[ISN] Security websites taken down by unhappy hackers

[InfoSec News]

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=3465

By Paul Roberts
IDG News Service 
12 April 2005

Two prominent websites that specialise in remote access software have
been taken offline by a DDoS attack orchestrated by a group of hackers
who have taken offence at comments posted about them.

Rootkit.com, an established website run by security expert Greg
Hoglund, has been offline for almost a week. Two other sites, operated
by a prominent rootkit author known as "Holy Father" have also been
taken down in the attacks, which are believed to be the work of a
group of Bulgarian and Turkish hackers known as the SIS-Team.

The attack against rootkit.com began on Tuesday 5 April, after someone
using the name "ATmaCA" posted an inflammatory message to one of the
discussion groups on the site that advertised a number of malicious
remote access software programs sold by SIS Team, including
SIS-Downloader, ProAgent and SIS-IExploiter, Hoglund said.

The programs are powerful spyware tools that, when combined, enable
remote attackers to secretly compromise other machines using attack
Web pages. They are sold online at websites like
www.spyinstructors.com and are popular with those behind spam
campaigns, who use the tools to plant remote control programs that are
then used to send out spam, Hoglund said.

The post by ATmaCA prompted curt responses from rootkit.com members,
who objected to authors using the discussion forum as a venue to
advertise their commercial software. Other rootkits discussed on
rootkit.com are open source, and authors typically post links to their
source code on the site, Hoglund said.

In the flame war that erupted between the SIS-Team members and the
rootkit.com contributors, questions were also raised about the quality
of the SIS-Team products. Some rootkit.com regulars alleged that the
tools were poorly written and frequently crashed machines they ran on,
Hoglund said.

Within hours of the first post from ATmaCA, the rootkit.com website
was under attack by a network of more than 500 compromised computers,
or bots, that flooded the site with about 170,000 requests a second,
making it unreachable for most Internet users, he said.

Two rootkit-focused websites operated by Holy Father were also downed
by DDoS attack after that person posted remarks critical of ATmaCA and
SIS-Team.

In both cases, extortion e-mail was sent to the website owner
following the DDoS attacks saying that the owners could end the
attacks by posting public apologies to ATmaCA and SIS-Team on their
websites.

Hoglund is angry and unrepentant: "I find it very offensive that a
public website that does nothing but share information is attacked by
a bunch of immature children. These are hackers who can't stand on
their own merits. They make claims for their software, and then can't
argue about it, but just DDoS their critics off the Internet."

Rootkit.com has more than 25,000 registered users and about 30 regular
contributors. Despite the reputation of rootkits as hacker tools, many
of those who frequent the site are professional security experts and
students who study computer security and use the rootkit source code
available on the site to figure out ways to defend against rootkit
programs, Hoglund said.