The website of a recreational vehicle business in Mount Maunganui has been hacked by anti-war protestors as diplomats discuss the next steps in the Syria crisis.

Staff at RV Shops on Hewletts Road arrived at work this morning to find the words ‘No War – All Hail the Islamic world, we're here' across their homepage in a hack by anti-war group Akincilar.

RV Shops marketing manager Nicola van Huenen is concerned New Zealand is being targeted because of the Syrian civil war.

Marketing manager Nicola van Huenen discovered Akincilar tends to target websites hosted by countries that are deemed enemies of Muslims.

She believes the hack is a result of the current Syrian conflict and an attempt to stave off military action against Syria.

The prospect of a US-led intervention into Syria's civil war is being stemmed from the West's assertion - still not endorsed by UN inspectors – against President Bashar Assad's regime's use of chemical weapons.

It is alleged the regime is responsible for an attack on civilians outside the rebel-held Damascus neighbourhood on August 21 that the group, Doctors Without Borders, says killed 355 people. Assad denies the claim.

The Arab League also threw its weight behind calls for punitive action, blaming the Syrian Government for the attack and calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.

'It's slightly concerning that New Zealand would be targeted [by Akincilar],” says Nicola.

RV Shops has a web store in the recreational vehicle industry retailing RV accessories, motor homes and caravans.

'There is no reason why we would be targeted. We certainly don't have any political aspirations.
'Usually when this groups hacks they do thousands of websites at a time. This is why I contacted SunLive to see if anyone has been hacked and whether it was happening New Zealand wide or whether it was maybe Tauranga-based.”

The message left behind by Akincilar after the RV Shops website was hacked this morning.

She says it would be unusual for their website to be a one off.

Logistic Information Systems, which hosts the RV Shops' website, systems engineer, John Mckeown, says there were a couple of other sites hacked as well.

'We have managed to sort them out now. A couple of our other sites got hacked by the same hacker.”

John says not all of the sites targeted are based in Tauranga.

'They were basically just targeting our server. It seems they have gone through and managed to hack into our server and grab a couple of websites from there.”

'It was pretty easy to bring the sites back, they didn't really damage anything. They just put their own message in there, so we just had to get rid of that and lock them out.

'We are doing a bit of an investigation to find out how they got in.”

John warns people who have been hacked to get in touch with their web provider as soon as possible to sort the problem out.

'They can then take steps to lock the hackers out and to try and track them down if possible. The problem is they are often overseas so there is not a lot that can be done legally.”