Hackers say attack was easy

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/0,1643,500308974-500496290-503480397-0,00.html

By JONATHAN FOWLER
Associated Press

GENEVA (February 11, 2001 7:03 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) -
Uncovering confidential data, such as passwords and credit card
numbers, on business and government leaders who attended an annual
meeting in the Swiss Alps was easy, computer hackers were quoted as
saying Sunday.

The Zurich weekly SonntagsZeitung, which last Sunday disclosed the
capture of data on 27,000 leaders, listed on the Internet the type of
information that was compromised for each leader.

Former President Bill Clinton's forum password and actor Dustin
Hoffman's e-mail address were included. The newspaper lists the names
and titles, but withholds the confidential numbers.

Organizers of the annual gathering last week confirmed that hackers
broke into a computer containing credit card numbers and other
confidential data, but they denied reports that former President
Clinton had been among the people compromised.

"It was just lying there offering itself in a show window,"
SonntagsZeitung quoted an unidentified member of hacker collective
Virtual Monkeywrench as saying on Sunday. The hacker compared entering
the computer with walking into an open courtyard.

The newspaper said it had to conduct the interview in writing through
an intermediary.

The information varies from business leaders' credit card numbers to
passwords for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Russian President
Vladimir Putin, said SonntagsZeitung.

Other data included direct and cellular telephone numbers for some
leaders and e-mail addresses for others, it said.

Charles McLean, spokesman for the World Economic Forum, criticized the
SonntagsZeitung's publication of the data.

"They are trafficking in stolen material, and using it to sell
newspapers," McLean told The Associated Press.

McLean said the newspaper had refused requests from the World Economic
Forum that all copies of the data be returned, and that legal options
were being considered. The forum last week filed a complaint and
authorities in Geneva are investigating the matter.

The forum, a foundation set up 30 years ago to run the annual
meetings, has been increasingly targeted by activists who maintain
that it is an exclusive club acting in the interests of big business
and against the world's poor.

McLean said such criticism ignores the positive work of the forum,
ranging from getting drug companies to improve access to medicines, to
bringing together Balkan presidents to discuss regional
reconstruction.

SonntagsZeitung said it learned of the computer break-in through a
CD-ROM it received from the hackers. Included were 800,000 pages of
data.

This week it produced a sample of what had been stolen from whom: the
e-mail address of Microsoft's Bill Gates, the direct telephone number
of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and the credit card number of
Pepsi-Cola CEO Peter M. Thompson.

The group -- whose name harks back to the "monkeywrenching" of United
States environmentalists -- were quoted as saying their cyber-attack
had been an attempt to destabilize the forum.

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