http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-04-13-ala-airport-hacking_x.htm 4/13/2005 ANCHORAGE (AP) - A hacker broke into the Web site of the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and replaced arrival and departure times with a waving Turkish flag. Screens also displayed a steely eyed man's face in the lower right corner. Beneath it was a message crediting a Turkish hacker who goes by the handle "iSKORPiTX" for the cybervandalism. The flight information page on the Web site of the state-owned was defaced at about 1:40 p.m. Sunday, airport officials said. It remained that way until about 9 p.m., when technicians disabled that part of the site until about 6 a.m. Monday, they said. The hacker gained access only to the airport's Web server, not its internal network on which financial documents, e-mails and other data are stored, airport director Mort Plumb said. The break-in occurred as federal law-enforcement officials are completing an investigation of a broader rash of cyberattacks on state computers this winter. Stan Herrera, the state's director of enterprise technology services, said Tuesday that a defacement of another agency's Web site during winter spurred the investigations. The breadth of the attacks is still being analyzed, and federal officials have not released details of their investigation, he said. Lawmakers recently set aside $5 million to pay for equipment and software to make the state's computer network more secure, Herrera said. Two years ago, officials had expected to shift all of the state's computer systems onto a new, more secure platform to be built by Anchorage-based Alaska Communications Systems, which had been hired to overhaul the state's telecommunications system, including computer networks. That deal fell apart in September 2003 and the state's networks reverted back to equipment and software that were to have been phased out, Herrera said. Money earmarked this year for computer security upgrades will buy new routers and switches and the software that makes them work. Some also will be used to pay for new security software that will be installed on network servers as well as employee workstations, Herrera said. The airport Web site hacker is fairly well known in Internet circles and does not try to hide his tracks. Earlier this winter, an image and message similar to the ones that appeared on the airport's site showed up on the Information Security Association's Web site in the United Kingdom. The group is a nonprofit international organization of information security professionals. A hacker Web site that chronicles such exploits gives iSKORPiTX credit for defacing hundreds of other Web sites, including state government sites in Iowa, Georgia and Tennessee. _________________________________________ Network Security - http://www.auditmypc.com Free vulnerability test - How secure is your computer?
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