FC: Feds warn of Chinese hack attacks, from WashingtonPost.com

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:09:39 -0500
From: Robert MacMillan <robert.macmillan () washingtonpost com>
To: declan () well com

Hi Declan - We just ran this a little while ago -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60363-2003Mar31.html


Feds: Chinese Hack Attacks Likely


By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2003; 3:27 PM


Chinese hacker groups are planning attacks on U.S.- and U.K.-based Web
sites to protest the war in Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security
warned in an alert that it unintentionally posted on a government Web
site today.

The hackers are planning "distributed denial-of-service" attacks,
which render Web sites and networks unusable by flooding them with
massive amounts of traffic. They also are planning to deface selected
Web sites, according to the alert, though the government said it did
not know when the attacks would occur.

The Homeland Security Department said it got the information by
monitoring an online meeting that the hackers held last weekend to
coordinate the attacks.

The department sent the alert to government and industry officials
over the weekend, but accidentally posted the link this morning on the
homepage of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC). The
alert was pulled early this afternoon.

Homeland Security Department spokesman David Wray said the information
was not supposed to be released to the public. "This was an
inadvertent release and the information -- while not classified -- is
sensitive," he said.
... [snip]




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