Profound conspiracy behind hacking of Shafiqur Rahman’s X account: Jamaat

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami has alleged that hacking of the X (formerly Twitter) account of its ameer, Shafiqur Rahman, was part of a “profound conspiracy”.

Speaking at an emergency press conference at the party’s central office in the capital’s Moghbazar area on Sunday afternoon, Jamaat’s central publicity and media affairs secretary, Ahsanul Mahboob Zubair, said the hacking was carried out in a “highly premeditated manner”.

He further said the party’s information technology team was investigating the incident to identify those responsible. According to him, preparations for the hacking had been under way for several days.

“There is a deep conspiracy behind this incident,” Ahsanul Mahboob Zubair said. “After hacking the ameer’s X account, the perpetrators posted offensive and objectionable content. This clearly shows a deliberate attempt to malign Jamaat-e-Islami.”

He alleged that a particular group or its cyber team may be involved, though he stopped short of naming any party.

Zubair said a general diary (GD) had been lodged with the local police station late on Saturday night and that Jamaat would pursue all available legal remedies.

Describing the hacking as a “grossly excessive act”, he said the objective was to damage the party’s image and discredit it in the eyes of the public.

He emphasised that Jamaat’s position on women’s dignity was unequivocal and that the party’s ameer had repeatedly spoken about respect for women at election rallies.

“This appears to be a calculated effort to cast Jamaat in a negative light,” he said, adding that the election commission and law-enforcement agencies would be formally informed so that appropriate action could be taken.

Speaking at the media conference, engineer Sirajul Islam said that the last legitimate post from Shafiqur Rahman’s official X account was made at 4:00 pm on Saturday. An objectionable post appeared at around 4:37 pm, which Jamaat became aware of at 4:55 pm.

After contacting those managing the account, it was confirmed that the account had been compromised. The account was recovered at 5:09 pm, and at 5:22 pm a rejoinder was issued stating that the account had been hacked. Later, a GD was filed at around 3:30 am on Sunday.

Sirajul Islam also claimed that Jamaat’s other social media pages had been facing attempted cyber attacks in recent days.

Engineer Mahmudur Rahman later gave a presentation explaining how the hacking occurred.

He said that shortly after the ameer’s account was compromised, a similar post appeared at around 4:53 pm from the X account of Dhaka South Jamaat secretary Shafiqul Islam Masud, indicating that two accounts had been hacked simultaneously.

Mahmudur Rahman said that a screenshot was taken within a minute or two of the post from the Jamaat ameer’s account and was released after five or six hours.

Stating that this action was intentional, he told the media that within half an hour of making the post by hacking the page of the ameer, Jamaat issued a statement, informing the media that the ID has been hacked.

He further alleged that a government email address,  [email protected], had been used to send a phishing email containing an attachment falsely labelled as election-related information.

The email, he claimed, was sent from the name of Mohammad Sarwar Alam, an employee of the President’s Office.

Many such attacks were carried out against the Jamaat-linked pages for the last few days, he alleged.

Mahmudur Rahman further said Jamaat would submit a formal application to the Cyber Security Council seeking an investigation into how government email accounts were allegedly used in attempts to sabotage Jamaat’s official email IDs of Dhaka north and south city units.

Members of Jamaat’s central election steering committee, including its member secretary Abdul Halim, were also present at the press conference.