OSAC Item (Printer Friendly Version)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

CurzTech News Network

OSAC Item (Printer Friendly Version)
from The Press Enterprise on Thursday, March 27, 2003

INTERNET: The tampering caused a mockery of President Bush and anti-war statements to appear.

Moreno Valley was staunchly anti-war for at least a few hours Sunday, after computer hackers hijacked the city's Web site and replaced it with an anti-war message that made a monkey of President Bush.

"Don't attack Iraq," the mocking message read over side-by-side mug shots of a chimpanzee and the commander-in-chief. "We need oil."

For the record, Moreno Valley has no plans to join the 160-plus cities nationwide that have taken an anti-war stance. In fact, city leaders are still wondering how the site was taken over and who's behind it.

Richard Shimko, whose consulting firm maintains the city site, said the offending images were removed 15 minutes after the city contacted him Sunday evening.

As many as 500 commercial, personal and governmental Web sites that are on the Georgia-based commercial server could have been affected, he said. So far, investigations have traced the hackers to a server in Russia, but the hacking could have been done from anywhere, he said.

"Most of these little groups of hackers are multinational. It's like saying which ghost did it," Shimko said.

The city's official Web site is entirely separate from its internal computer system, so no serious damage could have been done, Shimko said.

"My gut reaction was, we've got to get this (message) off and get it off fast," said City Councilwoman Bonnie Flickinger, who discovered the hijacked Web site after being alerted by a constituent at about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Still, Flickinger admitted the message was somewhat amusing.

"If I had seen it while browsing the Web, I would probably have said, 'Yeah, that's cute,' and moved on," she said. "But even if I agreed with it, it's not something you'd want on the city Web site."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Arif Alikhan said events of national and international interest often bring the computer-savvy, ideological types he calls "hack-tivists" out of the woodwork.

"It's just something that happens periodically," said Alikhan, who heads the computer crimes section in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

Reach Gregor McGavin at (909) 567-2410 or gmcgavin@pe.com

[an error occurred while processing this directive]