KARACHI: The website of Customs Today is persistently hacked for raising issues of importers and exposing shipping companies for bulldozing Pakistan laws, fleecing traders in the name of demurrage and detention charges and tax evasion of billions of rupees every year.
The management of Customs Today has detected that the website is hacked when it carries stories about alleged overcharging of importers by Maersk officials, including Aruna Hussain, Soren Skou and others, in the name of demurrage and detention charges. Recently, Customs Today’s website was hacked and its English language content was replaced with the Japanese language or another foreign language, in a bid to harm its credibility and business and wean its readers away from it.
Technically, when Japanese or foreign language content sites replace the news stories, then Google starts downgrading the links. To save the content and also ratings at Google for the news stories, Customs Today’s technical team had to put all relevant news stories under two separate sub-domains
http://arunahussain.customstoday.media
http://sorenskou.customstoday.media
After the hacking, the management of the Customs Today newspaper decided to move the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for an investigation. The hacking was also an attempt to silence the voice of importers and traders, who face huge financial losses in the name of demurrage and detention charges.
Meanwhile, importers and businesspeople also expressed serious concern over the hacking of the Customs Today website and said the cheap tactic could not stifle the voice of the truth. “Instead of desisting from their illegal activities, the accused have taken the law into their own hands. They have forgotten all corporate ethics and are involved in criminal activities without any fear of law. Years of inaction has emboldened them. If they had been dealt with sternly under the law, they would not have dared hack the website of the Customs Today,” they observed.
The Customs Today is Pakistan’s first in-depth newspaper that presents balanced news, reports, analysis and reviews regarding customs, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), and Sales/Income Tax Departments to its readers besides covering import and export sectors comprehensively. The newspaper has been facing threats and legal action from officials of shipping companies, like Maersk, for exposing their activities. However, it remained steadfast. Its website was also hacked several times in October 2020.
The Customs Today management also lodged a complaint with the hosting service provider besides using services of Cloudflare to get security against such hacking attacks including safeguarding from DDoS, BOTs, etc. The management decided to lodge a complaint with the FIA against Søren Skou, Claus V. Hemmingsen, Søren Toft, Vincent Clercp, Morten H. Engelstoft, others of Maersk Line and Arslan Khan, Aruna Hussain, Ghazanfar Khan, Raheel Salim, Maqsood Ul Hasan Khan, Fuad Khan, Hasan Faraz, Shakeel Masih, Omer Khan, Ali Jawad Alvi, Zafar Iqbal, Ayesha Chowdhry, Zahid Hussain, Salman Ahmad, Aamir Ali, Umais Aziz Khan, Mohammed Naeem, Farheen Mahmud, Mubasshar Iqbal, Affaq Syed, Syed Mohammad Abbas Jafri, Muhammad Tanveer Sharif, Salman Ateeq, Hamza Haq, Ziad Mahboob, Aamir Ibrahim, Yasir Saeed Khan, Amal Sadiq Dawood, Effat Mehmood, Maria Urooj, Zain Warsi, Mehreen Zulfiqar, Awais Saleem, Zafar Iqbal, Syed Osman Iqbal Zaidi, Anum Yaqub, Fahad Ali, Obaid Iqbal, Zahid Hussain, Muhammad Ali Qureshi, Danish Siddiqui, Amir Arif, Arshad Ayub, Syed Mudassir Ali, Syed Hammad Hussain, Ayesha Qadri, Sheikh Samiullah, others of M/S Maersk Pakistan Private Limited and officials of audit and legal firms of Maersk Pakistan Private Limited.
The Customs Today has taken some technical measures to stop its website from persistent attacks of hackers, to save its reputation and readers from inconvenience. It hopes the readers will continue to enjoy reading stories of their choice on the website without any interruption.
