http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1005000/1005850.stm
An anti-Israeli hacker has attacked the website of one
of Washington’s most powerful lobbying
organisations, the American-Israeli Public Affairs
Committee (Aipac).
The attack, led by self-styled "Doctor Nuker, founder
of the Pakistan Hackerz Club", included the
publishing of critical emails downloaded from Aipac's
own databases, as well as credit card numbers and
email addresses of Aipac members.
The FBI has been informed
and 700 Aipac members,
including at least one
Republican senator, have
been advised to cancel
credit cards and monitor
their accounts.
"The hack is to protest
against the attrocities in
Palestine by the barbarian
Israeli soldiers and their constant support by the US
Government," the hackers wrote.
"Instead of writing articles or putting pictures of
Israel's atrocities in Palestine, this time I've put
e-mails and comments that I got from the web site."
There follows the text of
eight e-mail messages
and a list of web links of a
more or less acrimonious
anti-Israeli nature.
In the past year, the
Pakistan Hackerz Club
(PHC) is reported to have
defaced more than 100
internet sites, most of them
official Indian sites, to
protest on behalf of
Kashmir separatism.
Cyberwars
Correspondents say "hacktivism" - as the political
hacking is called - is on the rise, as the practice is
easy for activists to make a big splash with little risk.
There have been numerous successful and
unsuccessful hacking attempts since the beginning of
the recent Middle East crisis and website
administrators on all sides are reported to have been
busy defending their sites against attack from enemy
hackers.
The computer security site Attrition.com reported at
least four other anti-Israeli hacks on Friday by another
group calling itself GForce Pakistan.
Previously hackers have targeted the websites of the
Knesset, Israel's Parliament, its foreign ministry and
an Israeli internet provider, as well as several sites
run by the Hezbollah guerrillas.
Aipac spokesman
Kenneth Bricker said the
hackers were only able to
download credit card
numbers and about 3,500
names and web
addresses from people
who had contacted
Aipac's website.
The broader list of the
organisation's 55,000
members, which he
referred to as "the crown
jewels of Aipac," are stored on a separate computer
system "that was never compromised".
Mirrored
The New York Times reported that Aipac's site was
defaced by the PHC manifesto for less than 15
minutes before the organisation blocked access.
The page soon reappeared on other sites, known as
mirrors which monitor and preserve hacked pages.
At the time of writing, the site is still not functioning, and
Mr Bricker said the group would not bring it back into
service until it had completed a thorough
investigation and had taken new protective
measures.
Mr Bricker said Aipac was now rethinking its web
strategy: "All this is new to us, but we're certainly
getting a crash lesson."
[This message has been edited by CoolDude (edited November 06, 2000).]