http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172496.html By Melvin G Calimag, Metropolitan Computer Times MANILA, PHILIPPINES, 28 Nov 2001, 1:10 PM CST Saying they're out to help Philippine-based system administrators and MIS managers discover "flaws in the their computer systems," a group of Filipino "freelance security enthusiasts" called Team Asianpride recently went on a hacking spree. Among the first victims of the group's nasty undertaking, which took place in the early hours of Nov. 17, were the Web sites of ABS-CBN (http://www.abs-cbn.com ) and Mosaic Communications (http://www.mozcom.com) . ABS-CBN is the country's largest broadcasting company, while MosCom is the first commercial ISP in the Philippines. A message that the hacker group posted at the defaced ABS-CBN Web site, said the hacks were part of their scheme dubbed as "The 4 O'Clock project." The project has the intention was to "disseminate the importance of Information security here in the Philippines," the group said. The defacement was said to have lasted only a few minutes before the sites' main pages was restored. ABS-CBN Interactive, the division that operates the broadcast giant's online version, has refused to divulge details of the incident. In its message on the defaced ABS-CBN Web site, Team Asianpride said: "This team has conducted a survey by scanning random hosts and informing these people on these technicalities and encourage them to fix their servers up. "We have no intention, however, of destroying, and/or information hijacking, and any other related activities. We are not paid to do this," it added. The hackers said they have found that more than 90 percent of the servers can be exploited through common vulnerabilities in their systems. The group added they had already tried to bring this matter to the attention of the system administrators, but to no avail. "Inasmuch as we would like to help the administrators secure the different servers by trying to communicate to them personally, we have been subjected to insult, despite our professional approach," the group said. Team Asianpride lashed out at MIS managers and system administrators, who despite their alleged condescending view on the group still allowed flaws to exist in their systems. "And also despite the fact that we have informed them of their vulnerability, still these administrators failed to respond. They scorned us with their witty remarks bragging what degrees we have and thinking that we know less." The group said they chose to hack on the ABS-CBN Web site since the site's administrator has failed to respond in their attacks. "What we haven't seen is a productive result following these kind of responses. Yes, we are eager to help you out, but you pushed us way far gentlemen, too far, indeed." MosCom, meanwhile, said its engineers detected the intrusion this morning. The ISP said the site was immediately redirected to a maintenance page, while at the same time reformatting the hacked server, which was later uploaded with security patches. "Of the more than 20 servers at our data center, only one old Web server was affected by the incident. This prevented the access of some of the Web sites hosted in that server," MosCom said in a statement. Company officials have vowed to investigate the matter and go after the attackers. "All the necessary measures are being done as to avoid the incident from happening again," MosCom officials said. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Nov 29 2001 - 13:40:45 PST