Forwarded From: Kiera Wooley <kiera@infobeat.com>
Indian Nuclear Center Admits Hacker Break-In
NewsBytes
04-JUN-98
By Martyn Williams
TOKYO, JAPAN, 1998 JUN 4 (Newsbytes) Officials at an Indian nuclear research
center have confirmed their computer network was infiltrated by a group of
hackers and that the electronic mail system was accessed. "It's all taken
care of, there's nothing to worry about," an official of the Bhadha Atomic
Research Center (BARC) told Newsbytes by telephone.
The official confirmed the claims of the a group of hackers calling
themselves "Milw0rm" who said they managed to breach network security at
BARC, change the Web home page and download five megabytes worth of e-mail
and data.
"It's a very normal loop hole in sendmail," the BARC official said. Sendmail
is defacto Internet standard software for running electronic mail systems.
"Definitely, there was some problem with sendmail, they were using an old
version," he added before refusing to comment any further.
Sendmail has been the object of many security attacks in the past and most
security-conscious users have addressed the loopholes uncovered and
documented over the years. The sendmail software at BARC had evidently not
been updated with the latest security measures.
The hackers believe they downloaded messages and data related to India's
recent series of nuclear weapon tests but that has yet to be confirmed.
A single e-mail message from the five megabytes downloaded was passed to
Newsbytes. After being shown it, scientists of the University of Tokyo's
Institute for Nuclear Studies said it had nothing to do with weapons but
that it did contain, "pretty advanced nuclear physics."
Newsbytes has also confirmed a second group of hackers attacked the BARC Web
site. As opposed to the Milw0rm group, which attacked the network and
accessed files, the second group replaced the home page on the internal web
server with a simple message titled "Just Say No."
The hacked web page said "Nuclear Tests in India. This page has been hacked
in protest of a nuclear race between India, Pakistan and China. It is the
world's concern that such actions must be put to end since, nobody wants yet
another world war. I hope you understand that our intentions were good, thus
no damage has been done to this system. No files have been copied or
deleted, and main file has been just renamed," the Web page read.
"Stop the Nuclear Race! We Don't Want a Nuclear Holocaust," it ended in
large, bold, red letters.
At time of writing, the BARC Web site, http://www.barc.ernet.in , had
reverted back to normal although the second Web page hack remains available
at http://www.barc.ernet.in/~barc/barc.html .
-o-
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Received on Thu Jun 4 17:14:06 1998