Microsoft's New Zealand website hacked

Microsoft has had another of its international websites broken into and defaced by hackers.

Hacking group Prime Suspectz broke into the software giant's New Zealand website overnight, replacing the front page with a message mocking the software giant.

"Oh!!! what's hapened!! Another Micro$oft was hacked? !!Yes!! 'The vulnerability is completely teorical' !! I don't think so !! security wuz broke'n !" the hackers wrote.

Microsoft has been at the centre of a number of security breaches recently. In October hackers broke into the company's corporate network and saw source code then under development.

In December Microsoft's Slovenian website was defaced twice in the space of three days.

The latest attack exploited a known vulnerability, which affects Microsoft's own Internet Information Server (IIS) versions 4.0 and 5.0.

It was the same exploit that allowed hackers to break into Microsoft's servers for a second time in November last year.

This attack came only days after the software giant was attacked using the QAZ Trojan.

Paul Rogers, network security analyst at MIS said the exploit, known as the Unicode Bug, allows remote attackers to list directory contents, view files, delete files and execute arbitrary commands.

"It's a simple challenge for the hackers to find the big names, which are not protected and show they have beaten the system's administrators," he said.

"Does nobody learn, at the end of the day it's all about education but it seems that some people have optional deafness and choose not to hear things."

At the same time a number of other websites were hit by hackers, among them www.chanel.com, which was defaced by anti-fur trade protesters.