tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63864886183881618922012-02-16T10:57:02.748-08:00Differentia Chroniclenoreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6386488618388161892.post-75013184304639412652007-03-06T07:22:00.000-08:002007-03-06T07:23:35.474-08:00Hacker drops a bomb on nuclear watchdog's website<br /><br />Last Updated: Thursday, February 8, 2007 | 5:31 PM ET <br /><br />CBC News <br /><br />Someone hacked into the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's website and inserted a photograph of a nuclear explosion — spurring the agency to call in the RCMP.<br /><br />The commission said the media releases section of its website was vandalized by the hacker. However, a spokesman emphasized that a person without a secure government login would not be able to access potentially dangerous information — such as part of the agency's internal site that tracks the movement of high-risk radioactive sealed sources.<br /><br />According to a report in Thursday's Ottawa Citizen, the commission's current and archived news releases were renamed "security breaches" and contained a photo of a mushroom cloud.<br /><br />The photo was under the heading "for Immediate Release" and was accompanied by a caption reading: "Please dont [sic] put me in jail … oops, I divided by zero."<br /><br />Commission spokesman Aurèle Gervais confirmed the defacement of the site and said the pages were disabled minutes after the newspaper contacted the agency.<br /><br />Gervais said the vandalism occurred on a part of the agency's site run by an external provider with no link to the internal site.<br /><br />A secure government login is needed to access the internal site with sensitive information, he said.<br /><br />Still, the commission considers the incident "very serious" and has called the RCMP to investigate, Gervais said. He said it is the first time such a breach has occurred at the commission.<br /><br />Government sites 'surprisingly easy' to hack: expert<br /><br />But the sensitivity of the commission's mandate raises legitimate concerns about the safety of government-run websites, said Brian O'Higgins, the chief technology officer with Third Brigade, an Ottawa internet security firm.<br /><br />"It's surprisingly easy to get onto the big servers and do this kind of defacement. <br /><br />The threat isn't getting better, it's getting worse," O'Higgins told CBC News Online.<br /><br />O'Higgins said the increased variety of software and software upgrades for publishing to the internet opens up more and more vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit.<br /><br />O'Higgins said it was clear from the way the commission's site was defaced that the hacker was more interested in drawing attention to the vandalism than finding secrets.<br /><br />But he warned that defacement of sites is a declining trend as more hackers adopt a stealthy approach in hopes of finding a way to profit from their intrusions.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6386488618388161892-7501318430463941265?l=hackerdropsbombnuclear-article-dcfp.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Differentia Chroniclenoreply@blogger.com1