[ISN] Canadian hackers attack 13 major corporate sites

From: mea culpa (jerichoat_private)
Date: Wed Apr 07 1999 - 12:23:57 PDT

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    http://www.computerworld.com/home/news.nsf/CWFlash/9904062hacker
    
    Canadian hackers attack 13 major corporate sites
    By Tom Diederich
                                          
    Several major corporate Web sites apparently were hacked into last Sunday
    evening by a group called the Yorkshire Posse. 
                                          
    The group said 13 companies were targeted to protest the arrest last April
    of Canadian Jason Mewhiney, who is suspected of breaking into a NASA Web
    site and causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. 
    
    "I think they went for us because we were a high-profile site," said Sara
    Winge, a spokeswoman for information technology publisher O'Reilly &
    Associates Inc. in Sebastopol, Calif., one of the sites that was hit.
    "They were trying to get a message across about a Canadian hacker -- or
    cracker, I guess I should say -- who was being tried for computer crimes.
    But it didn't have anything to do with O'Reilly as a company." 
    
    The hacked sites were replaced with a page that proclaimed a "declaration
    of war against all who would challenge the freedom of Canadians with such
    ludicrous actions!" 
    
    The group claimed to have also hit Playboy.com, Sonymusic.com and a Sun
    Microsystems Inc. customer support site in Canada. Officials from those
    companies weren't available for comment at press time. 
    
    Winge said O'Reilly was contacting the other 12 sites to learn how the
    attacks were carried out. "We obviously can't give a lot of detail, but we
    have prevented it from reoccurring at this point," she said. 
    
    "All of our electronic-commerce offerings are on another server, which was
    not at all touched and has much heavier security," Winge added. 
    
    She said the attack occurred late Sunday night and was fixed by 9 a.m. 
    Monday morning. 
    
    
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