Hacker’s mark left on Greenfield paper’s Web site
By George Barnes
WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
Jun 6, 2006
GREENFIELD – Visitors to the Greenfield Recorder’s site on the Internet over
the weekend were surprised to discover that instead of a page of news
headlines and links to information, what they got was `Hacked by Metlak.’
A view of the Web site, recorder.com, was blocked Sunday by a picture of a
Turkish flag with the face of what appears to be a soldier superimposed on
it and the words `Hacked by Metlak,’ and `Turkish hacker’ in parentheses
beneath it. In smaller lettering was a paragraph written in Turkish.
Yesterday, the newspaper’s Web site could not be accessed.
Douglas Hillman, operations director for the Franklin County newspaper, said
the problem was not in the newspaper’s equipment, although he said he was
still trying to determine exactly what happened.
`We believe it is in our ISP (internet service provider),’ he said.
Mr. Hillman said he was able to view the paper’s Web pages from his office,
but people seeking to read the newspaper on the Internet were blocked. He
said he was not initially aware of the Metlak issue.
The newspaper’s Internet service provider is eclecTechs, a Northampton-based
company. A spokesman for the company could not be reached for comment
yesterday, but a message to customers left on the company’s answering
machine said, `We have now excised many of our technical issues we had
earlier in the day. However, there may be some lingering issues. If you do,
please leave a message.’
Mr. Hillman said he reached the company and was told its server was down and
the company was trying to fix the problem.
A search for Metlak on the Internet shows many instances of the name in
connection with access problems on Web sites. It is also linked to a Turkish
hacker known as Iskorpitx, who is credited on many sites with committing the
largest Internet hacking in history.
Jason Matthews of Check Point Software, an Internet security company, said
one of the ways people improperly gain access to a Web site is by
surreptitiously gaining access to many computers through a virus. After
gaining access to as many as 1,000 computers, the person then uses those
computers to attack and overwhelm an Internet server, making it vulnerable.
He said firewalls are designed to prevent access to computers by viewing
information coming into the computers and determining if it could pose a
threat.
Mr. Hillman said he was unsure how his paper’s Web site was compromised, but
by late yesterday afternoon, it was up and running and displaying the
current day’s news.
He said that because the new server the pages are on was installed with an
old back-up tape, initially the public saw out-of-date stories and
information on recorder.com, but the newspaper was working yesterday
afternoon to load the new information to replace it.
Jason Feifer of the Telegram & Gazette staff contributed to this report.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
