[ISN] War provokes hackers to launch attacks on Web

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 01:44:15 PST

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    http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend27_20030327.htm
    
    BY MIKE WENDLAND
    FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
    March 27, 2003
    
    The Iraq war has unleashed a wave of attacks aimed at defacing Web
    sites as a form of protest.
    
    The Overseas Security Advisory Council, a group established by the
    State Department and U.S.-based corporations that operate abroad, puts
    the number of hacker attacks at more than 2,500. The council warned
    its members that the longer the war continues, the more hacking
    incidents they can expect.
    
    "These digital attacks are causing business disruptions through online
    vandalism of commerce portals and computers belonging to businesses,"  
    said the warning. "Government and military systems are also being
    targeted."
    
    Think of it as the information age's electronic equivalent of graffiti
    protests.
    
    And it's not all antiwar sentiment being expressed. A U.S.-based group
    called Hackweiser has been defacing dozens of small Web sites with
    slogans like "HOORAY FOR WAR!"
    
    The new English Web site run by the Arabic Al-Jazeera TV network
    (http://english.aljazeera.net) remained largely inaccessible for a
    second day Wednesday because of what are known as denial of service
    attacks, in which hackers bombard a site with so many requests for
    access that the computer servers running the site crash.
    
    Rich Mogull, a research director for Gartner Inc.,
    information-technology research firm, says most large corporations
    have adequate security to foil the attacks, which he describes as
    generally unsophisticated and dependent on known security flaws.
    
    Ford Motor Co., for example, says it has had no problems with anyone
    trying to hack into its dozens of public and private Web sites.
    
    Scott Bailey, director of information risk management for Rehmann
    Consulting's Troy office, said he's seeing an increase in unsuccessful
    attempts to get into secure systems: "It's not the big corporations
    that are being targeted. It's more typically small and medium-sized
    companies that get nailed. So far these have been pretty
    unsophisticated incidents and basic security is keeping them out."
    
    Besides the Web page defacements, security experts have identified
    four worms and viruses being spread as attachments to e-mail that try
    to exploit interest in the Iraq war, according to F-Secure, a
    Helsinki, Finland-based company that makes antivirus software.
    
    One of the worms, called Prune, has a subject line like "U.S.  
    Government Material -- Iraq Crisis." F-Secure says it is likely aimed
    at people with friends and relatives in the military who are very keen
    to get any kind of information about the crisis and can be tricked
    into opening the attachment and thus activating the worm, which then
    tries to erase operating system files.
    
    Details are at www.f-secure.com/virus-info/iraq.shtml.
    
    
    
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