Anonymous hacks Senate website

[Mr. Dictator]

US officials said they have ordered a security review after hackers managed to break into the Senate website at the weekend.

An official said the incident had been "inconvenient", but had not compromised the security of the staff.

The confirmation came after Lulz Security, a loosely aligned group of hackers, said it had carried out the attack for fun and posted files online.

Lulz has previously targeted Sony, Nintendo and Fox News.

Senate Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms Martina Bradford said the hacking had been noticed at the weekend, and that officials were now reviewing all the sites hosted on Senate.gov.

"Specifically, there is no individual user account information on the server supporting senate.gov that could have been compromised," she said in a statement.

Lulz Security posted files online which indicated they had been in the Senate network. However, none of the files appeared to be sensitive.

"We don't like the US government very much," Lulz Security said at the top of a release.

"This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov - is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?" it added.

The US recently said it would consider cyber attacks an "act of war", and reserved the right to respond to attacks with conventional means if they were found to have been orchestrated by a nation state.

Lulz is a reference to internet-speak for "laugh out loud".

Link

So should be expecting some missiles in their smokestacks soon?

Add another to the list of brazen hacks lately.

 

[Cynovolans]

Lulz is a reference to internet-speak for "laugh out loud".

Did they really need to add that?

EDIT: lulz internet-speak!

 

[History_Buff]

I think this is a battle that powers that be can't help but fight, but it's a losing battle.

 

[LucyDuke]

This kind of thing says more about the security considered adequate than it says about the big scary hackers.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Did they really need to add that?

Hey, they're not calling it a corruption anymore!

 

[Archbob]

They just need to treat hacking secure websites the same as robbing banks and the same punishments to match.

 

[punkbass2000]

These decentralized collectives sure must be well-organized.

 

[Civman33]

Ugh.

Greeeaaat... now the Senate. Maybe hackers are a step-up from the government.

 

[warpus]

This kind of thing says more about the security considered adequate than it says about the big scary hackers.

Every website in the world is hackable. It's really only a matter of how difficult it is to get in. Most of them are easy..

With the amount of incompetence usually found in government run institutions, I'm not surprised that their websites are easy to hack.. heck.. HBGary was easy to hack, apparently, and they're a SECURITY firm.

 

[warpus]

By the way, Anonymous isn't affiliated with Lulz, are they?

 

[LucyDuke]

They did it for the lulz... shouldn't it at least be difficult enough to deter that?

 

[warpus]

If they want in badly enough, they will.

 

[GoodGame]

Not much to say but obviously Anonymous are cowards.

 

[warpus]

Dudes, I really think Anonymous and Lulsec are two separate organizations

 

[GoodGame]

In before this thread is corrupted by anonymous hackers.

 

[civ_king]

Dudes, I really think Anonymous and Lulsec are two separate organizations

They are.

I'm awaiting LulzSec's pwning by th3j35t3r

 

[civver_764]

This is pure awesomeness.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Anonymous is hilarious, except when they try to organize and actually do something. Then it's just embarrassing.

I mean, Lulz Security? Seriously?

Time to dust off Picard...

Spoiler :

 

[Maniacal]

Another fail of a thread title. Lulzec has clearly separated themselves from Anonymous by adopting their own identity.

Also screw them they keep releasing the usernames, e-mails and passwords of the users of those websites. They do it for the attention.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, LulzSec =/= Anonymous...

The moral of the story is not that internet security is inadequate, but that we think it's adequate. We need to stop believing that websites can't be hacked. There are secure ways of keeping data safe and there are insecure ways, and we need to recognise the difference. Use strong encryption, pay attention to hashes, make passwords out of two words instead of one, don't let users execute arbitrary code or SQL, etc etc...

It's one thing to hack a website's server, which contains pictures and content, and replace that content with a picture of a monocled ragetoon quaffing wine. It's another thing to actually be able to access the databases that contain personal user data or commercially sensitive company data. I think the public needs to be better educated -- and the media more clear -- on what the difference is, and what it means for our data.