El Reg reports that a man who tried to hack a web site gathering donations to help victims of the Tsunami has been arrested:
Police yesterday arrested a 28-year-old man from East London on suspicion of attempting to hack into the website of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). The New Year’s Eve attack on the site of the organisation co-ordinating efforts to help support victims of the Asian tsunami disaster failed.
The attack was blocked by BT, hosts of the secure payment page of the website, which notified the Metropolitan Police Service about the assault. Scotland Yard’s subsequent investigation lead to the arrest of a suspect at an address in the Bishopsgate area of London by officers from the Met’s Computer Crime Unit yesterday.
What an idiot. How can someone be so heartless as to try to hack into a site like that?
Then again, he didn’t seem to make a good job of it – a proper hacker would have actually got in and wouldn’t have got caught so quickly.
Update (2005-01-27): According to BoingBoing the guy wasn’t hacking at all – he was using the Lynx web browser in Sun’s Solaris operating system. In which case, damn you BT for being such utter dumbasses and for wasting police time.
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January 21, 2005 at 23:01
That’s humanity for ya
. I guess some people just can’t turn down a chance to make a buck.
I sure hope no attack like that succeeds, though. I gave quite a big share of my money pie to Asia.
January 24, 2005 at 18:23
DEC.org goes to an entirely different site. Try http://www.dec.org.uk
January 27, 2005 at 11:24
I hope the moron that made the mistake is fired. Honestly, anyone so stupid shouldn’t be monitoring access logs. Hell, they shouldn’t be near a computer.
January 27, 2005 at 20:47
It is very easy to read security logs and come to the wrong conclusions, I’ve done it in the past – though not to this extreme. If you think you’ve got an intruder then you tend to throw everything you have at him ASAP without thinking too much.
However from what we’ve been told this does look like it’s either a very basic mistake or the guy is lieing about using Lynx and really was hacking in.
Meanwhile I’m going to use an alternative browser for everything now – let’s see how quickly I can get myself arrested whilst not breaking the law.
January 28, 2005 at 18:49
I went to the site with my modified user agent browser (see the archives
), so far MI5/6/7, FBI, CIA or KGB haven’t been around…
January 30, 2005 at 17:57
I’ve nailed huge planks across the doors.
February 2, 2005 at 09:23
I’ve done the same, only also across the windows and any openings.