eclectica
2003-07-05, 08:24
excerpts from the full article (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/03/hacker.warnings.ap/index.html):
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.
This came to my attention because the web hoster for napsterite.org sent me this e-mail:
Dear BOD HOST users,
On Sunday 7/6/2003, FTP and SSH services will be shutdown from 12am-12pm, due to the upcoming Hacking contest to deface websites. It is suggested that all users should backup their website files to their local machines, even though we do have mirror and off-site backup.
This will be a test of security for our system. We feel confident that our system is ontop of this event.
Without really knowing why, I've heard that SSH has a security vulnerability, but I wasn't aware that ftp does too.
Anyways, the really bad attacks that anyone will have happen, won't be announced in advance. It reminds me of the terrorism alert levels, which assume that one would know when the terrorists will strike or not.
Out of the three websites I have, this is the only one which notified me of such a thing. I don't know if they are overly cautious, or if they're doing the right thing, but the fact that chose a certain time when to be cautious, and when they think an attack will occur, seems to be overly confident on their part.
As far as the sixes go, well, to have 666 then they should have done it in June. Though if you consider that computer geeks start counting with zero rather than with one, then July is month number six.
666+1337=2003
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.
This came to my attention because the web hoster for napsterite.org sent me this e-mail:
Dear BOD HOST users,
On Sunday 7/6/2003, FTP and SSH services will be shutdown from 12am-12pm, due to the upcoming Hacking contest to deface websites. It is suggested that all users should backup their website files to their local machines, even though we do have mirror and off-site backup.
This will be a test of security for our system. We feel confident that our system is ontop of this event.
Without really knowing why, I've heard that SSH has a security vulnerability, but I wasn't aware that ftp does too.
Anyways, the really bad attacks that anyone will have happen, won't be announced in advance. It reminds me of the terrorism alert levels, which assume that one would know when the terrorists will strike or not.
Out of the three websites I have, this is the only one which notified me of such a thing. I don't know if they are overly cautious, or if they're doing the right thing, but the fact that chose a certain time when to be cautious, and when they think an attack will occur, seems to be overly confident on their part.
As far as the sixes go, well, to have 666 then they should have done it in June. Though if you consider that computer geeks start counting with zero rather than with one, then July is month number six.
666+1337=2003