Experts Bracing For Sunday Hacker Attacks (extended until midnight July 6, Estonian time)

IndyChannel ^ | July 6, 2003 | AP

[FairOpinion]

WASHINGTON -- It's all a contest among Internet hackers, and the results could be devastating.

Both government and private experts have warned that hackers had planned to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday during the loosely-coordinated contest. They've also urged Web administrators to be alert.

Organizers had established a Web site for the event, which was shut down last Wednesday evening. Before it was removed, the site listed the rules for hackers who might be taking part.

FBI spokesman Bill Murray says "The FBI is taking this very seriously...hacking is a crime and those who participate in this activity will be investigated and brought to justice."

A New York cyber security firm has warned Internet providers and other organizations that the goal was to vandalize some 6,000 Web sites in six hours.

[FairOpinion]

I went to the hackers challenge website earlier and againt today:

http://www.defacers-challenge.com/

They extended the contest until midnight July 6 (or "zero" hour July 7). It's in Estonian time, which is 7 hrs ahead of EDT, so I guess the contest is continuing until 3 pm EDT today.

The site said, and I checked,that the other site, which was going to report the statistics, http://www.zone-h.org is down ( could have been taken down by law enforcement), so the hackers had to change their reporting method of e-mailing it in.

Current Estonian time: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=242

An important point that I think is being misreported in the press: every article I see talks about defacing a TOTAL of 6000 sites, when in fact at the contest website it's specific that EACH PERSON OR GROUP should have a goal of defacing 6000 websites.

If each group or person is trying to deface 6000 website, assuming that there are probably thousands of hackers out there, there are going to be an awful lot of websites defaced.

I just hope the website administrators are ready and instituted protective measures.

[xJones]

It takes quite a lot of arrogance to announce such a "contest" over the internet. Bust 'em all....

[tet68]

Wonder if Aljezzer is ready for this?

[ex-Texan]

About ten minutes from now it will begin. Counting down now 10, 9, 8, 7 . . . I hope FR has installed a great firewall.

[FairOpinion]

It supposed to have been over and started at 9 am Estonian time ( 2 am EDT). They extended it to last all day July 6 Estonian time, because the site which was supposed to have reporte the statistics and hence determine the winner was taken down ( presumably by law enforcement).

So far I hadn't noticed any of the major sites being down, so hopefully with the advance notice, administrators took protective actions. So in that sense this contest make people, even those who haven't been as security conscious as they should have been, pay attention and secure their servers -- at least I hope so.

According to their current timetable, we have only about another half hour to go, unless they extend it again.

[BushCountry]

This would be LOL funny if the authorities are the ones sponsoring the contest to collect information and arrest hackers! If they are not, then they should the next one!

[FairOpinion]

Good thought!

I don't think they are sponsoring this one, but I agree, that's a good way of smoking out the hackers. But probably the real professional ones, called "crackers" (as someone explained to me) who are not out for fun, but to do real damage or are basically "hired hands" for spying or doing serious damage don't fall for this. But even catching the "minor criminals" would make the internet a safer place for everyone.

[Cicero]

Distributed Denial of Service attacks involve covertly taking over a bunch of computers and then using them to attack a site. So they could conceivably be hacking private individuals.

Not a bad time to do all your operating system security updates, your antivirus updates, and so forth. And I personally think that anyone who uses one of those file exchange programs such as Kazaa has to be out of his skull.