Courtney Trenwith reports that Turki Omar, a Saudi national, posted on his Twitter account ‘Marjouj Hazazi’ on Thursday that he had been intercepted at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on charges of hacking. Saudi Gazette adds that a spokesman for Makkah Police said the police had received reports from a public organization in Al-Laith governorate that their website had been hacked into. The public organization was not named, and it’s not clear whether this was just a defacement or if data were stolen or corrupted.
This is not the first time this hacker has been in trouble with the law, it seems. In April 2013, he was reported to have surrendered to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution in the city of Taif to face a lawsuit that Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University administration had filed against him for breaching their website in 2011. The Riyadh Connect reported:
The Hacker said in a statement to Arabic daily Sabq that he had hacked only the university forum site and merely changed the forum home page but did not cause any damages. He added that he did not hack the main website of the university nor did he publish any information of students over the internet.
Marjouj Hazazi quit hacking after he volunteered to contract with a government agency to help other companies without pay. He also appeared on a Saudi TV channel and publicly apologized for his actions. He revealed his real identity as proof that he stopped hacking, adding that he had helped a lot of people including Saudi celebrities to solve their internet issues.
So… what was this hack really about, if Omar was really responsible for it? His “Marjouj Hazizi” Twitter account appears to be gone.
Updated: Arab News reports (via Yahoo!):
Turki Umar, also known as Marjooj Hazzazi, had earlier hacked a website of the educational administration of Al-Leith, and tweeted about it on his account.