Army site latest hacking target
The group at the center of an FBI investigation into computer attacks on federal Web sites has resurfaced, defacing the U.S. Army's home page over the weekend. The latest intrusion by 'Global Hell' comes amid a continuing flurry of other attacks on sites operated by NASA, the Education Department and other federal agencies.
Administrators for the Army site believe that the www4.army.mil site was altered sometime between 8 p.m. Sunday and 5 a.m. ET Monday, Maj. Jim Stueve told The Associated Press. He said internal computer systems were unaffected, and the intruders did not gain access to sensitive information. The site was restored to normal by 6 a.m., the AP reported.
Global Hell, or gH, has been linked to a series of attacks on government Web sites, including the Internet home page of the White House, and last month gH members said they were targeted by a series of FBI raids in Washington state, Texas, California and other areas of the country.
Those raids set off a wave of protest attacks on federal Internet sites, with the FBI and the U.S. Senate among the most prominent targets. The latest victims include NASA, which still had some Web pages out of service late Monday; the Education Department, which sported an altered Web page for a time on Friday; the Agriculture Department's Food and Nutrition Service; and several U.S. Navy facilities.
More intrusions promised
The altered Army page promised that more intrusions, or “cracks,” would be forthcoming from gH. It also seemed to assert that rumors of gH's demise were greatly exaggerated.
Text on the page declared, “global hell/gH is alive. global hell/gH will not die.” Other text, hidden in the page's source code, criticized “all the fakes gH has had to deal with, all the lamers that have turned their back.” “For all the people reading this, trust very few people,” the hidden text read.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman told MSNBC that the bureau was aware of the latest intrusion and had referred the matter to the proper authorities.
“We investigate all computer intrusions of all government computers,” she said Monday. But she said different procedures may be followed for different incidents.
She said the bureau had nothing further to report on the progress of its investigation into past intrusions.
Insufficient training
Just last week, experts told the House Science Committee's technology panel that managers at many federal agencies fail to consider computer security adequately and have too few employees with sufficient training.
One of those testifying at the hearing was Keith Rhodes, a director in the information management division in the General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of Congress. Rhodes told the Associated Press that the Defense Department's computer-security expertise is uneven.
“They're the best and the worst in computer security,” Rhodes said. “They've got some real pros, some of the best in the business. But the DOD is huge ... and some of the areas in the Department of Defense don’t have very good security.”