Web site attacks (was Sokhomlin)

Kelley the-squeeze at pulpculture.org
Mon Mar 31 03:33:20 PST 2003


At 08:25 PM 3/29/03 -0500, Michael Pollak wrote: I'm not saying amateurs couldn't do it. But the more I think about, the more I can't
>think of a single reason the Pentagon wouldn't have thought of it, liked
>the idea, and be good at it.

Script kiddies in warring countries hack web sites. Antiwar kiddies have been hacking insecure .gov sites--some Navy site recently, for instance. Some guy on a hacker list--where they look down at these dummies for engaging in easy and, ultimately, insignificant attacks--advocated a hack on al-jazeera recently. He got shot down for being an ass. List mbrs don't care for such talk because feds have monitored the site in the past and harassed people for the things they posted there. No doubt, you can find script kiddies on IRC babbling about taking down (defacements, redirects, knocking out servers, etc) sites they find offensive.

From what little I've read, these are not sophisticated attacks on iraqwar.ru. A really sophisticated attack would make it _really_ difficult for this guy to get his site back on-line. (Hacking for Girlies' attack on the NYT in 1999 is an example of a hack that made it difficult for the admins at NYT to get their site back on-line: <http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/hfg.html> <http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9809/18/nythack.idg/>

Al-jazeera's site, however, seems to have been getting the whammy <http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030328/72/39i6o.html>. They appear to have shut down services in defense against a buffer overflow attack. Not sure though because I didn't really look into it that much, just know that buffer overflow attacks are common with IIS.

Al-jazeera's running IIS 5/Windows 2000 which is susceptible to attack, more so than the apache server that iraqwar.ru, etc are running on.

this just came across the wire:

http://www.irna.com/en/head/030329170806.ehe.shtml

Hackers bombard US sites, pasting anti-war messages

New Delhi, March 29, IRNA -- As Baghdad continues to be pounded by US forces, the cyber war too has intensified with more and more hacker groups defacing websites and pasting anti-war messages, local press reported on Saturday.

On Friday alone, a record number of over 2,000 sites were vandalized by little-known hacker groups, taking the total number of sites coming under digital attack to around 30,000 ever since the war began.

Aljazeera.net, the online version of the Arabic news channel which has been beaming the devastation in Iraq, has come under a `patriotic' attack obviously by an American hacker who identified himself as `Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia'.

Though the site managed to put up its original within a short time, the patriot had indeed left his mark supporting the US-led war.

Another hacker group `gl0b4l', on Friday attacked more than 2,000 sites and pasted a rather interesting massage. "Don't get me wrong. I am not against the US, I am against war. Innocent soldiers and innocent people are going to die. Long Live US, In Peace, In One Piece'.

The hacker apparently brought down a server and all the sites hosted on it. However, he did not appear to have damaged any data on the sites.

The other hacker groups active today were TechTeam (whose message was `Stop war...only innocent people die'), Ironic Boys (`We want peace. No war USA sux), NHC, USG, Renjana and dum.my and tum.my. The well-known defacement mirror site, zone-h.org, had posted all the defaced sites on seven pages. Generally, the defacement list does not go beyond two or three pages, even when hackers are most active. IND/AH End

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