http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nf/20010417/tc/9028_1.html By Robyn Weisman, NewsFactor.com Tuesday April 17, 2001 The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday confirmed past hack attacks on several U.S. Web sites, and said that perhaps several more have been perpetrated by Chinese hacktivists protesting U.S. actions in the recently-ended spy plane crisis. Although the FBI declined to offer specific details about the hacked sites, news sources have learned that hackers have defaced two U.S. Navy sites, neither of them classified, and two e-businesses that don't appear to have any connection to the crisis. The hack attacks reportedly include condemnations of American imperialism and eulogies for Wang Wei, the Chinese fighter pilot believed to have been killed when his jet collided with a U.S. spy plane. "All that we are aware of is an intrusion emanating from abroad," said FBI spokesperson Debbie Weierman. "We are coordinating with appropriate government agencies." Random Attacks "We discovered that the home page on one of our sites had been replaced with a posting of a Chinese flag, with some rhetoric in Chinese and English," Dan Olasin, president of Intelligent Direct, a company that sells maps online, told news sources. "It would have been more productive in the scheme of things if the hackers had been interested in exchanging ideas on the Internet somehow, rather than resorting to attacks like these." Frank Prince, an analyst with Forrester Research, told NewsFactor Network that such a benign site "may just be a target of opportunity" that had no apparent relevance to the conflict at hand. "The terrorist has a bomb in the truck set to go off at 1 p.m.," said Prince, citing an analogy. "He's driving to the target but traffic is heavy and he's late. So at 12:59 he drives into the nearest building and blows it up. Should the building owner have to put up barricades against truck bombs?" "Should the government put cameras on every corner to track terrorists?" Prince added. "What aspect of the problem do you want to focus on?" 'Hackers Union' Takes Credit The "Hackers Union of China" took credit on Monday for defacing at least one American Web site, of a California-based business, and has posted a list of at least 10 more sites hacked in memory of the dead pilot. On the American Web site, text left by the hacking group read: "As we are Chinese, we love our motherland and its people deeply. We are so indignant about the intrusion from the imperialism. The only thing we could say is that, when we are needed, we are ready to devote anything to our motherland, even including our lives." 'Vulnerable' Sites Targeted SecurityFocus.com incident analyst Ryan Russell expressed scorn regarding the hacker group. "They are supposedly protesting the U.S. plane, and yet they are picking on some sites that have nothing at all to do with anything vaguely military," Russell told NewsFactor. "They defaced a few pages just because they were vulnerable and appeared to be in the U.S." "Recently, we checked the records in our ARIS system for attacks originating in China, for the two weeks following the downed plane," said Russell. "There was no significant increase." "What we have here is a handful of guys causing trouble, and claiming to represent China," Russell concluded. "I don't believe they represent anyone but themselves." [Breakout of defaced U.S. .mil sites] http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/mil.html ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERVat_private with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Apr 17 2001 - 23:16:24 PDT