Utah ISP is victim of retaliation following hackers' attack on Al-Jazeera

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=37813

March 28, 2003

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Salt Lake City-based Internet service
provider Networld Connections became the unwitting tool of hackers
attacking Arab television network Al-Jazeera, then itself then struck
by a retaliatory attack, possibly from anti-war hackers.

The original hackers, impersonating an Al-Jazeera employee, tricked
the Web addressing company Network Solutions into making technical
changes that effectively turned over temporary control of the
network's Arabic and English Web sites.

Visitors to those sites were diverted to pornography and to a page
with a U.S. flag and the message, ''Let Freedom Ring.''

That page was posted on Networld Connections computers from 8 a.m.  
Thursday until 10:30 a.m., when it was removed.

''We have no idea who the hacker is, but now there is a
'denial-of-service' attack going on against us because of what
happened, something we had no control over,'' Ken Bowman, Networld's
president and chief executive, said late Thursday. ''We are using most
of our bandwidth, but we are blocking most of it - they haven't taken
us down.''

Denial-of-service attacks flood a targeted service with data, such as
self-reproducing e-mails or incomplete computer-processing commands.  
The intention is to overwhelm the target's resources, either crashing
the site or at least making it inaccessible to others.

Bowman said the attacks were from all over the world, but seemed
concentrated most from nations such as Russia, China and France that
have among the most vocal opponents of the U.S.-British coalition's
attack.

Al-Jazeera's Web sites have been suffering disruptions for days, ever
since showing pictures of dead and captive U.S. soldiers in Iraq.



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