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ARMY RESEARCH WEB SITE HACKED

Posted on July 22, 2002

      An attacker defaced a page on the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Web site Friday with a message criticizing the military organization for supplying weapons to Israel.

      The attacker, going by the handle Rivver, posted a long, profanity-laced tirade against the Unites States government and its stance in the Middle East, the military and India. The same attacker defaced another U.S. Army Web site last fall.

      The Army Research Lab is a collection of labs that do research on high-tech weapons systems, survivability and information systems, among other things. It includes the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.

      "Oh looky! US Army got owned. I was nice and calm, I left your networks alone and in peace," the most recent defacement reads. "But no you had to go and keep supplying [expletive] Israel with newer and badder toys to use against kids and infants. How about this, you keep doing what your doing and I'll keep owning your networks."

      The message goes on to urge the army to "use your [expletive] toys to free Kashmir!!! Put a choke hold on Israel," according to a copy of the defacement archived at Zone-h.org.

      Web-site defacements have become a favorite tool of so-called script kiddies and other low-level attackers looking to draw attention to themselves. Many defacements simply tout the attacker's skills and denigrate other Web vandals.

      However, some attackers use their defacements as a soapbox, broadcasting their political and social views. Vandals last week defaced the USA Today site, replacing its normal content with fake stories about a supposed Iraqi attack on Israel and calling the Bible a hoax.

      Earlier this year, a pair of attackers calling themselves the Deceptive Duo vandalized dozens of military, government and banking sites as part of what they called a "patriotic" mission to alert administrators to vulnerabilities in their networks before "foreign forces" found them.

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