Hackers Attack U.S. Consulate Site, Infect Web Pages

[OhioChick]

The attack may be linked to the same hacker group that infected 400 other Web sites last week with malware.

September 14, 2007 04:00 PM


The Web site for the U.S. Consulate in Russia was hacked into earlier this week, infecting pages with malware that would attack visitors.

Researchers at security company Sophos told InformationWeek that the consulate's IT team cleaned up the infection within a matter of days. They also reported that the break in was part of a widespread attack that resulted in more than 400 Web pages around the world being infected over the last week by what appears to be the same hacker group.

"If an organization like that can be hacked into, it's pretty discouraging to other organizations and businesses," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with Sophos. "We don't think this was a targeted attack against the consulate. The hackers just got lucky that the site was vulnerable."

Sophos researchers discovered the data breach while investigating a piece of malware that a customer nearly picked up at the consulate's Web site. Cluley said they didn't work with the consulate on the break in or the malware because the site was being cleaned up by the time they discovered it.

The U.S. Consulate didn't have any information about the breach up on its Web site and a call for information was not returned.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201806646

[peacetalksforall]

1. IT system people reduced to pick up more money for war propaganda,

payoffs, and payola laundering bogus billing?