SA websites fall to hackers
2004-05-31 22:26
Johannesburg - In the biggest hacker attack in South Africa since January 1 2004, hackers successfully defaced more than 73 local websites at the weekend, said Reinhardt Buys of IT law firm Buys Inc on Monday.
Even the website hack.co.za, famous in the internet underground and security community, crashed under a repeated attack, Buys said.
At 12:21 on Sunday, a hacker group referred to as "FBH" hacked into the hack.co.za website. The home page of the site was defaced with a logo and "hacker talk" - a code language commonly used by hackers.
The site was hosted on a Linux platform and an Apache server.
According to Zone-H, a group monitoring worldwide hacking activity, "FBH" is an acronym for "Federal Bureau of Hackers" operating from Pakistan.
On Saturday from about 07:52, another group called "DIabOlaX" hacked into and defaced 72 South African websites - the highest daily count since the start of the year.
Short message in hacker talk
All the websites ran on a Windows 2000 platform.
The group removed the home-page content of the websites and replaced it with a short message in hacker talk and what seems to be the group's email address: cr4ck3r@linuxmail.org
"The fact that an extremist Pakistani group is active in South Africa is truly worrying," said Buys.
"FBH seems to promote a political agenda through hacking and related activities".
He added: "Lately, there has been a visible increase in politically motivated hacks."
- SAPA