Michigan church’s website hacked to play Islamic State video

The FBI was notified over the weekend after the website of a small Christian church in Michigan was discovered to have been defaced by hackers who left a message in support of the Islamic State terror group.

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Storteboom told Michigan’s WOOD TV that she was looking for the phone number for Lamont Christian Reformed Church near Grand Rapids on Friday night when she navigated to the congregation’s website and was instead greeted with a message and video attributed to Islamic State supporters.

“I clicked on the website, and all of the sudden this video pops up, and I’m like, what is going on?” the teenager told reporters.

The news station said the video was a minute-long Islamic State propaganda clip that automatically launched when visitors loaded the church’s website.

“It just started playing, and I was reading the bottom, and it was talking about crazy things,” the teenager recalled. “It was, like, talking about, like, hating Christians and how Allah was, like, God and everything else, like that. And they’re talking about, like, taking the women and children and stuff.”

The autoplay video was uploaded to YouTube in 2014 and attributed to Abu Muhammad Al-adnani, a senior Islamic State leader who has served as a spokesman for the terror group.

“We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah, the Exalted,” reads an excerpt from the video’s English subtitles.

The church was made aware of the breach late Friday night, and Jennifer Bosch, a Lamont CRC member who is in charge of the site, alerted the FBI. C.C.S. Technologies, a local IT company that administers the back end of the site, resolved the issue the following day.

The teenager told WOOD TV that the possible prank put a dent in attendance during Sunday’s services.

“They were pretty freaked out,” she said. “One of my friends said they didn’t think a lot of people were going to show up today, and then the doors opened during service, and they said like six people turned around and were getting freaked out.”

In addition to altering the church’s website so that the YouTube clip would automatically load for visitors, the individuals response also left a message stating the site had been “hacked by the United Cyber Caliphate,” a group of pro-Islamic State hackers who have taken credit for similar compromises in recent weeks, including breaches affecting the U.S. State Department and the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, according to SITE, a Maryland-based group that monitors online jihadists.

Earlier this month, Australia media reported that the United Cyber Caliphate took credit for hacking the websites of more than 20 small businesses down under and posting similar defacements.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has claimed that the newly formed hacking group is a composite of other similar outfits, including the Ghost Caliphate Section, Sons Caliphate Army, Caliphate Cyber Army and Kalachnikov E-security.