more on loosely coordinated hacker "hackathon" this weekend

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ari Ollikainen <Ari () OLTECO com>
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2003 10:52:52 -0700
To: dave () farber net
Cc: mark () broadbandphysics co
Subject: Re: [IP] loosely coordinated hacker "hackathon" this weekend

At 1:20 PM -0400 7/2/03, Dave Farber wrote:
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Mark Laubach <mark () broadbandphysics com>
> Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 09:57:31 -0700
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> Subject: loosely coordinated hacker "hackathon" this weekend
>
> [for IP]
>
> Dave,
>
> I'm sitting here doing email and watching CNN Headline News on the tube.
> They just released a news story that sometime this coming Sunday,
> a loosely coordinated group of hackers is going to try to hack into
> 6000 web servers in 6 hours. I cannot find any mention of this on the
> CNN site at this time. Anyone else know anything?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=738&e=6&u=/ap/20030
702/ap_on_hi_te/hacker_warnings

Government Warns of Mass Hacker Attacks

By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer

WASHINGTON - The government and private technology experts warned
Wednesday that hackers plan to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday
in a loosely coordinated "contest" that could disrupt Internet
traffic.


Organizers established a Web site, defacers-challenge.com, listing in
broken English the rules for hackers who might participate. The Web
site appeared to operate out of California and cautioned to "deface
its crime" - an apparent acknowledgment that vandalizing Internet
pages is illegal.

The Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday it was aware of
the hackers' plans but did not expect to issue any formal public
warnings. The Chief Information Officers Council, part of the Office
of Management and Budget, cautioned U.S. agencies and instructed
experts to tighten security at federal Web sites.

"Frankly, hacker challenges occur frequently, and we don't think they
all rise to the level of a warning," Homeland Security spokesman
David Wray said.

An early-warning network for the technology industry, operating with
Homeland Security, notified companies that it received "credible
information" about the planned attacks and already has detected
surveillance probes by hackers looking for weaknesses in corporate
and government networks.

"We emphasize that all Web site administrators should ensure that
their sites are not vulnerable," wrote Peter Allor of Internet
Security Systems Inc., the Atlanta-based company that runs the
Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Separately, the New York Office of Cyber-Security and Critical
Infrastructure Coordination warned Internet providers and other
organizations that the goal of the hackers was to vandalize 6,000 Web
sites in six hours.

New York officials urged companies to change default computer
passwords, begin monitoring Web site activities more aggressively,
remove unnecessary functions from server computers and apply the
latest software repairs from vendors such as Microsoft Corp.

Chris Rouland, director of the X-force security team at ISS, said
researchers monitoring underground chat rooms and other Internet
activity detected a drop in the numbers of vandalized Web sites
recently and an increase in the types of surveillance scans that
typically precede computer break-ins.

"It's kind of a sand-bagging period," said Rouland, who predicted
that hackers were quietly breaking into computers and waiting to
vandalize them on Sunday.

The purported "prize" for participating hackers was 500-megabytes of
online storage space, which made little sense to computer experts.
They said hackers capable of breaking into thousands of computers
could easily steal that amount of storage on corporate networks.

___

On the Net:

Hacker contest: www.defacers-challenge.com
 

 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
 You can't depend on your judgement when your imagination is out of focus.
                                  -- Mark Twain.
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       OLTECO                    Ari Ollikainen
       P.O. BOX 20088            Networking Architecture & Technology
       Stanford, CA              Ari () OLTECO com
       94309-0088                415.517.3519


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