Pro-Israel Web site hacked by pro-Palestinian cracker

Computerworld - A pro-Palestinian cracker who goes by the name of Doctor Nuker defaced the Web site of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and replaced the site with a diatribe against Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

The AIPAC site remains defaced and has been taken down, but a copy of the defacement has been recorded by the Attrition Mirror, a Web site that documents verifiable hacks.

The defacement rails against Israeli policy with regard to Palestinians. It also has links to credit-card information of some of the site's users, a link to the list of member e-mail addresses and pages of pictures.

Last Thursday, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) warned that such digital activism had been and would continue to be a fallout of the violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.

"The recent unrest in the Middle East appears to have been responsible for an increase in cyberattack activity between sympathizers on both sides of the tensions. Known targets have included Web sites operated by the Israeli government and military as well as Web sites operated by pro-Palestinian organizations including Hizballah and Hamas," according to an advisory at the NIPC site.

Similar defacements decrying the violence in the Mideast have been common in the past couple of weeks.

The Doctor Nuker hack is similar to the almost daily defacements done by a group called GForce, which posts detailed descriptions of alleged violence in Kashmir by the Indian government.

Related links:

• For more security coverage, visit our Security Watch page.



• Have opinions on security issues? Head to the forums. (Note: Registration required to post message; anyone may read messages. To register on Computerworld's forums, click here).