Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Holy cow, please edit the submissions before posting them.
*sigh* I'll get modded down for having the nerve to ask for a baseline of professionalism, won't I?
The real WTF here is that
A) Cryptome is running on Network Solutions
B) The email associated with the account is on *earthlink* ???
C) None of these things have been shut down.
Seriously, doesn't cryptome host some pretty shady stuff? On the same level as wikileaks, isn't it? What the hell is going on here?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Basically this stuff was never safe to begin with, and you're an idiot if you post anything there expecting to be anonymous.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
The controversy about hacker vs. cracker is old and unsolved. But this case really does not warrant the use of the word "hack/hacked" under any meaning of the word whatsoever. This is a act of pure vandalism, nothing more.
Didn't they tell you to use both uppercase and lowercase letters? Had you used "Passw0rd" instead, nobody would have found out!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
A professional organization that knows its web presence is its life is going to have a bit better setup than a server that someone else (Network Solutions in this case) has control over. The right solution is a co-located server that is controlled exclusively by the organization. The hosting company doesn't need to have any passwords. They are also going to have their email processed by their own server and not be relying on an ISP for anything at all except connectivity.
However, a completely amateur operation is going to use shared virtual hosting because it is cheaper and the hosting company will be doing backups for them. And controlling passwords. And all other security. Oh, and using a non-domain based email setup from an ISP.
I guess it is pretty obvious into which category Cryptome falls, right?
Yes, it would cost $2000 a year or more for a co-located server whereas shared virtual hosting is dirt cheap.
Cryptome was cool before Wikileaks made it mainstream. And John Young is the original gangsta, so you know he got backups. Bitches don't know about all the backups he has.
> no one will ever know, so its moot.
Oh Christ don't bring 4chan into this!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I'd expect that if it were a publicity stunt, they might mention a possible motive. As it is, I'd probably guess it's something like a bored teenager who was too lazy to scratch some vulgarity on a bathroom wall. Had they made even a tenuous conspiracy theory I might be more interested. Interested enough to click on over to cryptome anyway.
Not to say that obviously this isn't a publicity stunt because it could have been done more effectively.
And Cryptome is now saying that a Wired reporter contacted them after having spoken with a hacker claiming responsibility for the attack.
Which they responded to with a threat of a subpoena, and publishing news about it before the reporter, after they told the reporter they wouldn't? ... er. Way to burn bridges, guys? Seriously, I understand free speech and using reporters as sources, but I don't think reporters are going to be too gung-ho about reporting your findings later after this.
Its the only CMS I use on my servers. Mercurial for version control over ssh. Update my sites with hg push. Hooks on the receiving side to run hg up and rebuild if required. SSH can be configured to require certificates only for authentication. Desktop environments all integration with ssh-askpass or similar.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Good work soldier! Wikileaks is obviously a Soviet cover operation to rape our baby seal sand sabotage the fourth of july, blow up over the woods so that to grandmothers house we can't go.
Also... only 8G of data? That's it?
how much data do you expect them to host? it's not like they store multi GB long videos of events or anything.
Quite likely, any important submissions will be resubmitted. Not all, of course, but if I had something that I felt HAD to be leaked, I would keep leaking it until it stuck.
Of course the important submissions will be resubmitted. Unless the submitter died from a suicide, or heart attack.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Why am I suddenly worried for the state of your laundry?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Wikileaks doesn't harm western democracies - they do inconvenience the administrations, but the whole concept of leaks are great for the society, citizens, and especially the democracy part; silencing leaks would harm western democracy and destroy the whole meaning of it. I don't care about Chinese government cheating their citizens - that's their problem, I want to be informed about the failures and lies of *my* officials that I elected and that affect my country. I don't want to improve country reputation by simply hiding unflattering things, I want to improve the reputation by fixing the faults. Lying to ourselves about bad stuff not happening is the domain of North Korea, not the western world.
And what do you mean about "journalistic discretion" ? The big newspapers that are following your so-called "journalistic discretion" shouldn't be allowed to call themselves journalists because of this anymore. In earlier times they did proper journalism, dug up the dirt themselves, interviewed informants, cared about their reputation of protecting the anonymity of their sources and fought for the right of publishing facts for the society, even and especially if the goverment claims to be harmed by the facts - for example, the Pentagon papers case. Now wikileaks has picked up the slack where the "journalists" are failing their role in society, and it's a shame - but a shame for the publishing industry.
If you can't afford such writers, mount /var/log (or /var/adm depending on your system) on a remote with a different authentication with the directories as 500(-r-x------) and files as 300(--wx------) with a specific user for whichever syslog variant you use. Then chattr -i on the remote system so that the directory is immutable. On the remote system (if using rolling logs) don't forget to change the logrotate (or other appropriate cron configuration files)
Works every time for system security stuff.
You can tailor the logs for as much or as little as you need. Until the cracker can compromise your remote logging system (which should have different root passwords, no sudo/ssh credentials and no other rot access than the physical console), everything is recorded. Once it is cracked, you will know when it happened, because without the proper credentials on the logging system nothing can be erased.
Tripwire/dnotify/inotify are your friends if you take the time to learn them and if you take the time to set them up properly.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)