Information Security News mailing list archives
Hack Attack Hits UK Government
From: William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 04:59:17 -0500
http://www.sky.com/news/technology/story7.htm [An archive of the original defacement along with the other eight domains can be found on Attrition at... http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2000/08/14/www.ali.gov.uk/ ] August 16th 2000 A hacker has taken out at least nine UK government web sites, replacing their home pages with an attack on the government's 'hypocritical' policy on smoking. Local authority websites in Sheffield, Swindon, Woldsway, and Dumfries & Galloway were among those hit in the attack. They were joined by central government sites including those of the Global Information on Science and Technology (GIST), and the Training Standards Council. The hacker, calling himself 'Herbless' claims to have exploited a weakness in the Windows NT operating system, on which all the targeted sites were based. The attacks appear to have taken place late on Monday evening (Aug 14). By Tuesday morning, several had been returned to service. Others had taken their web services completely 'offline'. Three systems - at clevelandway.gov.uk, woldsway.gov.uk and binfield.gov.uk - continued to display the 'hacked' homepage. 'Herbless' writes that he is taking the opportunity to 'get (some issues) off my chest and perhaps stimulate some thought in anybody that happens to be reading this'. A smoker until four months ago, Herbless compares government policy on CJD to its laissez-faire approach to smoking. Apologies 'A couple of people every year might have died from CJD infected meat so the government put a ban on the retail of beef-on-the bone, placing a great hardship on farmers and butchers,' he writes. '120,000 people will definately (sic) die from smoking every year, and the government puts huge taxes on cigarettes and lines the pockets of fat-cat businessmen in the process. Hello? Am I the only one to see something wrong with this?' A hack attempt, apparently carried out by the same Herbless, disabled the website of the Cabinet Office in July - taking out the site of the government's E-Envoy at the same time. It is thought to have been the first serious attack on a Whitehall website. But Herbless's preference for hacking government sites appears to be driven more by the challenge, than by any anarchic tendency. 'Please accept my apologies for using your webserver as a vehicle for my ramblings,' he writes at the foot of his latest message. '.gov servers are just a little bit more tempting than anything else.' *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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- Hack Attack Hits UK Government William Knowles (Aug 16)