Hack Attack Hits UK Government

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

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
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