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Re: Justice Department Security

> 
> Have any other sites ever been affected in this way, and what is stopping
> hackers from causing mayhem on any similar sites?
> 

Some months ago, the Euskadi Koordination web server suffered a similar 
attack.

Euskadi Koordination is an organization intending to internationally spread 
knowledge about [their view of] the current political situation in 
Euskalherria (Northern Spain and Southwest France -- also called Basque 
Country). Their political alignement is very close to that of terrorist 
organization E.T.A., although Euskadi Koordination is explicitly 
anti-violent.

A group of crackers, presumably from Valladolid University, placed blue 
ribbons as the background for all pages in the web. The blue ribbon is the 
symbol Basque people use to claim for the end of E.T.A. terrorism -- a symbol 
of peace. [At that same time the 'blue ribbon' campaign for freedom of speech 
in the I-net was going on, but that's probably just an accidental 
coincidence].

Following this, a campaign was promoted to mail-bomb Euskadi Koordination, by 
sending them thousands of e-mail messages intended to fill up their mailbox. 
This of course caused saturation of their web hosting provider resources (a 
Swiss company) who decided to close their site. The site was later re-opened 
through a Belgian web hosting provider, at URL www.knooppunt.be/~euskadi. 
Check it for more info on the organitzation and on the attack. I presume the 
security set-up of this later provider is much stronger, since otherwise the 
arrack would probably had been repeated.

There was much discussion about the ethics of those attacks, which were 
mostly welcomed or even promoted by the media. Many people saw it as just a 
way of showing refusal, which is probably the case with the mail-bombing 
attack. My personal view is that the web server cracking was an illegal 
action against a perfectly legal (even if anti-pathetic) organization, and 
thus ethically incorrect.

Hope this info is of some help to you.

Faithfully,

-- 
Jordi Salvat i Alabart
  Web Edicions Barcelona
  edicions i consultoria Internet
  http://www.webarna.com
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