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Tag Attack Defaces 40,000 Sites
Security and Privacy Blog
Gregg Keizer Keeps You Up To Date
A Turkish hacker's gone graffiti on nearly 40,000 sites in a couple of swoops since Wednesday, a site that tracks Web defacements (as the break-ins are politely and euphemistically called) said yesterday.
According to Zone-H, a Turk going by the nickname "Iskorpitx" (say that five times fast) broke into 21,549 Web sites Wednesday, then another 17,000 a bit later, and defaced the sites with a new page that displayed a Turkish flag and a photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic who, among other things, commanded Turkish troops that fought the British and Australians to a standstill at Gallipoli in 1915 during the First World War.
The page was also tagged with the cracker's name and a barrage of F-bombs:
"F***** ARMANIAN-F***** FRANCE-F***** GREECE-F***** PKK TERROR"
Clever.
(The PPK is a terrorist group whose aim is to create an independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey.)
The tagging is the biggest in Web history, says Zone-H, and puts Turkey at the top of the list, dubious though the honor may be, as the country that defaces more sites than any other.
Iskorpitx been the busiest, with a total of 122,000+ defaced sites to his credit.
He's also older than your average cracker, says Zone-H, who says he's "believed" to be about 45. So much for "script kiddies" being behind site tagging.
Although defacements aren't at the top of anyone's security concern list, they show just how insecure many sites are; in order to tag a site, someone like Iskorpitx has to be able to break into the server. If he can, others can too, and with more malicious intensions than just F-ing Greece, France, and the Kurds.
Tagging can, of course, be embarrassing to a site, especially to a commercial site. Apple's Korean online store, for instance, was defaced earlier this month by yet another Turk, this one dubbed "Diman" by Zone-H. Apple quickly got out the digital paint thinner and scrubbed the site.
Security and Privacy Blog
Gregg Keizer Keeps You Up To Date
A Turkish hacker's gone graffiti on nearly 40,000 sites in a couple of swoops since Wednesday, a site that tracks Web defacements (as the break-ins are politely and euphemistically called) said yesterday.
According to Zone-H, a Turk going by the nickname "Iskorpitx" (say that five times fast) broke into 21,549 Web sites Wednesday, then another 17,000 a bit later, and defaced the sites with a new page that displayed a Turkish flag and a photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic who, among other things, commanded Turkish troops that fought the British and Australians to a standstill at Gallipoli in 1915 during the First World War.
The page was also tagged with the cracker's name and a barrage of F-bombs:
"F***** ARMANIAN-F***** FRANCE-F***** GREECE-F***** PKK TERROR"
Clever.
(The PPK is a terrorist group whose aim is to create an independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey.)
The tagging is the biggest in Web history, says Zone-H, and puts Turkey at the top of the list, dubious though the honor may be, as the country that defaces more sites than any other.
Iskorpitx been the busiest, with a total of 122,000+ defaced sites to his credit.
He's also older than your average cracker, says Zone-H, who says he's "believed" to be about 45. So much for "script kiddies" being behind site tagging.
Although defacements aren't at the top of anyone's security concern list, they show just how insecure many sites are; in order to tag a site, someone like Iskorpitx has to be able to break into the server. If he can, others can too, and with more malicious intensions than just F-ing Greece, France, and the Kurds.
Tagging can, of course, be embarrassing to a site, especially to a commercial site. Apple's Korean online store, for instance, was defaced earlier this month by yet another Turk, this one dubbed "Diman" by Zone-H. Apple quickly got out the digital paint thinner and scrubbed the site.
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