Saudi hackers breach 23 government websites

More than 23 Saudi government websites were hacked in less than two hours on Saturday, according to reports published by local media.

The websites included educational, health, sports, municipal, and traffic online portals operated by the government.

Users who visited the websites were redirected to a page that read: "We do not want to harm the site. Had it been hacked by enemies, your personal information, emails and registration data would have been compromised," Al Riyadh newspaper reported.

Saudi officials said they have managed to restore their websites after the latest incident. 

Tweets sent by the Saudi hackers, who went by the online name of "Cyber_Emotion," said the operation was necessary after government websites had ignored previous messages on an imminent attack. The hacker added that no data was taken, while the intention was to only protect government websites.

"All we wanted is to protect government websites," he was quoted as saying by the Saudi Gazette.

Last year, the same group breached a Twitter account belonging to the justice ministry and questioned the ministry over funds used to develop a website.

In 2013, the kingdom was hit with a series of major cyberattacks as a number of government websites were disabled by foreign hackers for a brief period of time.

Media reports have suggested in the past that many government websites are hosted on servers with weak security.