In the biggest hacker attack in South Africa since 1 January 2004, hackers successfully defaced more than 73 local websites over the weekend, Reinhardt Buys of IT law firm Buys said on Monday.
Even the website Hack.co.za, famous in the internet underground and security community, crashed under a repeated attack, Buys said.
At 12.21am on Sunday, a hacker group referred to as ”FBH” hacked into the hack.co.za website. The home page of the site was defaced with a logo.
The site was hosted on a Linux platform and an Apache server. According to Zone-H, a group monitoring world wide hacking activity, ”FBH” is an acronym for ”Federal Bureau of Hackers” operating from Pakistan.
On Saturday from about 7.52am, another group called ”DIabOlaX” hacked into and defaced 72 South African websites — the highest daily count since the start of the year. All the websites ran on Windows 2000 platforms.
The group removed the home page content of the websites and replaced it with a short message and what seems to be the group’s e-mail address: [email protected]
”The fact that an extremist Pakistani group is active in South Africa is truly worrying,” said Buys. ”FBH seems to promote a political agenda through hacking and related activities”.
He added, ”Lately there has been a visible increase in politically motivated hacks.” – Sapa