Hackers hacked by hacker

They know nothing about their own security, plenty about others

By Nick Farrell: Friday 21 May 2004, 07:36
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AN ALLIANCE OF HACKERS dubbed the Hackers Against America (HAA) has had its website defaced by er a Hacker.

The group, which has its site based deep in the Russian Confederation, boasts that it has links to the Al Qaeda terror group.

According to Zone-H, when news of HAA's association with terror groups got out, it so peaked a Portuguese hacker called Marcos that he wrote to them and gave them a piece of his mind.

In return he received an email from HAA which was so full of abuse and general naughtiness Marcos decided to get his own back.

He used the headers of the mail sent to him to find the IP address and DNS of the sending server. Scanning it, he found that BIND (software used for DNS) and an FTP server were running.

HAA were running a version of BIND which was so old that it had a certain vulnerability which all hackers knew about. Being the sort of network experts they are, the Pirates had failed to install the patches.

Marcos modified the DNS so that when the site webmaster tried an FTP connection to update the site, he would be sent to Marcos's own FTP server.

When HA's webmaster logged in, Marcos nicked his FTP username and password which he promptly used to deface the website after deleting all the other content, it transpires.

Marcos, who is Portuguese, wrote "This site has been permanently disabled for dirtying the term hacker and planting absurd and ridiculous ideas."

In another security twist, it appears that the hackers had used the same password on their yahoo email sites… so Marcos closed them. Well if you don’t take the most basic security precautions, it is clear you will get hacked. Maybe HAA should get some security experts in. µ

The Inquirer
 
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