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Hackers pwn PBS in Revenge for WikiLeaks Documentary

Hackers aligned with WikiLeaks broke into and defaced the website of US broadcaster PBS over the weekend shortly after it had aired a less than flattering documentary about the whistle-blowing site.

LulzSec took particular offence at the portrayal of presumed WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning during of an episode of PBS’s Frontline news magazine programme. In response, the hackers broke into PBS website before swiping passwords and other sensitive information.

The hacker pranksters uploaded usernames and hashed passwords for the PBS database administrators and users onto Pastebin.com. Even more embarrassingly, the prankster also posted the logins of PBS local affiliates, including plain-text passwords.

Just so everyone would know the hack had happened, LulzSec also defaced PBS’s website, posting a bogus story (cached here) that claimed dead rapper Tupac Shakur was alive and well in and living in the same New Zealand town as nemesis Biggie Smalls. PBS posted a statement on the hack but that was defaced as well with an abusive message posted against Frontline.

Hacks of this type are normally carried out using SQL injection attacks. Flaws in content management systems are also a popular target. However LulzSec said that it had used a zero day exploit in Movable Type 4 on Linux servers running outdated kernels. That in itself would only have allowed LulzSec to deface the PBS website, but the use of the same password across multiple systems within PBS allowed the hackers to pull off a far more deeply penetrative attack.

Since the hack, LulzSec has turned it attention towards patriot hacker Jester, the most prominent member of the anti-Wikileaks cyber-militia, who attacked WikiLeaks after the release of US diplomatic cables. Unsurprisingly, LulzSec claimed his hacks were “lame” before threatening an attack against long-running hacker magazine 2600

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  • 31/05/2011
  • adm

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

  • 21/01/2011
  • adm