Inter-mediates' sites hacked and down

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/12479.html

By: Kieren McCarthy
Posted: 09/08/2000 at 13:17 GMT

We received word that Inter-mediates' vast network of sites had been
hacked and were down. The company, most commonly known for its Special
Reserve discount store network confirmed there had been "external
interference" but declined to comment on whether it was a denial of
service attack or a hack.

It looks pretty much like a server hack to us since every site run by
Inter-mediates is down. And that's quite a few. A spokesman told us:
"Yes they are all down and we don't want to put them back up until
we're sure it's safe." He said they hoped to be up and running in the
next hour or few hours. He was unwilling to speculate on the reason
behind the hack. And we've no idea either.

Among the sites affected are specialreserve.net, ukcomputing, ukgames,
ukxbox, ukpokeman, ukn64, ukadvance, ukcdrom, gameaday, plonkers,
1press, upwire (all com and co.uk) - the list just goes on and on.

We'll try to find out why Inter-mediates has been targeted and get
back to you.

Update

A reader has sent us a message from the daily radar forum concerning
the hacked sites. The message reads: "SpecialReserve.net and all of
there domains hosted on there box were 0wned by do0do0 and -V. Some
say (mainly the media) that all we do is rm -rf systems when we get
access, that all we want to do is cause damage to the systems...this
is done to learn and to show the world that no one is secure.. my boy
yt showed this and is currently mia.. who will be next? GForce
Pakistan? Again, they showed the world that no one is secure with the
.gov and nasa domains they have defaced to get across there message.
We think the media don't know what rm -rf is :)

Nothing else to say accept that do0do0 and -V will live on.. Our fans
/ our haters don't have to worry about that :-)"

It's now about five hours later and Inter-mediate still hasn't managed
to get any of its sites up. This looks like a big hacking job.
Instead, the same message on a white page has been put up on all the
sites. As ever, it has gone for the euphemism "major upgrade".

This is the message: "Special Reserve, GetDotted and Freeola would
like to apologise for the unavailability of our web sites at present.
We are currently performing a major upgrade to our systems and expect
to be back on-line later this afternoon. Special Reserve's Sales Lines
are open now on 0870 725 9999 for orders and customer service."

We have also been contacted by Inter-mediates. Its Internet Director
said the sites will be up by early evening, and wanted to stress that
no customer data had been compromised in the hack.

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