Thousands Of Aussie Websites Exposed In Hack Attack

Thousands Of Aussie Websites Exposed In Hack Attack

www.smh.com.au

Thousands of Australian websites are vulnerable to being taken over by hackers following a break-in at Australian domain registrar and web host Distribute.IT, security experts say.

It comes as the hacker group LulzSec followed up yesterday's attack on the CIA's website by today releasing 62,000 email addresses and passwords. A number of the leaked login details related to .com.au addresses and several government departments and councils.

(visit the link for the full news article)

So, its all playing right into thier hands...

Attacks on various finanical institutions, governmental agencies, Pentagon contractors...

Now, a threat to every day...chaos will ensue if "we" dont intervene...
business to every man is business yet its a livelihood to many.

Complaints have already begun pouring in from affected businesses who are suffering as a result of the break-in.

'Killed my business'

"This new outage has probably killed my business, with over 40 of my clients running a special promotion on the web this weekend that is going to be a total bomb, wrote a user on the Whirlpool forums

So whats left...beg for protection, scream for internet security even if you dont believe in it because you have to have it to survive.

This is only the beginning....hold on for dear life.
Its been a great learning lesson, and I can only hope that if and when the time comes
we are all subject to the ole IP address and bulletin board days, we carry on well.



www.smh.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well there you have it, the attack that affects the general public that I've been waiting for. All bets are off now.

But I don't understand this:

Distribute.IT was hacked on Saturday in a "deliberate, premeditate and targeted attack", the company said. Almost an entire week has elapsed since then and the company has still been unable to get its website online, explain what happened or notify customers of any stolen data.

How could they possibly be 'unable' to notify customers of any stolen data? Surely they could at least notify customers of potential stolen data - unless all of their staff were bound and gagged in a basement somewhere?!

EDIT: I'm a bit confused, the OP's linked article implies that lulzsec have released a bunch of usernames and passwords, but the lulzsec site shows no new releases since the senate.gov release. Has this article been written to blame lulzsec for this latest attack when they are not taking responsibility? Will have to have a read through LS's tweets and see if there's anything in there.

And now we wait...

reply to post by TheStev


Well it depends...it the ability to send emails was linked with the website, as is many sites that
I am familiar with, yes...the entire business was interrupted.

Imagine, all of your customers e-mail addresses stored online, in the site, or the email accounts
associated....yes, a total interruption.

Not to say its bright of anyone to count one the net these days...
Then again, not everyone is up to speed with the CIA...and the "Pentagon Contractors".

reply to post by burntheships


nah... i wont let my self get sucked into that..

I do support both anon and the lulz in their efforts... being a techie I use BSD based oporating systems which are very secure indeed and customisable at kernal level to increase personal security.

Its a shame that so many of us out there simply dont understand the tech enough to protect themselves or their businesses... and yes.. will probably end up paying for some BS security package.

In fact I could almost place a bet on internet security contracts becoming the new "energy saving lightbulb" or "carbon tax" of the decade! lol

Good point, I hadn't really considered that.

I've still got a really bad false flag feeling about this. Absolutely nothing on the LS website about this release, nor anything on their TPB user account. There is mention of it on their tweets, but I find it very odd there's no mention of it elsewhere.

My spidey sense is tingling!

reply to post by w3nd1g0


Oh, I see this going far beyond that...the courts are already
making case law with it.

Is an internet address an person? (no)

If an internet address is not a person, how do we definatively idenitify and
prosecute these types of "criminals?"

I posted a thread over two years ago ...I guess I was ahead of the trend...

Yet, I predicted this very thing!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Like a social security number, you will need a secure internet ID.

Or, they will just do an all in one soon, an invisible "tattoo" passive that takes care of
all of it, not visible, not seen by the naked eye.

On your forehead, or your right hand will that be?

reply to post by TheStev


I too have been getting a bad false flag feeling about this whole thing. If you scroll down a bit on the Twitter account you will see where they talk about the release and a link to a TPB account.

reply to post by Domo1


Hi and welcome to ATS!

Hey, could you post a link to that twitter?

And, how do you know its a PTB account? ( )

thankfully our firm doesn’t use Distribute IT.

However, lulz are really starting to come across as something more deliberate, or agenda related.

On one hand you have anon, which tbh im not entirely sure who they are .

They seem to be something against the government.

Where as LULZ are now taking on regular companies, companies where the common man has interests.

This is going to vilify hackers, and unfortunately have them all painted with the same brush.

An attempt at smearing a good group maybe?

My mind changes daily.

reply to post by Agit8dChop


Well its all similar to the "common man" that does not understand
that its nearly all but proven that these hacker groups have been infiltrated
by governmental alphabet agencies.

All is not as it seems.

Remember 9/11.

reply to post by burntheships


Its funny you should say that... as of about 7 years ago.. intel started to tatoo their processors with a "unique" ID number.. now.. whenever you use the internet or perform a download or upload.. this number was to be "tagged" onto your communications and the number be registered to you and you alone.

This did not work.... at all.. and the tech was never really utilised.

With the new introduction of ip v6 from v4 we have the pottential of allocating a "unique" IP address to any one individual.

scary eh? you bet your ass it is!

Weather or not this makes it more difficult for us "geeks" to seek out usuable proxy servers needs to be seen.. but if the individual IP becomes a personal standard.. then I would be very worried indeed.

I do not see this happening at this level any time soon tho as it would be one hell of a PITA to implement on a global level.

I spose we shall just have to wait, watch... and run if needed !!

reply to post by Domo1


They link to the Sony release on their TPB account, but their website has a link to their TPB account (is it kosher to post the link here? I might err on the side of caution, but it's linked on the LS website) Don't see why I can't post the releases which have been put out under their account:

Other
(Other)
Bethesda internal data
Uploaded 06-13 21:13, Size 15.04 MiB, ULed by LulzSec 106 4
Other
(Other)
Sownage 2
Uploaded 06-06 17:34, Size 59.52 MiB, ULed by LulzSec 64 4
Other
(Other)
(swear removed by poster) FBI Fridayâ„¢ (FFF)
Uploaded 06-05 17:14, Size 711.92 MiB, ULed by LulzSec 106 13
Other
(Other)
Sownage
Uploaded 06-02 22:24, Size 4.66 MiB, ULed by LulzSec 179 2
Other
(Other)
X Factor Leaked Contestants Database
Uploaded 05-07 03:19, Size 32.58 MiB, ULed by LulzSec

They do post a link to a Mediafire host for the 62,000 accounts referred to, but I get the feeling that LS are just passing on the accounts, and were not responsible for obtaining them. They would be listed on the releases on their site if it were a real LS release. Also, I believe LS hacks have been attributed to LS themselves, not to any individual hacker. The OP's news source lists:

When the hacker initially broke in, it defaced Distribute.IT's website with the message "OWNED BY EVIL AT EFNET YOU MOTHER f****ers". Evil is the same hacker who recently broke into the University of Sydney's website. In that instance Evil admitted to hacking into the university from Brazil for money.

I'm more and more convinced that this was not an LS hack in any way.

reply to post by w3nd1g0


Well it depends at what speed "they" move.

Take for instance todays announcement, the title of the thread in my signature. I have
been waiting ffor them to "announce" it.

Lets say that every person had a unique id wired right in, yes as in nano.

We know fibre optics and the internet, but do we know fiber optics nano interfaced
with human genes, aka The Living Foundries

reply to post by burntheships

One thing I'm curious about, is whether distribute.IT may have less security than some of its competitors?

We've known for years that hackers may try to attack vulnerable systems, and I think we also know that some systems are more vulnerable to attack than others. A business looking for a reliable domain name server will likely investigate the provider they intend to use and make sure it won't be going down.

In contrast, a small business or mom and pop shop may not be savvy enough to shop for anything but the lowest price per month, and then they will complain when the service goes down. It may not occur to them that perhaps they might need to pay a little bit more for a more reliable site?

One reason I think this may be a factor, is there were references to downtime in the OP article which seemed to precede this latest attack, so that causes me to question the overall reliability of distributeIT.

The other thing mentioned in the article I completely agree with, is that people need to think twice about this "cloud computing" concept. This incident highlights the additional exposure cloud computing faces from attacks, compared to more secure systems.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hmmm....well junk IP providers and site hosts are as old as the day.

So, lets just say for the sake of the argument this is "lulz".

Why now?

The only people in real danger here are the government/power institutions. Hackers tend to have needy egos so they're more likely to go after the big targets to make a name for themselves. I would suggest that there are very few regular people that are in any danger here.

My 2 pennies!

IRM

reply to post by burntheships

Twitter link.

Thanks for the welcome. I was actually mistaken about Lulzsec having posted a TPB account. As another member pointed out it was a Mediafire link that as you can see has since been removed. I'm sure that the information will find it's way out soon enough.

reply to post by InfaRedMan


On the surface I would agree...but perhaps your overlooking the timing.
Again, why now? Why not 6 months ago?