Must Read: Sorry, but bringing back the Start menu won't help Windows 8

Topic: Security

Hacker defaces RAAF site

Summary: The Royal Australian Air Force has confirmed that a hacker defaced its website on 13-14 July, in an attack the perpetrator described as a warning message to stop racism against Indian students in Australia.

Chris Duckett

By |

The Royal Australian Air Force has confirmed that a hacker defaced its website on 13-14 July, in an attack the perpetrator described as a warning message to stop racism against Indian students in Australia.

The hacker left a message on the site which read: "This site has been hacked by Atul Dwivedi. This is a warning message to the Australian Government. Immediately take all measures to stop racist attacks against Indian students in Australia or else I will pawn all your cyber properties like this one."

The site was temporarily offline and is now operating normally.

An RAAF spokesperson said that the defaced site was an external-facing site and was not used to conduct RAAF business or connected to any operational Defence system. As a result the RAAF claimed that no sensitive information was compromised.

The Air Force was not forthcoming on the technical details of the hack and said it would be inappropriate to comment further as the Defence Security Authority was conducting an investigation into the incident.

Topic: Security

About

Chris started his journalistic adventure in 2006 as the Editor of Builder AU after originally joining CBS as a programmer. After a Canadian sojourn, he returned in 2011 as the Editor of TechRepublic Australia.

Google+ Contact

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Talkback

9 comments
Log in or register to join the discussion

  • pawn?

    I think you'll find it was "pwn" as in "own".
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • pawn?

    If I had to bet on whether the misspelling of "pwn" as "pawn" was attributable to the hacker or the journalist, I'd back the journalist to be right any day. ;o)
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • pawn?

    If the graphics on the display shown in the video are directly from the web site, the spelling is the hacker's. Since hackers have never struck me as particularly rational animals, who knows what he has in mind? But I doubt his neighbourhood moneylender would take the RAAF's "cyber property" off his hands.
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • pawn?

    I have yet to see a site takeover where spelling and grammar were correct. I love the thought of pawning a website though! Surely there must be something equivalent of cyber-pawnshops?
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • It's a script kiddie

    Obviously the bloke is just a script kiddie. The word is "own" and a hacker worth his salt wouldn't stoop to that stupid l33t h4x0r talk.
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • Script-Kiddies strike again

    The fact that the cracker used pawn instead of pwn would indicate that it is not the work of a hard-core cracker. The bigger question is why is the Aus government using Windows, which is known to be very insecure, to run the RAAF site? In fact, why are they using Windows to run any sites? I would have hoped that the government would be far more professional than that.
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • Pawn?

    More food for thought: could "pawn" have mean't "porn"
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • RAAF Site != ADF Run

    They don't use it for webservers where they can help it. The people they outsource non sensitive work to do.

    That site isn't run by the ADF, its a contracted to a company who does runs the website and updates it. It was the contracting company that was hacked.
    anonymous
    Reply Vote

  • Pot. Kettle. Black.

    Somewhat ironic that an Indian is complaining about racism.
    This is a country which has religious and ethic riots on a fairly regular basis, and has a few (nt very well publicist in the "west") insurgencies with religious, communist and ethnic causes.

    The fact that a relatively few attacks against Indians in Aust even makes the news just shows how unusal these attacks are, especially compared with say India where ethnic, religious and political violence is endemic and to some extent truly institutional.

    Next the hackers will be demanding "encounters" to deal with any non convicted accused in these cases.

    Bleh.
    Indians should worry about the state of their own country before they get to demanding about the state of ours.

    In any case, they can always go home if they really think that our way of life is not for them.

    I wonder if they realise that cracking web sites is a crime as well.
    Not nearly as serious (in this case) as violent attacks, but still a crime all the same.
    And attacking a defense force website makes no sense at all in the context of the stated complaint.
    The RAAF has no responsibility for policing the streets. Though it is a defense force, so attacking it can at the outside be considered an attack on.

    Clueless.
    anonymous
    Reply Vote
CNET Join | Log In | Privacy | Cookies Close