For the new breed of underground hacker bent on vigilante justice – or just interested in messing with the establishment – there is no target that is off limits. Corporate America as well as international governments have been under siege for the past several months. But the next step has been taken. A group of hackers called Lulz Security went after the U.S. Senate.
It was confirmed to the media by a Senate representative that Lulz broke into the Senates Web site, and gained access to the servers directory and file structure. Of course, they did not stop there. They also published this information on their web site. Check it out here.
The word is that the government initiated a security review and (to date) determined that network security was not compromised and that no user information was breached. Here’s a statement that from the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate on the breach:
The intruder did not gain access into the Senate computer network and was only able to read and determine the directory structure of the files placed on Senate.gov. That server is for public access on the public side of the Senates network firewall, and any files that individual Senate offices place there are intended for public consumption. Although this intrusion is inconvenient, it does not compromise the security of the Senates network, its members or staff.”
An intrusion of inconvenience? Indeed it was. Check out what Lulz said in a statement:
“This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov is this an act of war, gentlemen? We dont like the US government very much. Their sites arent very secure.
Although this was a “just-for-kicks” breach, it clearly shows that security vulnerabilities lie everywhere on the Internet. And, perhaps next time, someone wants to hack the U.S. Senate – or any other government-related web presence, they won’t be doing it as a joke.
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