[ISN] MS UK defaced in hacking attack

[InfoSec News]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/06/msuk_hacked/

By John Leyden
6th July 2005

Microsoft's UK web site was defaced late on Tuesday night with a 
message in support of Venezuelan hacker Rafa. Defacement archive 
Zone-H reports that well-known defacer Apocalypse hacked into 
Microsoft's UK web site (microsoft.co.uk) and uploaded a picture with 
the message "FREE RAFA - HACK IS NOT A CRIME" (recorded in an archive 
here [1]).

The site has since been restored to normal operation and the offending 
GIF removed. A Microsoft spokesman said it was aware of the attack, 
which technical staff are investigating. "There is no reason to 
believe customer data or any other sensitive information has been 
compromised," he said. Although somewhat embarrassing all early 
indications are that the attack was not serious.

Apocalypse has been targeting US institutions and the government sites 
for months, always posting messages in support of Venezuelian hacker 
Rafael (Rafa) Nunez-Aponte, a suspected member of the World of Hell 
hacking crew. Rafa is in custody in the US following his arrest in 
Miami in April over a series of alleged attacks on US Department of 
Defense servers dating back to 2001.

Previous targets of Apocalypse's "digital graffiti" attacks have 
included Stanford University (archive here) and US Navy web sites. 
Zone-H reckons that misconfiguration of Microsoft's UK web server 
permitted the latest attack. For the record, Microsoft's UK site runs 
Microsoft's IIS 6 web server software on Windows 2003 servers. ®

[1] http://www.zone-h.org/en/defacements/mirror/id=2531794