Site Hacking Misanthropes

There has long been a group of tech heads who take great pleasure in creating grief and problems for everyone else out there. Some of them create viruses and hack web sites apparently for nothing more than malicious kicks. Apparently, some of them are now engaged in even more heinous activities.

There was a hacking incident this week at an Epilepsy support forum. The hack consisted of animations designed to flash and move in a way which could cause problems for epilepsy sufferers, even cause seizures. A number of regular visitors to the site's discussion forums maintained by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation were affected by the attack.

The hackers who carried out the attack should be caught, then barred from any Internet or computer access for a minimum of ten years. To be honest I think that would be a really light price to pay (after all, there are folks out there now who'd like to see the miscreants physically thrashed).

There's no hacker ethos or tradition of attacking people with physical or mental disabilities. Such a thing is horrible to contemplate or observe and in this case amounts to a targeted attempt to physically assault a specific disability. Shame on anyone who devises and executes such attacks. For more info read the original post on Wired.

Many hackers deathlessly walk the fine line which separates outright felony from relatively benign acts designed only to benefit an individual or satisfy a challenge. Times have changed. Hackers who stay on the side of the line that most of us often ignore (including many of the authorities charged with the task of investigating cybercrime) eventually grow out of their most prurient interests as age and other priorities evolve in their lives. But hackers who range into the realm of assault on people with disabilities are looking for a whole other kind of trouble. They've now drawn attention to themselves of a kind that no sane person could possibly want. I pity the hacker brought before a judge to answer for this crime.

Wordpress Hacked

Some hacker manager to somehow get an exploit into a number WordPress 2.1.1 downloads. Wordpress themselves aren't entirely shure how this came about but issued a 2.1.2 update as soon as they realized the problem. The hacker had somehow managed to modify two files in the 2.1.1 release, which would allow for the remote execution of PHP code. Not a pretty picture, eh? Version 2.1.2 can be downloaded from the Wordpress Site.

DOS Attacks on DNS Servers.

Yesterday seems to have been an eventful day as hackers appeared to attempt to bring down the DNS servers that direct traffic on the internet. The Attack appears to have been focused on the domain name system servers, which maps domain names to the numeric IP addresses of servers connected to the internet. Key DNS servers had heavy traffic very early (02:30 PT) on Tuesday morning. Many root servers were affected but the "G" server, run by the US Department of Defense, and "L", run by Icann, seem to have been the heaviest hit.

These type of attacks are not common but if succesful could be disasterous even if only for a short period. Come on, why not devote your efforts to something more beneficial... nuff said.