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Cryptome Hacked; All Files Deleted

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hate-when-that-happens dept.

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.'"

7 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Editing! by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm glad they reminded me it happened on the weekend, I have a short attention span and forgot by the time I reached the end of the first line.

  2. Hack by Stargoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Hack by zarozarozaro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Mod parent up. A company I used to work for used Earthlink as their provider for everything (web, email, ISP). I pretty much had to take on the IT admin role there. They had lost all of their passwords and logins. I could not believe how easy it was for me to take control of everything in ONE DAY without even getting my boss on the phone with the support guy at Earthlink. Security at Earthlink is a joke. The support people there seem to choose one piece of your information at random to verify that you are the account holder. They will often ask you to tell them your password over the phone and other similar nonsense.

  3. Re:Backups for the win! by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Old school by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Hmmm. by hoggoth · · Score: 5, Funny

    > no one will ever know, so its moot.

    Oh Christ don't bring 4chan into this!

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  6. Re:...what? by Xemu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't believe their Earthlink account was *hacked*.

    http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/elcoslnk.htm">Earthlink is connected to the Scentology cult, which are known for hating free spech on the internet. If Cryptome had hosted anything remotely connected with Scientology, they would not hesitate to use that email account to hurt Cryptome.

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    Tell your friends about xenu.net