|
Senate Hit -- Again
Mike Hudack
Editor-in-Chief
McIntyre
Attrition.org News
The Senate.gov website, defaced earlier this month by Masters of Downloading (suspected to be so1o aka Chris McNab), was again the target of crackers -- this time calling themselves the Varna Hacking Group. It´s believed that this group, known as VHG, comes from the Bulgarian town of Varna. In the past, VHG has defaced the site of the Cartoon Network United Kingdom.
The defacement occured when VHG infiltrated Senate.gov DNS servers, replacing the correct DNS settings with those of a VHG-controlled server.
The site remained largely intact, with only the middle section of the page defaced. The banner which usually proclaims "US Senate" was replaced by that of the "Varna Hacking Group." In addition, the area where the "top story" about the Senate usually goes, a graphic was placed calling for the release of Kevin Mitnick and Zyklone (raided by the FBI earlier in this "hacker war"). In addition, the drop-down list which would normally lead to individual senators´ web sites was replaced with a drop-down list reading "Select a Penis" which then linked to playboy.com. "Today´s calendar" text was also replaced with text in a foreign language, presumably Bulgarian.
Interestingly, VHG left an e-mail address for contact. The e-mail address, hosted at usa.net, is an anonymous service, however. OSAll e-mailed VHG requesting an interview immediately after the defacement took place.
This second Senate.gov defacement will serve as a major embarassment to webmasters throughout the government, although of course, especially at the Senate. The idea that the server wasn´t adequately secured even after attack is particularly startling.
At the time this article was written, OSAll could not contact FBI or Senate officials for comment. A mirror of both Senate.gov defacements can be viewed at the Attrition Mirror, which is a member of the OSAll Network. |
