As Gulf tensions flare, reports of hacking pour in

As tensions flare between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran and their allies, reports of hacking are emerging across the Gulf.

The Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera said Thursday that it was being buffeted by increasingly serious electronic intrusions that it described as "systematic and continual." The station gave few other details, saying only that its system had not been compromised.

Meanwhile a series of largely lightly trafficked Saudi websites were vandalized by hackers who left messages in Farsi and photographs of Ayatollahs Ali Khamenei and Ruhollah Khomeini, the current and late supreme leaders of Iran respectively.

Low-level hacking is typical in times of heightened international tensions. Qatar has been at the center of a regional tug-of-war between Iran, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia and its allies on the other.