Hacker Group Lulz Security attacks CIA's website
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 16 June 2011, 21:30 IST   |    5 Comments
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Hacker Group Lulz Security attacks CIA's website
Bangalore: Lulz Security continues grabbing the lime light with its hacking activities and this time its latest target is the public website of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). There recent attack brought the CIA website down for couple of hours and remained inaccessible for all that time, however,the hack claim could not immediately be verified. It was not clear if the distortion was due to LulzSec's efforts or due to the large number of internet users trying to check the site. The group claimed the attack to be carried out by them on its Twitter feed where they displayed a message saying "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz," "The hackers accessed the Senate website but did not obtain any sensitive information. The attack appeared to be targeting the CIA's public website, which does not include classified data and has no impact on the CIA's operation," said a senate security spokeswoman. He informed that the only information seized was already public. The motto of Lulz Sec is "laughing at your security since 2011" and to make fun at the loosely organized security system. This is their unique way of making fun and raising awareness of the widespread lack of effective security against hackers. For young generation they have become the element of entertainment every now and then as they can be associated as internet pranks rather than serious cyber attacks. The group first emerged in May 2011, and has successfully attacked the websites of several major corporations. It specializes in finding websites with poor security, and then stealing and posting information from them online. It uses methods, such as SQL injection, to attack its targeted websites. The emergence of Lulz Sec was first noticed in May 2011 when it hacked Public Broadcasting System (PBS) website where they created a euphoria stealing user data and posted a fake story claiming Tupac Shakur was still alive and living in New Zealand. This attack was motivated by their desire to defend and support Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. They claimed responsibility for leaking information including passwords and altering several Fox.com employees' LinkedIn profiles. Then they leaked a database of X Factor contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants. The emergence of Lulz Sec was first noticed in May 2011 when it hacked Public Broadcasting System (PBS) website where they created a euphoria by stealing user data and posting a fake story claiming Tupac Shakur to be still alive and living in New Zealand. This attack was motivated by their desire to defend and support Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. They claimed responsibility for leaking information including passwords and altering several Fox.com employees' LinkedIn profiles. Then they leaked a database of X Factor contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants. In June 2011 Sony became its next victim and took data that included names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people. This attack was motivated by Sony's legal action against George Hotz for jailbreaking into the PlayStation 3. The group claimed to have compromised over 1,000,000 accounts, though Sony claims the real number was around 37,500. Lulz Security also claims to have hacked InfraGard, a company affiliated with the FBI that does work on botnet detection in June 2011. The group leaked some of Infragard's e-mails and a database of users. They tried and failed to hack Nintendo. They tweeted that they stopped and like the N64. On June 8th, Lulzsec attacked the website of Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting, a network security company, and tainted the image displayed on their front page to one containing the Lulzsec logo. On June 9th, LulzSec sent an email to the administrators of the British National Health Service, informing them of security vulnerability discovered in NHS systems. On June 11th, reports circulated that Lulzsec hacked and stole user information from the pornography website www.pron.com. They obtained around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords. On June 14th, Lulzsec took down four gaming websites also. Lulz Sec seems to be on a roll in hacking various corporation. In a single year, they have begged many infamous distinctions. Now it will be interesting to watch out who will be its next target.

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