LAN_PRINT_135: Extreme Islamic Group Takes Government Website Off-Line for Past 2 Weeks
(LAN_PRINT_86 IT Security)
LAN_PRINT_94 NIST.org
Tuesday 15 August 2006 - 20:51:15
Score one for the extremists. FEB.GOV was hacked and defaced by an Islamic hacker group on August 2nd and has been off-line ever since.
It is hard to know what to say about this. Lets start with the facts. On August 2nd FEB.GOV was hacked and defaced. FEB.GOV lists at least 20 sites under it for various offices and regions of the Federal Executive Board.
You can view a screen shot of the hacked page at Sunbelt Software's blog. The real FEB.GOV site, and all sites hosted under it, have been down since August 2nd.
This U.S. Government office lists the following mission:
The Federal Executive Boards (FEB’s) were established in 1961 by a Presidential Directive to improve coordination among Federal activities and programs outside Washington. The need for effective coordination among the field activities of Federal departments and agencies was then, and is still, very clear.
They do such things as coordinate the avian flu response, coordinate government agency evacuation and continuity of operation plans, coordinate cross-agency employee training, announce snow and weather related office closures, coordinate emergency crisis and terrorist response, etc. You can find cached copies of their website at Alexa.com and some at Google. Their website may not be critical to national security but it is important never the less. It is also embarrassing to have a Federal government website(s) down for two weeks because because of a hacker attack. Wipe, reload, mitigate for whatever vulnerability was exploited, and get on with it. This was a public facing web server so there should have been no sensitive information there to compromise. Being down for this long leads people to think there is a cover-up and/or great incompetence. Right now we're showing the extremists / hackers that they're winning.
FEB.GOV is hosted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). As the old adage goes "the most secure computer is one that isn't connected to any network, is unplugged, and stored in a vault deep under ground". OPM must be taking this literally as the FEB has been off-line for two weeks now!
UPDATE 25 August 2006: The FEB.GOV site is back in operation.
LAN_PRINT_303NIST IT Security
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