Arrest a Hacker and Keep Quiet
August 23, 2009 by Milo Riano
Filed under Computers
Whenever you hunt down and are able to arrest a hacker make sure you and you’re department shut your mouth up otherwise multitude of hackers are going to test your strength, security settings and smart *ss. Furthermore if you have arrested a respectable hacker you should by all means instruct your department to keep mum about this for the same reason.
This is what has happened to the Australian Police Department which got bush wacked after they have arrested a high profile hacker and bragged their accomplishment. The take down of the hacker was televised on ABC’s Four Corners while the Australian Police raided, and seized the computer owned by an administrator who runs the underground hacking forum at domain r00t.y0u.org. The police were able to get passwords after the rest and monitored other users or suspects logging in the site.
When the Australian Police began monitoring the site visitors they went further by threatening users that all member IP addresses have been logged and arrests are going to be made. This has heightened the tension and the hacker community started their work by breaking into the police system the investigators were using during the investigation and announced they have gained access to intelligence within the police mainframe.
A specific hacker put up his own vengeance on the pastebin.com making a mockery of the Police department saying they have caught “script kiddies” and even posted fake ID pictures and stolen credit card number allegedly taken from police servers. The hacker said he was laughing while hacking the police servers powered by Windows operating system. He also says the MYSQL password was left blank by the police department. The hacker goes on bragging that he could have finished the hack in less than 30 minutes had he not been laughing while working.
The Australian Police responded that the files were planted on the compromises system belittling the hack done on their system. I think engaging in this word war with the hackers might just bring bad news to their department.
As I have said whenever you catch a hacker it is best to keep a low profile because the community can launch an attack right from their work area and could be done immediately.
Image from AFP.
