Friday, March 10, 2000 Gov.'s Web Site Hacked Again

By Loie Fecteau Journal Capitol Bureau SANTA FE  Gov. Gary Johnson's World Wide Web site was hacked again this week, apparently by the same group of self-proclaimed delinquents that first hit his Internet page over the weekend, Johnson's office said Thursday.

Johnson shut down his Web site Thursday about 8 a.m. after it was invaded Wednesday night by a group of hackers collectively named DHC, which stands for Delinquent Hacking Corporation, said Diane Kinderwater, Johnson's press secretary. "They got into our code and replaced the governor's page with their own Web page," Kinderwater said. The Governor's Office hoped to have the Web site back up and running by today, Kinderwater said.

"We are tightening the security, but like so many others across this country, we're not confident at this point that people can't get in again," Kinderwater said. "We're putting up additional firewalls to make it more difficult." DHC has hacked at least 18 other Web sites since Jan. 1, making it the fourth most-active hacking group in the world, according to the computer security Web service attrition.org.

The computer hackers first hit Johnson's Web site Saturday afternoon, causing the site to crash. The site was put back up Monday night, with increased security. It stayed up until hit again Wednesday at 7:20 p.m., Kinderwater said. Kinderwater said both hacking incidents have been reported to the FBI. "It's costly," Kinderwater said. "It's costing the Governor's Office about $20,000 in manpower and to put in the additional security, the firewalls and the inconvenience."

Johnson's Web site averages about 5,000 hits a day from people trying to gain access to information about the governor or action he has taken on legislation, Kinderwater said. Kinderwater said these two incidents are the only time Johnson's Web site has been hacked since he took office in 1995.

In April 1998, however, Johnson had to correct his biography on his Web home page to take out erroneous information put up by his office that he had bungee-jumped and that he held "the amateur record for rollerblading down Sandia Mountain."

"Give me a break," Johnson, an accomplished triathlete, said at the time. "I've rollerbladed down Sandia, from Sandia Crest, and it was not pretty. That's a joke

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 13, 2000