WhatsApp hacked by Palestinian protesters, site defaced

WhatsApp was briefly hacked this morning, with its website defaced by someone claiming to be the KDMS team, a new group of Palestinian hackers affiliated to Anonymous.

The hugely popular messaging service seems to have been affected to some extent, with some members of the CNET team unable to download photos. No, not the selfies! Anything but that!

It's not clear if the hack had any effect on the app's normal service, or if any user data was compromised. I've contacted WhatsApp for comment and will update this story when I hear back.

The message left on whatsapp.com, which has now returned to normal, did not make any demands, but seems to be intended to raise awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people. "Palestinian people has the right to live in peace," it says, "Deserve to liberate their land and release all prisoners from Israeli jails."

The address bar at the top of the page says, "You Got Pwned." You can see the full message at the bottom of the page.

The group's Twitter account also claims it's hacked the AVG site, but that also appeared to be functioning normally at time of publication.

Two days ago, KDMS hacked LeaseWeb, one of the world's biggest hosting companies, again defacing the corporate site with its political message, Hacker News reports. It seems to be a new group, with these three purported hacks the only references to them online.

Have you seen any unusual behaviour in your WhatsApp? Let me know in the comments, or on our maximum-security Facebook page.

Update: WhatsApp.com's IP address record was changed today, according to my colleague Stephen Shankland at CNET News, meaning the hackers may have briefly redirected traffic from WhatsApp servers to their own.