Web Quiet as Hacking Contest Plucks Small Scalps
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By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Computer hackers vying in a global contest on Sunday defaced a slew of Web sites, but the damage was confined to the Internet's backwater of small, unsecured sites, security officials said.
The "Defacer's Challenge" got off to a quick start on Sunday with 300 attacks reported minutes after the 2 a.m. EDT official start, said Roberto Preatoni, founder of Estonia-based Zone-H.org, a site that tracks hack attacks.
"There were no big names," he said. But he added his own site,
www.zone-h.org, was knocked offline for much of the day because of a high volume of legitimate visitors and apparent attempts by hackers to bog down his computer servers.
According to the contest Web site
www.defacers-challenge.com, which was taken offline last week, hackers were urged to prove their skills by defacing as many Web sites as possible during a six-hour span on Sunday.
Points were awarded for the number and type of computer servers they infiltrated, the rules stated.
Concern grew among cyber security organizations last week that the competition would cripple countless Web sites, but by Sunday afternoon as the event was drawing to a close there was no sign of damage among the Web's most popular sites.
The Web's largest Web sites, including Amazon.com and Yahoo.com, were functioning as normal on Sunday.
"It seems to be a damp squib," said Graham Cluley, spokesman for UK-based security firm Sophos.
Via.Networks, a U.S.-Dutch Internet service provider and Web site hosting firm that manages Web sites for over 50,000 clients in America and Western Europe, also reported no incidences.
"None of our customers have called to report any problems. It's all quiet on the Western Front," said Joanne Hughes, a spokeswoman for Via Networks.
Hacking activities have been on the rise for years as the expertise behind compromising a Web site's vulnerable computer server is freely passed around the Internet in chat areas and is posted on Web sites dedicated to the activity.
Hack attacks range from outright defacement to flooding a server with data requests, knocking a site offline. In the former case, hackers replace the contents of a Web page with their own message, often a political rant written in the signature style of broken English.
With hackers sending out challenges regularly, security officials expressed bewilderment that this contest received so much press attention, fearing it would only encourage more elaborate events in the future.
But Via.Network's Hughes saw something of a silver lining in the fact she and her team were on the ready this weekend for a possible showdown with hackers. "If it makes people more aware about security then that's a good thing," she said.
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