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Hackers Rebuke Obama Via Oregon University Computers
- From: Howell, Paul
- Date: Thu Jun 25 08:44:09 2009
At http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3847
June 24, 2009 Hackers Rebuke Obama Via Oregon University Computers
Instead of reaching the Oregon University System's Web site this
morning, visitors found an angry message directed at President Obama.
Diane Saunders, a university spokeswoman, said hackers had redirected
the system's home page to a site claiming to be "from Iran." The message
was up for approximately 90 minutes before an employee arrived at work
and found the breach.
The Web page, which was sent to The Chronicle and the Associated Press
by the university system, told "Stupid Fly Catcher Obama" to stop
talking about Iran and the recent Iranian election, which has prompted
protests since the June 12 vote.
"Iran's election doesn't have problem and Moosavi with his tiny brain
will be in jail in near future, so don't pay your time and money for him
and for his fans," the site reads. "70-80% of Iranian people hate
Moosavi nowadays... We never cheated in elections and even Moosavi knows
that."
A message sent to the e-mail address listed on the Web site was not
returned. Ms. Saunders said the hackers were most likely able to access
the university Web page through ClickHeat, a free program that documents
what areas of Web sites are being clicked most. She said the program
does not automatically update solutions to problems that are found, and
the university had not downloaded the most recent security update.
The university will pay more attention to updates for ClickHeat and five
other third-party programs it uses that do not perform automatic
updates, and Oregon State University is trying to find out exactly how
someone was able to access the Web site, she said.
Ms. Saunders said she did not know why the university system's page was
targeted. "My guess is that hackers have ways of finding vulnerable
entry points in Web sites," she said. "I don't know if this was a random
or purposeful selection of going through our site." - Marc Beja
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