Pak hacker attacks E Rlys site threatens cyber war on India

[indradhanush]

Thu, Dec 25 02:39 AM

In the first instance of cyber attack on Indian government websites, the attack on Eastern Railways site on Wednesday popped open vulnerability of government websites in the country.

While Eastern Railway took almost two and half hours to restore the site to normalcy, visitors to the site continued to be attacked by Trojan virus. ER officials could only primarily trace the roots to Toronto in Canada after repeated top-brass meetings all through the day.

As spotted by FE in the morning, the official site of the Eastern Railway-www.eastern railway.gov.in—was hacked on Wednesday. When opened, the scroll on the site— which normally consists of official announcements—had unusual notes. The first note read: "Cyber war has been declared on Indian cyberspace by Whackerz- Pakistan (24 Dec-2008)." This was followed by two other notes: "Indians hit hard by Zaid Hamid" and "We are f**ked up Indians. You are hacked."

When clicked, the scroll opened into a new window which claimed that 'Mianwalian of Whackerz" has hacked the site in response to the air violation of Pakistan. It also claimed that it will continue to hack more Indian military and government sites. The threat note also claimed that servers of Indian financial institutions will also be hacked with the help of the group's members working in computer departments of "foreign companies". Data belonging to "Indian nationals (only Hindus)" will be destroyed eventually, it added.

Another threat note asked the visitors of the website to watch the real Indian conspiracy in Mumbai attacks on the website-www.brasstacks.pk. Brasstacks claims to be "a unique Pakistani think tank devoted to the study of regional and global political events and their implications for Pakistan's security and interests." The note ended with the slogan "Long live Pakistan".

The third note, which showed the hackers' apathy towards India, Israel and USA, challenged Indians to save their 'motherland' from turning into pieces.

When contacted, ER officials seemed unaware of the entire incident and the site remained as it is for almost an hour, till 11.40am, after which ER blocked it. The website resumed to normalcy after 12, when the threat notes in the scroll as well as in the news and events section were removed.

"Our sites have cyber security certificate from US-based Thawte," said an ER official. "We have informed the service provider and will get a detailed response from them only after 24 hours," he added.

According to a cyber security expert, similar attacks can be done through SQL injection method. In case of a SQL injection attack, webpages with active content like feedback forms are used. Attackers can write malicious commands in the forms through a rich text format and get control over the database of the target site.

Pak hacker attacks E Rlys site, threatens cyber war on India - Yahoo! India News

 

[XYON]

Thu, Dec 25 02:39 AM

In the first instance of cyber attack on Indian government websites, the attack on Eastern Railways site on Wednesday popped open vulnerability of government websites in the country.

While Eastern Railway took almost two and half hours to restore the site to normalcy, visitors to the site continued to be attacked by Trojan virus. ER officials could only primarily trace the roots to Toronto in Canada after repeated top-brass meetings all through the day.

As spotted by FE in the morning, the official site of the Eastern Railway-www.eastern railway.gov.in—was hacked on Wednesday. When opened, the scroll on the site— which normally consists of official announcements—had unusual notes. The first note read: "Cyber war has been declared on Indian cyberspace by Whackerz- Pakistan (24 Dec-2008)." This was followed by two other notes: "Indians hit hard by Zaid Hamid" and "We are f**ked up Indians. You are hacked."

When clicked, the scroll opened into a new window which claimed that 'Mianwalian of Whackerz" has hacked the site in response to the air violation of Pakistan. It also claimed that it will continue to hack more Indian military and government sites. The threat note also claimed that servers of Indian financial institutions will also be hacked with the help of the group's members working in computer departments of "foreign companies". Data belonging to "Indian nationals (only Hindus)" will be destroyed eventually, it added.

Another threat note asked the visitors of the website to watch the real Indian conspiracy in Mumbai attacks on the website-www.brasstacks.pk. Brasstacks claims to be "a unique Pakistani think tank devoted to the study of regional and global political events and their implications for Pakistan's security and interests." The note ended with the slogan "Long live Pakistan".

The third note, which showed the hackers' apathy towards India, Israel and USA, challenged Indians to save their 'motherland' from turning into pieces.

When contacted, ER officials seemed unaware of the entire incident and the site remained as it is for almost an hour, till 11.40am, after which ER blocked it. The website resumed to normalcy after 12, when the threat notes in the scroll as well as in the news and events section were removed.

"Our sites have cyber security certificate from US-based Thawte," said an ER official. "We have informed the service provider and will get a detailed response from them only after 24 hours," he added.

According to a cyber security expert, similar attacks can be done through SQL injection method. In case of a SQL injection attack, webpages with active content like feedback forms are used. Attackers can write malicious commands in the forms through a rich text format and get control over the database of the target site.

Pak hacker attacks E Rlys site, threatens cyber war on India - Yahoo! India News

EXCELLENT NEWS! More power to the hackers!

 

[Awesome]

Defacing websites is nothing good.

It hurts the little guy. What good would it be to us as Pakistanis if some webmaster is called and shouted at by his boss.

However if some person can hack into financial information, hack into RAW databases revealing something of national importance, then that's worth it.

 

[Imran Khan]

hacking is not good i don't like some one hack or defece any site.

 

[indradhanush]

Things like claims, allegation, counter allegations, defacing govt web sites and mobilization of army always happens when relations sour, this will continue for some time. Now a days open wars wouldn't be fought specially when the countries are nuclear. Some one said if you want to spike enemy the best way out is to be prosperous and live well, I believe in this. Rather than being overtly aggressive both countries should focus on being prosperous.

 

[Luftwaffe]

New Era of Cyber Warfare use any means to destroy your enemy. I love hackers. Great Work. By the way it should be precision strike. Its stupid to waste time hacking bollywood websites lol.

 

[indradhanush]

I think some time back a group of hackers from France had almost stopped the giant reactor experiment in Europe early this year and defaced them hours before it had to start. It looks like hacking is not very difficult these days or hackers hav become very clever.

 

[KhurramShahzad]

I feel the IT is growing so fast that it is leaving some back holes to penetrate...just guess..

 

[Lockheed F-16]

Pakistanis did the first virus I think we will be leading in cyber war!!! Because you don't need the highest technical facilities for it. The only thing which counts is the man behind the machine Like in our Air Force

 

[Ratus Ratus]

All this says is that Eastern Railways have a pathetic IT department and their net security is on par with the IT department. Very sub standard.

I have not as yet seen this hit mainstream media outside India. So far it has not hit New York Times, BBC news, CNN or CBC Canada.

AT present All I read from this is a hacker with a pseudo name that has the word Pakistan in it hacked the site. There is nothing but hype in this and NO concrete evidence it was a Pakistani doing it.

Add to that there is no direct concrete evidence it does come from Canada either. Statements like ‘only primarily trace the roots to Toronto in Canada’ do not give me confidence in the IT abilities.
Nor does an apathy to Israel, India and the US mean much. That apathy seems to cover a large section of the world’s population.

As for people jumping for joy on the hacker; don’t bother as this is little more than a sub set of terrorism. The next hack could be on a site in Pakistan. Will you jump for joy then? I doubt it.

Small note: Real cyber warfare will take more than a guy behind a compute in the basement.