Massive Hack Attack Plunges Netherlands Into the Stone Age

An attack on a company that certifies secure websites has forced the Dutch government to abandon email for faxes and snail mail. How long before frustrated citizens take to the streets and smash windows with postal scales and rolls of thermal paper?

A recent hack of the Dutch-based security company Diginotar has rendered many of the Dutch government's website's insecure and unusable for official business. According to the Wall Street Journal

In what is shaping up as one of the most damaging hacking cases for a single country, courts have advised lawyers to switch to fax and old-fashioned paper mail instead of email.

Lawyers can't access the Dutch Bar Association's Intranet, and have been told by courts to switch to fax machines and mail until the problems are solved.

So what's going on? While most of the world has been too bored by the details to really care, a huge hacking attack has rocked the system of certification many important websites rely on to assure their authenticity. A hacker broke into Digitnotar, one of the largest issuers of these certificates, and stole certificates allowing them to set up fraudulent websites and snoop on user's personal information and communication. For more than a week in July, fake certificates for sites like Google, Twitter—even the CIA—were in circulation.

According to a report by the security firm Fox-IT, the certificates were likely used to intercept communications in Iran. A notorious Iranian hacker named Comodohacker has claimed responsibility for the hack, hiding this understated message in the script he used to bust into Digitnotar.

"THERE IS NO ANY HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE IN THIS WORLD EXISTS WHICH COULD STOP MY HEAVY ATTACKS
MY BRAIN OR MY SKILLS OR MY WILL OR MY EXPERTISE"

As far as hacking attacks go, the Diginotar attack wasn't as obviously spectacular as, say, a massive dump of user names and passwords. But Dutch people now have to remember how to attach a stamp to a letter! And now that the U.S. postal service is going out of business at any moment, such an attack would basically send the U.S. back to the mid-1800s, all gas-lit lamps and Pony Express.

[Gawker]

Serious cyber attack targets EU institutions on eve of summit

Today is the first day of the first EU summit that takes place under the Hungarian presidency, and European leaders have gathered in Brussels to discuss matters such as the rising European debt crisis and the Libyan unrest and the subsequent military action.



But on the very eve of the summit, an unexpected occurrence cast a dark shadow over the event. The BBC reports that the European Commission and the External Action Service - the Community's diplomatic arm - have been hit by a "serious" cyber attack.

So far, details about the attack have not been divulged.

"We are already taking urgent measures to tackle this. An inquiry's been launched. This isn't unusual as the commission is frequently targeted," said EU spokesman Anthony Gravali.

An anonymous source confirms: "We're often hit by cyber attacks but this is a big one." Other sources compare the attack to the recently revealed one that targeted the computers of the French Ministry of Finance, when more than 150 machines were compromised.

Even though Gravali says that the European Commission will not speculate on the origin of the attacks, the similarities raise the possibility that the attackers could be the same ones that targeted the French. At the time, internal sources said that some of the files were redirected to Chinese sites, but they conceded that this fact doesn't say much.

The entire European Commission staff has been asked to change their passwords and to make sure to exchange information via secure email systems. The Commission has also shut down external access to email and the Comission's intranet, so that unauthorized information doesn't leak out.

[Net-Security]

South Korea hit by cyber attacks

South Korea has been hit by a series of cyber attacks which have targeted some of the country's leading websites.

Government ministries, the National Assembly, the military headquarters, US Forces in Korea and major banks were among those hit.

It is believed that the attackers injected malware into two peer-to-peer file-sharing websites.
The attacks are similar to those that targeted South Korean websites in July 2009.

Some 29 institutions were affected by so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) which overload a site with data causing it to fall over.

The web page of the Financial Services Commission, the country's financial regulator, was overloaded and an online stock trading system was shut down for a few minutes but both soon recovered, according to government sources.

North Korea


"There was a DDoS attack, but no damage was done," said an official from the presidential office.
South Korean security firm AhnLab expected another wave of attacks on Friday, targeting up to 40 government and corporate websites.

It estimates that up to 11,000 personal computers were infected by malware and recruited for the attack. It is distributing free software to clean PCs.

The South Korean cyber investigation unit has sent investigators to the two file-sharing sites that are believed to have spread the malicious code, according to the National Police Agency.

The cyber attacks against South Korea in 2009 were blamed on North Korea, although no link has been proven.

South Korean media outlets have, in the past, accused North Korea of running an internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into US and South Korean military networks.

[BBC]