrated in order to highlight the treatment of Bangladeshi workers by hacking several Malaysian sites along with Google.

The DNS translates human language domain names into a language that can be understood by machines. By attacking the DNS, hackers can make the site unreachable or redirect it to a fake site.