Re: Both Sides Hacked Over Kashmir

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

Forwarded by: Small Grey <spunge () attrition org>

A little fact checking, Wired?  Try www.pak.gov.pk.

What pisses me off about this is that Wired, this Manu Joseph
reporter, and securityfocus.com are carrying this story at all given
the story's focus on what is, afterall, almost certainly a hoax.

How the hell long does it take to figure out that "pakgov.org" IS NOT
the official government website of Pakistan?  The reporter could have
figured this out from the www.yahoo.com directory, whois, host,
nslookup and other every-day tools for the Internet from back in the
day.  I'm waiting for whitehouse.com to get hacked so Wired can report
that as a hack of the official whitehouse.gov site.



On Sat, Dec 23, 2000 at 05:50:54PM -0600, InfoSec News wrote:
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40789,00.html
>
> by Manu Joseph
> 2:00 a.m. Dec. 23, 2000 PST
>
> MUMBAI, India -- In the computer-infatuated subcontinent, Y2K will
> go down, among other things, as the year when the India-Pakistan
> technology war reached a crescendo.
>
> More than 40 Indian sites have been infiltrated this year by
> hackers like G Force Pakistan and Doctor Nuker, who have left
> poignant pro-Pakistan slogans and reasons why Kashmir belongs to
> that country.
>
> Among the prominent Indian sites that have been defaced this year
> are those belonging to the Indian Parliament, the Indian army in
> Kashmir, prominent television network Zee, Bhabha Atomic Research
> Centre, newspaper Asian Age and the Indian Institute of Science.
>
> Corporate sites like Glaxo Wellcome's have been attacked as well.
>
> It's been something of a two-way street, although the assault on
> Pakistani sites by Indian hackers has not been as substantial.
>
> The Pakistani government's site, pakgov.org, for example, has been
> defaced by those who claim to be "patriot Indians." There have
> also been reports that Indian hackers have repeatedly tried
> unsuccessfully to hack into the Internet edition of a popular
> moderate Pakistani newspaper called The Dawn. During the recent
> Kargil war, the Indian government had blocked access to The Dawn.
>
> The Indian hackers have left a message to their Pakistani
> counterparts saying that they should "keep their hands off Indian
> sites."
>
> Among threats of "breaking the Internet backbone" of Pakistan, the
> hackers have also warned that "India is the superpower of
> Information Technology."
>
> The Pakistani hacking has made many Indian sites take a fresh look
> at how to protect themselves. Satish Chatterjee, a network
> administrator in site-hosting company Powernet, said the best
> solution is just to monitor the sites 24 hours a day.
>
> "Most of the hackers do nothing more than take the user to a
> different URL where they have posted pro-Pakistan messages,"
> Chatterjee said. "Frankly, most Indian corporate sites are easy
> targets for Pakistani hackers because they contain static HTML
> pages.
>
> "It's difficult to hack a database-driven site. These are some of
> the things that those owning the sites should understand."
>
> Though the Indian government's Information Technology bill that
> was passed this year has not addressed the problem of hacking to
> everybody's satisfaction, a body called Cyber Crime Unit has been
> created. This unit is a branch of the Central Bureau of
> Investigation.
>
> Though the main task of the CCU is to grapple with more serious
> crimes, like the theft of credit card information, it has also
> kept a close watch on Indian hackers who are enthusiastic about
> defacing Pakistani sites.
>
> "We have managed to disable some Indian hackers' sites that have
> distributed hacking tools or pasted slogans against Pakistan,"
> said Sundari Nanda, the superintendent of police attached to the
> CCU. "We are working on ways to deal with hackers from Pakistan
> like G Force and Doctor Nuker. Now there has been an increased
> activity from a group called Attrition, which used to target
> Israeli sites and has now shifted its focus to India.
>
> "We ourselves got a mail just the other day. The fact that it was
> a very heavy mail made us cautious. It was a virus that we traced
> back to an ISP in Pakistan."
>
> She added that the Intelligence Bureau has been notified. But an
> official there admitted, "There is no high-level coordination
> between the governments of India and Pakistan to curb this
> cross-border cyberwar. The general perception among decision
> makers is that the hacking has so far been harmless, nothing more
> than immature expression of patriotism from both sides."
>
> Since Kashmir cannot be won over the Internet, it appears, both
> the governments are taking it a bit easy.

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