Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>
27Aug98 UK: CONNECTED - BOY HELD OVER SPECTACULAR UNIVERSITY WEB SITE HACK.
By MICHAEL MCCORMACK.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested by West Midlands police in connection
with a badly timed invasion of the University of Birmingham's Web servers
that treated students to a rare view of hacking in action.
One May 21, more than 20 students were examining the university's home
page on a projection screen when hackers began transforming its welcome
message into a threat to destroy the university's data. A lecturer
immediately alerted computer security officials, who disconnected the
server.
Dr Clive Field, Birmingham's librarian and director of information
services, said: "We were able to connect another server to the Net to let
people know that the university still existed, but it took just over four
days before we could bring the main server back online.
"After an incident like that, you have to spend the time to ensure it
cannot happen again. In our case that meant making several changes to the
operating system that governs the main Web server.
"Luckily, that process uncovered enough evidence of where the hack
originated to provide the police with a starting point for their
inquiries."
West Midlands police confirmed that a 15-year-old resident of Quinton,
Birmingham, was taken into custody last week and questioned about
violations of the Computer Misuse Act.
Meanwhile, the case of two Midlands hackers who falsely claimed to have
penetrated India's nuclear research facilities is still being
investigated.
-o-
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Received on Fri Aug 28 09:46:34 1998