Government sites hacked with Hate mail

Less than a day after the British government was left red-faced after hackers defaced websites including that of the e-envoy Andrew Pinder, two more government servers were hacked, but this time by different intruders.

As before, both sites were running Microsoft IIS 4 on Windows NT, and both were defaced with graphical pages, meaning the attackers, in this case a group called Hi-Tech Hate, got full root on the box.

The sites in question were the regional site for North East Lincolnshire, at nelincs.gov.uk, and South Tyneside's council site at s-tyneside-mbc.gov.uk.

In a rather touching move, the intruders dedicated the hacks to their girlfriends, and then proceeded to rant about freedom of information and peace on Earth. They ended their hack with: "Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Serbia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile, Peru, Myanmar, Brazil, Philippines, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Turkey, Algeria, South Africa, China, Taiwan, Chechnya r places where freedom is a dream, open your eyes, open your mind, wake up, and all toghether we'll turn freedom from dream 2 reality. You can agree with us or not. If you agree with us let diffuse this message 2 make our ideas become everybody's ideas (sic)."

Both sites have since been repaired, but the recent spate of government sites hit have turned the e-envoy's words of warning to hackers into nothing more than a hollow threat. The government will have to try harder if "people should feel that government is secure and cannot be brought down".