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Aussie Prime Minister hackers were drongos

by on10 September 2009


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Could not break into a paper bag


Chat logs
between the hackers that broke into the Aussie Prime Minister's web site revealed that that they were not exactly the brightest bulbs. The hackers hoped to crash the site for a sustained period - but did not manage that although they have got a lot of publicity.

Now chat logs from an IRC forum show the hackers, who identify themselves as being part of a group called "Anonymous" wanted to protest at the Government's deeply unpopular internet filtering policy but managed to bring down pm.gov.au only for a matter of minutes. The chat logs, seen by this website, show the attacks were predominantly designed to generate publicity for their cause. But actually showed them as being dipsticks of the highest order:

 

<aseadsf> guys its fail atm
<OhGoshNo> PM's site working well still :( <steven> its over guys!!!
<steven> fail fail fail
<Konanon> FAIL !
<vidfag> F---ing keep firing. Don't lose heart. We have a target-run with it

 

The hackers kept trying to flood the pm.gov.au site with traffic - known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack - but they had limited success.

At one point one of the hackers wrote "well lets retreat and regroup ...our aim was publicity and we got it".

 

<shoza_woghorse> well do we all agree
<shoza_woghorse> this died in the ass?
<bambi> try again tomorrow?
<vidfag> Ok. We need another date. We took them down for a bit and scared them-we need a next date
<shoza_woghorse> we need to unite
<coolstory> or we can move on to the next raid and not acknowledge our fail

 

After acknowledging their failure the hackers began posting links to news coverage of their attack. It is clear from the messages that publicity was their main aim.

 

<Anonymoose> I expect this to hit the news.
<Anonymoose> HOPEFULY before the 10 late news.
<barcafc> yep nine midnight or 10 late news should have it
<vidfag> Record it. Please
<barcafc> aswell as sunrise and today show (im hoping)
<shoza_woghorse> the aim was never to take out the siteeeeeeee
<shoza_woghorse> it was to get publicity.

 

One security analyst told AP that the full transcript shows that the hackers did not really know what they were doing. If they were serious they would have used a botnet to bring down the site. But they did not appear to have access to one. They also didn't get as much publicity as they clearly thought they would get.

The hackers had initially intended to target other websites including that of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but only pm.gov.au was affected.

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