Al Jazeera Hacked

[gnXfan]

AL JAZEERA WEB SITE IS HACKED

By LAUREN BARACK
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March 28, 2003 --
Hackers swarmed the English version of the Al Jazeera Web site yesterday.

Instead of the Arabic news service appearing, Web surfers were redirected to a site with a U.S. flag with the words "Let Freedom Ring," in an apparent domain hijacking yesterday.

"This is a very simple and very powerful hack," said Lance Spitzner, a security architect with Sun Microsystems, and a member of The Honeynet Project, which studies hackers.

"If I wanted to hack an organization, this is the ultimate way to hack an organization. It's very dangerous."

In this type of attack, hackers gain actual control of a domain name - even of the e-mail that is being sent to that address.

Although rare, this kind of "classic" hack has happened in the past and is considered far more sophisticated than a denial-of-service (DOS) attack, which floods a server with thousands of demands until the system is overloaded, or even a DNS poisoning attack, which hijacks just the site to a different Web page.

Al Jazeera launched their English-language Web site on Monday and almost immediately the site became a victim of a DOS attack.

VeriSign, which registered the Web site name, admitted the mistake that allowed the site to be taken over yesterday.

"An error occurred and someone got administrative control of the domain name and redirected the servers," said Brian O'Shaughnessy, spokesman for VeriSign.

Al Jazeera has come under fire for showing images of U.S. soldiers who have been taken hostage and killed.Link to the picture put up!

 

[blackbuick87]

USA!
USA!
USA!

How 'bout that for a little American ingenuity




Somehow they posed as employees of the server company and got in. The FBI is investigating, but $50 says they dont look very hard

 

[T-top87GN]

Gimme a break. Some DoS'ed their website. Big deal. Must be hackers right? Wrong. Anybody, especially script kiddies, with a little bit of bandwidth and the right commands can do that. Do you actually think hackers would waste their time on something like that? That kinda crap is actually looked down upon by the hacker community.

As long as the media gets ahold of any computer related news, it must have been hackers that did it. Whatever....

note: I'm not being anti-american or anything, heck I think it's funny someone DoS'ed those motherless $&(ks. But don't blaim "hackers" for everything. I'm just really sick of the negative connotation of the word "hacker." Seriously guys, it'd be like lumping all of us Buick guys in with the ricers because well, we both do like cars. See what I mean?)

 

[TTA89]

Do you have a link to that story?


Hack the Planet! Hack the Planet! (Good Movie )

 

[blackbuick87]

Originally posted by Bandit
Gimme a break. Some DoS'ed their website. Big deal. Must be hackers right? Wrong. Anybody, especially script kiddies, with a little bit of bandwidth and the right commands can do that. Do you actually think hackers would waste their time on something like that? That kinda crap is actually looked down upon by the hacker community.

As long as the media gets ahold of any computer related news, it must have been hackers that did it. Whatever....

note: I'm not being anti-american or anything, heck I think it's funny someone DoS'ed those motherless $&(ks. But don't blaim "hackers" for everything. I'm just really sick of the negative connotation of the word "hacker." Seriously guys, it'd be like lumping all of us Buick guys in with the ricers because well, we both do like cars. See what I mean?)

Can you read? It says they didnt just DOS it, it was much more complex then that. Its great that someone went into those POS's web site and put a flag and porn on it. Have you seen the crap they put up? burning towers, God slapping down the shuttle. And if you cut into someones website and change the programming, yes you are a hacker

 

[V6 Beast]

Originally posted by Bandit
note: I'm not being anti-american or anything, heck I think it's funny someone DoS'ed those motherless $&(ks. But don't blaim "hackers" for everything. I'm just really sick of the negative connotation of the word "hacker." Seriously guys, it'd be like lumping all of us Buick guys in with the ricers because well, we both do like cars. See what I mean?)

By taking over someone's website... you pretty much by definition are a hacker. Even if they weren't hackers before they did it... they were after they did it.

Sully

 

[equalizer442]

Do you actually think hackers would waste their time on something like that?

yes, i think they would. i sure as hell know i would.

 

[buickgs71]

Whoever they are and whatever you want to label them, I say THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I want to give the arabs the benefit of the doubt that they don't see the reality. But we also see reality through our own eyes. Like Forest Gump said, "Maybe it's a little of both.".

But stupidly biased anti-american crap has to be dealt with now. After 9/11 it's clear that ambivalence isn't going to work anymore. The pretending dead people on New York streets deserve to get treated like the dead. Run them over.

 

[tjthorson]

Steve beat me to it - I'll just add. People use "hacker" for everything. Its kinda like calling a "tuner" someone that can add a big hollow muffler and stickers to their Honda.

A hacker is someone who breaks in and pokes around and gathers info. They usually do no damage other then to make them somemore backdoors for later.

A cracker is someone who breaks in and changes things or breaks things to cause havoc or damage.

Furthermore - generally most hackers are not malicious people. The crackers are "usually" the type (usually kids also) that use the hackers' programs to "look around" to do the damage. A little knowledge can be dangerous to those folks.


Does that help?