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Cryptome Hacked; All Files Deleted
eldavojohn writes "Over the weekend, the whistle blowing site Cryptome was hacked and vandalized, resulting in all 54,000 files being deleted and two days worth of submissions lost. Cryptome reported that its EarthLink e-mail account was compromised in ways unknown, and once the attacker was inside there, they were able to request a new password from the administration console for Cryptome at their hosting provider, Network Solutions. Once the attacker had that password, they deleted the ~7 GB of data that Cryptome hosted in around 54,000 files. Cryptome was able to eventually restore the site, as they keep backups ready for cases like this and stated that they 'do not trust our ISP, email provider and officials to tell the truth or protect us.'"
Is a social engineering attack a hack? It sounds like someone called over to EarthLink and got an e-mail password reset. Then, once holding the e-mail account, called over to Network Solutions. This sort of thing wouldn't be difficult at all.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
But they weren't smart enough to mirror submissions to other servers and so two days of submissions were lost. Those two days could easily have been the target. If so, then mission accomplished.