The group, referred to as the “Beyond Hackers Team” claims that they operate from Chile, South America.
Knowing well that they infiltrated South African Government websites, the hackers left the following message on the hacked sites: “South Africa Government Server... hohoho - pwned by byond crew!! – Chile”. “It seems that the hackers only succeeded in hacking one important Government server from which it was fairly easy to bring down all the websites hosted on that server,” says Stefan Visagie, IT manager at Buys Inc. Attorneys.
The hacked sites included those of the Department of Justice, the Department of Arts, Culture and Technology, the Films and Publications Board, the main Government Information portal and the Government’s open source website.
Although most of the websites were operational again early Monday morning, some were hacked again by an Iranian group. The group referred to as “Iran-Babol-Hackers-Security-Team” left the following message on the Government’s Municipal Infrastructure Grand site at www.migec.gov.za: “HACKED BY BHS-TEAM , POPO WAS HERE ! JUST FOR FUN ;)”
At noon on Monday the site was still not corrected.
All the hacked sites were running on open source platform (FreeBSD) and an Apache Web Server.
FreeBSD is renowned for its emphasis on web security.
According to Reinhardt Buys, MD of Buys Inc. “these hacks are bad news for both the Government and the open source movement. It comes at a time when Government is stepping up delivery of services in electronic format and during a time of increased competition between Microsoft and the open source movement for key Government contracts.”
Last week the Department of Communications' Universal Services Agency has qualified the Government's IT policy by saying the emphasis is more on "open choice" than "open source.” The agency's CEO Sam Gulube was defending the choice of Microsoft as a partner for a new initiative aimed at improving technology to every South African citizen that was announced at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.
"Government is pushing for 'open choice', which means there must be a choice between open source or proprietary software," Gulube explained.
“The hacks, particularly the subsequent hacks from the Iranian group, damage Government’s reputation and slows down the public’s growing trust in e-Government services,” said Buys.
“Although hacking is a criminal offence in terms of the ECT Act, the Government can only proceed with legal action if the accused is in South Africa. That means that the hackers will have to be identified and extradited from Chile and Iran.”
Full details of the hacks are available from the Zone-h website at: www.zone-h.org/en/defacements/filter/filter_domain=gov.za/
Autor: Reinhardt Buys
Quelle: MyADSL, 10.10.2005
