icujp.org was hacked on Thursday March 27. The web manager first noticed the erroneous pages at 6:45 pm and has begun the endeavor of replacing the actual icujp.org site to its previous condition.

Please excuse us for any inconvenience you may suffer.

icujp.org Becomes "Collateral Damage" in Cyber War

Low down and skinny:



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Our webhost has suffered a complete breakdown due to a hack attack last week. I believe they lost all data (including our website). All of icujp.org is currently offline, maillists included. I have current backups of most data lost in the hack and can restore the site.

I will have a website back online within approx 24 hours. Maillists may take a little longer... it depends on variables I have not yet investigated related to the information below.

Mail Issues in the Near Term



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In the interim while a replacement site is posted and new mail lists rigged, there is no longer an icujp.org set of mail lists available.



Details about how this happened



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This is what our web host wrote me about the situation (note: "Luna" is the name of the computer that used to house our web site):

"Terry,

Despite our best efforts, Luna is not recoverable. We brought Luna back online, completely restored, and it was later used to launch a massive Denial of Service attack against our network..."

I also wrote to a friend and he has written an expert synopsis of the nature of the attack itself:

"... I suspect your website succumbed to is more likely a root access exploit, where the hacker has exploited a vulnerability in the configuration of the webserver to gain administrative access. From there the hacker can do anything the server administrator can.

The defenses against such attacks include: making sure that all current software updates and security patches are installed on the system, ensure that no unnecessary services are running, have a robust firewall and a maintained intrusion detection system. These are things your hosting company should be doing for you...."

Who attacked icujp.org and why?



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(the following is paraphrased from several news reports gathered online, references available)

On 03/27/2003, Al Jazzera was hacked by American hackers. They replaced Al Jazzera's home page with a pro-American war graphic and also sent viewers to a porno page.

In retaliation, USG (Unix Security Guards), WFD (World's Fantabulous Defacers), and AIC (Anti-India Crew) coordinated attacks on selected online targets. icujp.org went down on Thursday afternoon and was back online for a few hours on Saturday, before the attack resumed and overcame our server's defenses.

Most often, the sites attacked were owned by small businesses and nonprofits, whose servers haven't been tweaked to deflect hackers.

The attack against our server by USG was most likely driven by our particular server's vulnerability, not a specific attack against icujp.org. I guess we just got in the way. Collateral damage... but we are in good shape relatively



Thank you, and Peace