Hacker defaces RAAF site

The Royal Australian Air Force has confirmed that a hacker defaced its website on 13-14 July, in an attack the perpetrator described as a warning message to stop racism against Indian students in Australia.

The hacker left a message on the site which read: "This site has been hacked by Atul Dwivedi. This is a warning message to the Australian Government. Immediately take all measures to stop racist attacks against Indian students in Australia or else I will pawn all your cyber properties like this one."

The site was temporarily offline and is now operating normally.

An RAAF spokesperson said that the defaced site was an external-facing site and was not used to conduct RAAF business or connected to any operational Defence system. As a result the RAAF claimed that no sensitive information was compromised.

The Air Force was not forthcoming on the technical details of the hack and said it would be inappropriate to comment further as the Defence Security Authority was conducting an investigation into the incident.

• Related stories

• Alerts

Add your opinion

pawn? Anonymous -- 16/07/09

I think you'll find it was "pwn" as in "own".

• Reply to comment
• Reply to story
• Report offensive content

pawn? Anonymous -- 16/07/09 (in reply to #320151316)

If I had to bet on whether the misspelling of "pwn" as "pawn" was attributable to the hacker or the journalist, I'd back the journalist to be right any day. ;o)

• Reply to comment
• Report offensive content

pawn? Anonymous -- 16/07/09 (in reply to #320151316)

If the graphics on the display shown in the video are directly from the web site, the spelling is the hacker's. Since hackers have never struck me as particularly rational animals, who knows what he has in mind? But I doubt his neighbourhood moneylender would take the RAAF's "cyber property" off his hands.

• Reply to comment
• Report offensive content

It's a script kiddie Mel Sommersberg -- 17/07/09 (in reply to #320151316)

Obviously the bloke is just a script kiddie. The word is "own" and a hacker worth his salt wouldn't stoop to that stupid l33t h4x0r talk.

• Reply to comment
• Report offensive content

Pawn? Anonymous -- 19/07/09 (in reply to #320151316)

More food for thought: could "pawn" have mean't "porn"

• Reply to comment
• Report offensive content

pawn? Joe -- 16/07/09

I have yet to see a site takeover where spelling and grammar were correct. I love the thought of pawning a website though! Surely there must be something equivalent of cyber-pawnshops?

• Reply to comment
• Reply to story
• Report offensive content

Script-Kiddies strike again Anonymous -- 17/07/09

The fact that the cracker used pawn instead of pwn would indicate that it is not the work of a hard-core cracker. The bigger question is why is the Aus government using Windows, which is known to be very insecure, to run the RAAF site? In fact, why are they using Windows to run any sites? I would have hoped that the government would be far more professional than that.

• Reply to comment
• Reply to story
• Report offensive content

RAAF Site != ADF Run Anonymous -- 20/07/09 (in reply to #320152343)

They don't use it for webservers where they can help it. The people they outsource non sensitive work to do.

That site isn't run by the ADF, its a contracted to a company who does runs the website and updates it. It was the contracting company that was hacked.

• Reply to comment
• Report offensive content

Pot. Kettle. Black. Anonymous -- 21/07/09

Somewhat ironic that an Indian is complaining about racism.
This is a country which has religious and ethic riots on a fairly regular basis, and has a few (nt very well publicist in the "west") insurgencies with religious, communist and ethnic causes.

The fact that a relatively few attacks against Indians in Aust even makes the news just shows how unusal these attacks are, especially compared with say India where ethnic, religious and political violence is endemic and to some extent truly institutional.

Next the hackers will be demanding "encounters" to deal with any non convicted accused in these cases.

Bleh.
Indians should worry about the state of their own country before they get to demanding about the state of ours.

In any case, they can always go home if they really think that our way of life is not for them.

I wonder if they realise that cracking web sites is a crime as well.
Not nearly as serious (in this case) as violent attacks, but still a crime all the same.
And attacking a defense force website makes no sense at all in the context of the stated complaint.
The RAAF has no responsibility for policing the streets. Though it is a defense force, so attacking it can at the outside be considered an attack on.

Clueless.

• Reply to comment
• Reply to story
• Report offensive content

• Just In

• Most Popular

• Most Discussed

Reader Services

Popular Topics

Essentials