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Tuesday, May 30, 2000

Hackers who hit Legislature site say theyve struck many others

The House clerk says no files were lost in the holiday action

By Burl Burlingame

HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN

Investigators from the Honolulu Police Department and state attorney general's office were to begin looking into the computer hacking of the state Legislature's Web site, http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov, over Memorial Day weekend, says House Clerk Patricia Mau-Shimizu.

She said no files have been lost, according to her staff's initial assessment of the damage, but the Web site for both the Senate and the House was still not back online as of this morning.

Computer technicians took down the Legislature's Web site yesterday after the hacking was discovered.

Other state sites were not affected. Mau-Shimizu said a similar hacking incident occurred July 4 last year.

The hackers who struck down the state Legislature's Web site yesterday appear to be a highly visible group who also struck at several other government sites this weekend.

Calling themselves Pentaguard, they maintain a Web site that details their activities and philosophy.

They claim to be a "small Romanian hacking group founded somewhere in 1998 .... we first decided to make our hacks public in January '99, when the Chinese government sentenced to death two hackers."

Visitors to the state Legislature's main Web page saw this instead until the site was taken down yesterday morning.

Pentaguard maintains its own Web site, where the hackers state "as always our main targets are military and government servers (cause that's where the cool s--- is)

According to the online Hacker News Network, on Memorial Day weekend the Pentaguard group cracked the home pages of far-ranging organizations such as the departmental representatives of the national Department of Education, the National Park Service's Fire Monitoring Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a "biological resources" laboratory at the U.S. Geological Survey, federal courts in Idaho, the Washington State Liquor Control Board, and others.

Pentaguard previously claims to have hacked four NASA sites, the U.S. Navy, the Vietnam News Agency and the American Conservative Union.

Pentaguard leaves an email address, as well as nicknames or handles for several affiliated hackers.

An "ethics" manifesto on the Pentaguard site attempts to paint a picture of the typical hacker as a brilliant but misunderstood teen-ager who is entranced by the Internet, "rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins," whose only crime is that of curiosity and of "outsmarting" everyone.

Sen. Matt Matsunaga (D, Waialae-Palolo) recalled that proposed legislation to enact stiff penalties against hackers was tabled this year when legislators learned such laws are already on the books.

"There is enough existing law out there now to prosecute, I believe," he said.

"Something like this, though, coming from so far away -- I wonder how we'd even get jurisdiction?"

http://starbulletin.com/2000/05/30/news/story8.html

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 31, 2000