Posted on 06/16/2011 8:51:45 AM PDT by cartan
The hacker group Lulz Security has claimed it has brought down the public-facing website of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
The alleged attack on CIA.gov occurred on the same day the group opened a telephone request line so its fans could suggest potential targets.
On its Twitter feed, the group wrote: “Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz”.
The CIA website was inaccessible at times on Wednesday but appeared to be back up on Thursday.
LulzSec’s claim could not immediately be verified.
It was unclear if the outage was due to the group’s efforts or to the large number of internet users trying to check the site.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
They work for the Chinese government, as far as I can tell. Their only risk of jail is if they fail their masters, and that is more likely to lead to a bullet purchase. I wonder if they would hack Obama’s sites.
Wow, that takes a lot of guts to try and shut down the CIA website.
Methinks they might have pissed off the wrong gorilla.
“[Insert name here] former member of the hacker group known as Lulz Security, was killed today when apparently his brakes failed and he plunged down a sharp embankment into Fool Sucka’s Creek. The vehicle exploded upon impact. Authorities aren’t ruling out foul play, but initial investigations blame faulty equipment for the accident...”
They work for the Chinese government, as far as I can tell.The Chinese are certainly very active, too, but this group smells more like a bunch of Liberal Idiots of the West.
That or “The former head of the hacker group accidentally brutally cut his head off while shaving.”
Call me crazy, but I’d never have the guts to mess with people who could kill you and make it look like an accident, or even kill you and not make it look like an accident but threaten/bribe/bully the media and local authorities into saying it was an accident and disappearing it down the memory hole forever.
If this was 1942 they would be tracked down and shot. In 2011 they probably will get to be Internet Czars in the Obama Administration.
How embarrassing.
Really makes you wonder who the hell is doing security for the CIA when a bunch of /b/tards can knock them down.
Might not be such a terrible idea to put some of them on the payroll.
It was the CIA’s PUBLIC website, which has about as much security as the local hardware store’s site. The CIA has other systems they use for their internal business.
It was the CIA’s PUBLIC website, which has about as much security as the local hardware store’s site. The CIA has other systems they use for their internal business.
I’m aware.
Copy and pasted from another website:
PBS
In May they hacked the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting creating fake articles saying that Tupac and Biggie Smalls were alive and well in New Zealand.
Fox.com
They claimed responsibility for leaking information including passwords and altering several Fox.com employees’ LinkedIn profiles. Then they leaked a database of X Factor contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants.
Sony
In June they hacked Sony Pictures and some Sony BMG Music website servers (not PSN okay? that was other guys) and called it the beginning of the end for Sony. They leaked names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for many people. They say it was about a million while Sony says it was only a few dozen thousand. The batch of databases are on the site so someone could count them if they wanted to...
InfraGard
They hacked up the website of a company that does Botnet detection for the FBI. Leaked some emails too. “LET IT FLOW YOU STUPID FBI BATTLESHIPS”
Nintendo
They tried and failed to hack Nintendo. They tweeted that they stopped and like the N64.
Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting
An internet Security company puts up a “hack this website, win a ton of money” contest. They hack it and say “DONE, THAT WAS EASY. KEEP THE MONEY, WE DO IT FOR THE LULZ.” Black & Berg responds, “Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting appreciate all the hard work that you’re putting in. Your Hacking = Clients for us. Thx.” It’s pretty obvious they didn’t take the money because it could be traceable.
British National Health Service
They sent them a nice email identifying a security vulnerability and telling them to fix it. Maybe they’re not such bad dudes?
pron.com
This time I’m just copy+pasting from Wikipedia. They obtained around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords. Among the information stolen are records of six users who subscribed from .gov and .mil e-mail addresses as well as administrator information from 55 other adult-oriented websites. Following the breach, Facebook locked the accounts of all users who had used the published e-mail addresses, and also blocked new Facebook accounts opened using the leaked e-mail addresses. They feared that users of the site would get hacked after Lulzsec encouraged people to try and see if these people used identical user name and password combinations on Facebook as well.
Bethesda Studio
They compromised about 200,000 but didn’t publish all the data this time. “Bethesda, we broke into your site over two months ago. We’ve had all of your Brink users for weeks, Please fix your junk, thanks!”
United States Senate
This time e-mails and passwords from a bunch of people on senate.gov. They leaked these and the root directory of parts of the website, yikes! “This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov. Is this an act of war, gentlemen?”
Some Game Websites
On June 14th, “Titanic Take-down Tuesday,” Lulzsec took down four gaming websites! They set up a hotline so people can call in DDOS requests. While DDOSing isn’t their usual style, setting up a phone switchboard shows some real technical finesse. Minecraft, League of Legends, and Eve Online had their login systems, and therefore their websites, shut down. The Escapist’s website was also taken down.
Fin Fisher
Fin Fisher, some IT security company, was part of Titanic Take-down Tuesday.
S2 Games
By phone request they took down the Heroes of Newerth login server. “Heroes of Newerth master login server is down. They need some treatment. Also, DotA is better.”
US CIA
They DDOSed cia.gov. That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, LulzSec.
Bioware
18,000 user account names and passwords, email addresses, and birth dates
Think this through,
The public CIA.gov url is probably a honeytrap.
There is no way to know the CIA/FBI hasn’t already inflitrated this LulzSec group.
There is no way to know if the CIA allowed LulzSec to take down CIA.gov to build street cred for their pet front group.
That sounds like a typical Rockford Files episode.
Um. But maybe, being a vast bureaucracy, this is about as far separated from the "killer black ops dudes in Afghanistan" as the campus ROTC guys are from Seal Team 6.
I bet there were 100 times more people in meetings creating action items and emails circulating around the government today trying to figure out whose department is in charge of the cia.gov website than there are agents trying to "honeytrap" actual Intel Agents in all of China and Russia, etc, or who would even know someone to call to get a car boobytrapped, much less be able to identify a brake line on a car themselves.
Look at it this way. This is the rare example where the government outsourced a study on their security systems, and it didn't cost millions of dollars or take years of consultants. We got our money's worth for once!
Sound correct, and a rare incident (indeed) of receiving our money's worth.
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