• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 18, 2009

A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army hacked into Twitter, knocking the microblogging service offline early Friday morning. The group also hacked Iranian opposition Web site mowjcamp.org, redirecting traffic to its own site, where it claimed to have ties to Middle Eastern countries.

It appears that hackers tampered with Twitter's DNS server records. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in on the company's blog that Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed.

"As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while, but API and platform applications were working," Stone wrote. "We will update with more information and details once we've investigated more fully."

The hackers defaced Twitter's and mowjcamp.org's home page, as people attempted to log into the service. While Twitter's service is now running, mowjcamp.org remains down.

The message "written in confused English," according to the BBC, criticizes the United States for sanctions on Iran. "USA think they controlling and managing internet by their access, but they don't, we control and manage internet by our power," the message read.

The hackers left an e-mail address. Searches for the mowjcamp.org on Google and Bing were also influenced by the hackers at the time. The mowjcamp.org YouTube channel continued to show demonstrations in Iran.