[ISN] Political hackers deface Novell SUSE sites

[InfoSec News]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/03/opensuse_hacked/

By John Leyden
3rd October 2005

Three Novell OpenSUSE community web site were defaced on Sunday by
politically motivated hackers. Defacement archive Zone-H reports that
a group called IHS Iran Hackers Sabotage [1] broke into OpenSUSE.org,
wiki.novell.com and forge.novell.com to post a message stating that it
was Iran's right to develop nuclear power. All three sites were
defaced in the same way (archive here) [2].

OpenSUSE.org and forge.novell.com have since been restored to normal
operation and the offending images removed. The wiki.novell.com site
has been taken temporarily offline. Although somewhat embarrassing all
early indications are that the attack was not serious.

Of greater concern are reports that hackers compromised a
gaming-related server maintained by Novell and used it to scan for
other vulnerable machines. The hacked system - which ran a mail server
for a gaming site called Neticus.com - has been scanning for
vulnerable SSH systems since 21 September, Computerworld reports [3].  
The rogue behaviour was spotted by net security firm Brandon Internet
Security which traced attacks against its clients' systems back to the
compromised servers.

A Novell spokesman played down that incident by saying the hacked
servers were part of test systems located outside Novell's corporate
network. ®


[1] http://www.zone-h.org/defacements/filter/filter_defacer=IHS%20IRAN%20HACKERS%20SABOTAGE
[2] http://www.zone-h.org/en/defacements/mirror/id=2917402
[3] http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;2128628770;fp;2;fpid;1