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Hacker Took Over BBC Server, Tried To Sell Access On Christmas Day

Posted by samzenpus on from the you're-a-mean-one dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with this story about a hacker that took over a BBC server during the Christmas holiday. "A hacker secretly took over a computer server at the BBC, Britain's public broadcaster, and then launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system. While it is not known if the hacker found any buyers, the BBC's security team responded to the issue on Saturday and believes it has secured the site, according to a person familiar with the cleanup effort. A BBC spokesman declined to discuss the incident. 'We do not comment on security issues,' he said."

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Christmas Invasion by jeffmflanagan · · Score: 4, Funny

    The BBC has plenty of experience with Christmas invasions. I expect a police-box was involved in dealing with the problem.

  2. Re:It would work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People in the UK pay to see a made-for-TV Doctor Who movie in theaters.

    People all over the world pay to see Movies in movie in theatres when they could torrent it and watch it on a crappy TV or a computer monitor.

    It's about the quality of the experience, not penny pinching. This is especially the case if you are a big enough fan of Dr Who, Star War, Avatar, The Hobbit, Aliens, Predator.... etc. going to see the movie is actually worth it and watching it on TV, particularly the first time you watch it, is spoiling the experience. I watched the Dr Who movie in 3D and to me it was worth it even though I'm not a hardcore fan.

  3. Re:Really missed his chance by isorox · · Score: 3, Informative

    If he'd sold early access to the Doctor Who Christmas special to Americans, he would've made a fortune.

    He broke into an outside ftp server, presumably in a DMZ, that's used for transferring files to and from outside companies.

    I'd love to know the details of the breakin, was it an exploit in the previous FTP software?

    Currently it's running
    220 ProFTPD 1.3.3g Server (ftp.bbc.co.uk) [212.58.252.93]

    But has several more ports open to random people on the intarweb (rsync, really?)

    21/tcp open ftp
    22/tcp open ssh
    80/tcp open http
    443/tcp open https
    444/tcp open snpp
    873/tcp open rsync