Hackers Hijack Cryptome and Delete Everything

Hackers Hijack Cryptome and Delete Everything

news.softpedia.com

The longstanding whistleblower website Cryptome.org has been hacked during the weekend and all of the 54,000 files hosted on it have been deleted.

Cryptome publishes sensitive leaked documents and is ran by a long-time civil liberties activist named John Young, who co-founded the site in 1996.

The attack began during the early hours of October 2nd with the hacking of an Earthlink email address associated with the domain name.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I found this rather interesting but am unfamiliar with the site. I don't claim to understand hackers at all but this seems like the opposite of something they would do (to me). Of course the conspiracy part of my brain thought 'maybe this is just a test to see how people react'. Interested in hearing others thoughts on the matter.

news.softpedia.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Meet the new and improved state sponsored hacker...

After October 1 thousands of US military hackers and spies will get down to their cyber war activities

The command - made up of 1,000 elite military hackers and spies under one four-star general - is the linchpin of the Pentagon's new strategy and is slated to become fully operational Oct. 1.- Washington Post reports (6). The Defense Department has “15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices in use in dozens of countries, with 90,000 people working to maintain them and it depends heavily on commercial industry for its network operations” (7). Attracting allies and private companies working in the sphere of IT and security the US plans to establish the new order in the global cyber space.

Source

That's right. Now the military has its own bevy of Jolt Cola drinkers just for us!

Originally posted by Hefficide
Meet the new and improved state sponsored hacker...
That's right. Now the military has its own bevy of Jolt Cola drinkers just for us!

How correct you are. This is state sponsored hacking. I suspect the same people are behind the Stuxnet worm also. This is an opening salvo of the new cyber warfare initiated by the US Gov. I would not be surprised if there is not a counter strike in the coming days. Now you know why Wikileaks went underground.

Do they honestly think that a site like Cryptome would not have back ups of their content?

Even if they have lost it, many thousands of people have Cryptome files downloaded to their computers.

CX.

reply to post by CX


That's sort of why I think it was a 'test run' if you will. See how the public reacts etc. No reaction, no problems. They can obviously take down whatever they want so some random blogger isn't going to be a huge problem. Sites like this only have power when noticed, this one was apparently well known and it's not even in the MSM yet as far as I can tell. Looks like we showed em we dont care.

Just to add...

cryptome.org...

They obviously didn't do a very good job.

CX.

reply to post by abrowning


We are enteringa new sponsored terrorism phase. This phase is going ahead to ensure that the NET is neutralised. It sounds rather far fetched but wait and see. This new 'cyber terrorism' is going to be used to ensure more information is kept from the public and free speech cut short.

I guarantee you this: Banks will be hit and so will energy companies over the winter period. This is all going to take place to ensure that people put their liberties in the hands of the players so that they can garnish more control.

This is probably the work of government hackers.

They should be made to pay damages to John Young when they are identified and maybe even thrown in jail.

*Cyberterrorists are they not?

reply to post by CX


Beat me to it lol

reply to post by Exuberant1


The only problem with that is I doubt they will be identified. If they are, I certainly agree though.

Just goes to show you information is a commodity that is not safe anywhere.

Cryptome site is up again as they have backups ready for incidents like this which makes the hack event nothing more than a dumb waste of time.

As for timing of the hack itself. The hack started Oct 2, so logic would suggest that Articles/Documents posted on Oct 1 might contain an item that got the hackers attention and prompted them to try and delete all items.

The only item of any import from the October 1 postings on Cryptome is a short item about the StuxNet Virus that is hitting Iran and others Industries.

That item, Stuxnet Myrtus or MyRTUs?, hints at the possible link to "Israel's Unit 8200"?

There is another link in this to a nytimes article, but i am not about to sign up to read it.

reply to post by CitizenNum287119327


No need to sign up:

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

link

And here is the first thing that popped up on Israel's Unit 8200

Thousands are said to have signed up since then and have been incorporated into the defence forces Unit 8200. In the intelligence community it is regarded as a singularly Israeli act of bravura that has given the country an edge in a world that has been rapidly immersed in cross border technology attacks. Hackers, who invariably learn their skills engaging in illegal activity as teenagers, offer key advantages to countries seeking to defend against cyber warfare, or go on the offensive against an enemy. The Negev desert based Unit 8200 has evolved from the signal intelligence arm of the Israeli military into a respected leader in high technology warfare. One American consultancy rated Unit 8200 as the sixth biggest initiator of cyber attacks on the plants. It is a rapidly growing field. The Russians and Chinese have been implicated in thousands of attacks on foreign targets every year. The West is scrambling to bolster its capabilities.

Originally posted by Exuberant1
This is probably the work of government hackers.

They should be made to pay damages to John Young when they are identified and maybe even thrown in jail.

*Cyberterrorists are they not?

Why would you think that?

People hack web sites and do dumb things every day. The majority of those hackers are not from the government. Just because it's a site that you're personally interested in doesn't mean that 'the government' took it down.

I wouldn't put it above a government institution to hack something, I just don't think we should jump to conclusions either.

Personally I think if it was the government they would be a bit more effective about it. If this is the same government that allegedly faked the moon landings, hide the shape shifting serpents, and mislead the entire science community surely they would do something a bit more reliable.

reply to post by Pinke


I'll agree with that. Frankly I can see myself wanting to mess with people for fun if I had that capability.

Still seems like a good way to gauge public reaction to me at the same time.

Originally posted by Pinke

I wouldn't put it above a government institution to hack something, I just don't think we should jump to conclusions either.

Well don't jump to conclusions then.

While you investigate everyone on the planet with a computer (casting that net nice and wide), us more clever geniuses will start with the state-actors...


*And what government institutions would you not put above hacking? (just so we know which ones you are talking about here)

reply to post by abrowning


If you are looking to link this to government activity (who knows whos government but state sponsored none the less) then you probably arent that far from the mark. The Iranians have had a cyber threat lately, with personal computers and devices at thier nuclear plant being hijacked by a virus which was called by experts one of the most complex viral codes they had ever examined, and must,by thier estimations have taken man MONTHS of preparation, constant updating , and huge amounts of financial backing.And little wonder, since the virus was capable of actualy affecting real world things like turbine speeds in a nuclear plant. In short, the people in the know think that it was a state sponsored code. No one is sure which state would have sponsored it, but the possible suspects seem to be western powers for one reason or another. The virus was last reported to have been found in China as well, so you have to wonder what the motivation was. Now we have this cyber attack on a leak site. Of course, I dont know if the methods used were anything like as advanced as those used to create the virus I mentioned. Probably not, since the site was not a government one, afforded all the protections that entails. But it IS interesting to see how web based threats seem to be on the rise at the moment, and are becoming more advanced .
I think its likely that we wont find out what group was responsible for this hack, until we find out what information was deleted, which would at least give us a starting point in hunting a motive and therefore a suspect. However something to consider seriously is this.
Increasingly , governments are employing the most skilled cyber criminals from all over the world to battle eachother , and to do the bidding of those governments in general. So you get a virus capable of seriously screwing with a contraversial power plant, then going to China , presumably to see what havock it can cause there. Also you have a site which leaks sensitive documents into the public domain getting hacked open and deleted. I agree with the posters who say that ordinarily a hacker wouldnt do harm to a leaks site, since normaly speaking the ideaological place that hackers and leakers come from, is largely the same. But if a hacker was bought by a government and set upon the task of bringing down left leaning internet entities or organisations, then you would end up with exactly this result.

Good luck internet. Now your knights work for a different king.

Originally posted by Exuberant1

Originally posted by Pinke

I wouldn't put it above a government institution to hack something, I just don't think we should jump to conclusions either.

Well don't jump to conclusions then.

While you investigate everyone on the planet with a computer (casting that net nice and wide), us more clever geniuses will start with the state-actors...

*And what government institutions would you not put above hacking? (just so we know which ones you are talking about here)

edit on 5-10-2010 by Exuberant1 because: (no reason given)

Clearly your massive self endorsement of yourself has proven me wrong. I stand corrected?

And I don't see the relevance of your question.

Seems a bit odd to me... Why would you hack a long standing website of all its data? I too am unfamiliar with this site but I guess it is the same as any other archive documented one!

It couldn't of hosted that much sensitive data... Especially enough to delete the entire site

Never heard of the site. Deleting files, big deal. They make this thing called a flash drive.

What this really sounds like is someone looking for publicity. "Can't prove it, but someone, the man (wink,wink), hacked in and deleted my files." Golly, a couple of days, some headlines, and presto, the site is magically back up for all to see.

As for cyber crime and cyber warfare, the US is far behind the curve. The US has the most to lose with this type of warfare.