Big Trouble In Little World

Hackers Target House.gov Sites

August 7, 2009 at 2:58 am (Kata-Kata Mutiara) (Berita, House.gov Kena Hack)

Nih Infonya :

Hackers broke into more than a dozen Web sites for members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the past week, replacing portions of their home pages with digital graffiti, according House officials.

The landing pages at house.gov for Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), and Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) were among at least 18 member pages that were defaced in a series of break-ins that apparently began earlier this month, according to zone-h.com, a site that archives evidence of Web site attacks.

Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.), confirmed that Mitchell’s site was among those hacked. Bozzi said it appears the attackers broke in by guessing passwords used to administer the site. Bozzi said the messages that the hackers left behind had been erased, and that his office now has stronger passwords for the site.

The hackers replaced portions of the member pages with multiple copies of the message “H4ck3d by 3n_byt3 @ Indonesia H4ck3rs” according to zone-h.com.

Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House’s chief administrative officer,
said the defacements of several member Web sites began Aug. 1, and were the result of an outside computer vendor failing to adhere to the House’s required security standards.

“The defacements were the digital version of graffiti and did not result in the theft or loss of any sensitive data or materials,” Ventura said. “Over the last year the House has continued aggressively fortifying its security systems. These improvements to our systems resulted in the swift identification of the site defacements, which were fixed within hours of being detected.”

Ventura said Dan Beard, the House’s chief administrative officer, has called for an immediate review of the House’s relationship with the vendor in question.

The vendor responsible is GovTrends, a Web design company in Alexandria hired to provide Web hosting for about 100 House sites, although not all were affected.

GovTrends founder Ab Emam said the breaches were the result of passwords assigned by GovTrends to member offices that were never changed.

“Most of these passwords could be guessed, they were obvious,” Emam said. “That’s been changed, and each of these sites is now required to have strong passwords.”

Zone-h categorized the majority of the break-ins as “mass defacements,” which generally result from hackers targeting a single, a known security weakness present in one commonly used operating system or Web application. According to Zone-h, the hacker claiming responsibility for the attacks signed his name “3n_byt3,” is responsible for at least 797 Web site break-ins, including 366 flagged as mass defacements.

Sumber : http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/08/hackers_target_housegov_sites.html

Wedew : Pass BacaSerem Ngacir Ahhhhhhhhh