ISU Police Facebook account active again

This is a screenshot of the error message displayed when accessing the previous link to the webpage.

Maggie Curry
May 13, 2017

Iowa State Police Department has lost access to its Facebook page and is in progress to regain it.

UPDATE: As of Monday afternoon the Iowa State Police Department page on Facebook is active again. A tweet was sent out at 3:52 p.m. reading:

PREVIOUS UPDATE: As of Sunday afternoon the Iowa State Police Department page is no longer visible on Facebook.

ORIGINAL: Police tweeted at 10:44 a.m. Saturday that the account had been hacked. In the meantime, the department said all viewers need to be aware the posts were not placed there by the department.

The department is currently working to regain access to the page. The page administrators were all removed after the hack, said Anthony Greiter of the Iowa State Police Department.

The Facebook cover photo was also changed to a waving Syrian flag. This image was not set by the Iowa State University Police Department.

A post on the page made after the account had been hacked read: 

الحمد الله رب العالمين تم الختراق من قبل قوات الهكر السوري رد على تخاذل الحكومة الميركية من اتجاه السورين والقادم اعظم الله اكبر الله اكبر الله اكبر

A comment from a user, Abdullah Al-Tailji, translated the statement to be “Thank god, the account got hacked by a Syrian hacker as a response to the US government’s act towards Syrians, and what’s coming is even greater, allah akbar” in English.

A comment on the original post attributed to the department was also made during the hack and was not posted by the department.