EU climate exchange website hit by green-hat hacker
An EU Climate Exchange website was hacked as part of a political protest against carbon credits by a green-hat defacement crew.
The front page of the ECX.eu website was sprayed with digital graffiti lampooning the concept of applying a market-based approach to tackling carbon emissions. An anonymous group of hacktivists called Decocidio claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place late on Friday.
The hack highlighted the group’s opposition to carbon trading as a means of tackling climate change, and contained links to activist groups Earth First, Climate Justice Action, and the Hack Block as well as an embedded video called The Story of Cap and Trade. Archived copies of the defacement, which carried the headline Super Promo – Climate for sale, can be found here, on a blog maintained by former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts.
The defacement was purged over the weekend and the ECX.eu was restored to normal operation by Monday morning.
IndyMedia Australia has more on the background and motivations of the hack’s perps here. Decocidio preposterously describes its attack as a public act of digital direct action.
Doubtless, as we speak, the perps are camped out in Epping Forest eating lentils and listening to 80s anarcho-vegitarian agitpop from the likes of Crass or Flux of Pink Indians.
Netcraft reports the Climax Exchange website runs Apache on Linux. It’s unclear how the attack was carried out or whether any deeper compromise into databases or other sensitive information was achieved. The vast majority of website defacements do not coincide with deeper breaches.
Attacks against climate change or research websites carry an extra political weight, especially after the CRU breach last year.
A hack against University of East Anglia last November resulted in the exposure of emails and other documents from staff at its Climate Research Unit online. The so-called Climategate breach resulted in a huge political controversy over the methodology of the scientists, with researchers on either side of the climate change debate using extracts from the documents to back up their positions