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Science

Seti@HOME Cracked By Aliens? 258

Posted by Roblimo from the all-that-work-and-this-is-what-we-get? dept.
Chris L. Mason writes "The Seti@HOME website appears to have been cracked. The front page has been replaced by a picture of ALF (from the really bad comedy.) However, the perpetrators have been somewhat polite about it. A comment in the new html tells where the original page has been backed up. " Might be fixed by the time you read this, but it really happened. The story was submitted by a number of slashdot readers almost immediately. Thanks.
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Seti@HOME Hacked! More

Seti@HOME Hacked!

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  • I once read a short story on exactly this subject.. can't remember the author though..

    In the end the prize went to some kind of queen woman (as in queen of bees..). she won, because
    her measurements coincided the best with the ideal measurements given by the local male population.. Guess being the only female of an entire race does make you THE best female..
  • Ok I just checked now at 5:24pm EST and the official page is back. Now a very embarrassed/upset sysadmin has to restore the system from backup (to make sure security has not been compromised). This may be funny to us, but lets spare a thought for the guy who has to do all the work;)
  • > such as searching for Mersenne (sp?) primes

    You mean like www.mersenne.org [mersenne.org]?

    AFAIK, that program also uses 'lost' cycles, and they've already got some results. (As opposed to SETI ;-)

  • I think the stunt was really funny. The page was backed up and returned to Seti@home, so no permanent damage was done.

    I'm a little disapointed that the whole debate has generated into name calling, RC5 vs. Seti and such. I see two benefits from this Stunt.

    1. It showed the Seti SysAdmin that he/she should be more vigilant.

    2. It was a damn funny prank. I just wish I could see it.

    Too all you who think Seti is a waste of time and to those who hold it on a Pedestal.... Lighten up!

  • at 15:30 PST Alf is still there....
  • What's the point of those mirrors ...
    The site still displays Alf, so all of you, go there and say hello :)
    I really doubt this is a real hack (crack), because they could really have putten back the index page.
    Also, i liked it :))))

    Long life Distributed.net [distributed.net]. Will they hack them too ?
    :))


    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    Belgium HyperBanner
    http://belgium.hyperbanner.net

  • This stems from an oversimplification. (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Monday July 05, 1999 @07:04AM (#1818818)
    The speed of light isn't constant, in fact a team at MIT (or somewhere like that) slowed light down to something like 30 Mph (that's Mile per hour!!)


    The whole question of "If the speed of light is constant, how come it slows down in things like lenses" stems from the fact that the explanation of refraction given in high school textbooks is much simpler than what is actually going on.


    If I remember correctly (it's been a while), what happens when light passes through a transparent medium (like glass or water) is that it interacts with the electrons in the material so as to be briefly absorbed and then re-emitted in the same direction (I may be mangling this - like I said, it's been a while). This kind of interaction is logical when you think about it - a photon is a packet of coupled electric and magnetic fields, while matter is made up of charged particles (electrons and atomic nuclei [small enough to look like points to most photons]).


    The net effect of photons being absorbed and re-emitted is that the propagation of the light wave seems to slow down in the material. In actuality, the photons are still travelling at the speed of light in vacuum - they're just not travelling very far before interacting with the matter they're travelling through.


    It turns out that a very small fraction of the photons do manage to travel through the material without interacting with anything (though this drops off very sharply with distance). Someone built a device a few years ago that used this effect to take "x-rays" of peoples' hands with visible light (detecting these "ballistic" photons only; their pattern naturally varied depending on how absorbing the materials they passed through were, and was sharp because the photons hadn't scattered off of anything). Check back issues of Scientific American (or possibly Discover) for the reference.


    Recent speculation about the speed of light in vacuum not being constant stems from completely different observations, probably celestial.

  • As a Greenpeace supporter you urge me to respond to your offense on Greenpeace.

    In Holland Greenpeace collaborates with the Dutch government to install solar energy collectors on houses of consumers. A dutch house-owner can apply for a subsidized solar collector which will cost less than half of normal prize. Thus it will be cheaper (in the long run=10 years) than buying energy from a local energy company. Thanks to Greenpeace! The project is aptly but confusingly named "Solaris". Greenpeace has a (dutch) website here [greenpeace.org].

    On nuclear power: Greenpeace may be fiercely against nuclear power (I am not), in Holland it is the government that shuts down the old plants. And the government of the Netherlands are the people themselves.

    The reason we shut the existing plants down is that old-style, colossal, complex nuclear power facilities are way too unprofitable to sustain. That is if you want to apply decent security measures.

    A lot of American people and companies and local governments are ruthless in how they exploit the country. If you want to destroy all nature in your country, eventually you'll make life for yourself uncomfortable too. No more hot water for you - no more water at all. But we in Europe wouldn't care a bit.
  • AFAIK, that program also uses 'lost' cycles,

    True.

    and they've already got some results.

    Also true, however they've been running for something like two years.

    (As opposed to SETI ;-)

    Everybody grants that the SETI test is an extreme long shot. However, if they are successful, the payback will be much higher.


    ...phil
  • As much as I support SETI@Home, I have to say that their web site has not been the most forthcoming or interactive. Things like distributed.net go all out to keep everyone informed of what's going on, whereas the folks at SETI@Home would go weeks or months with no status updates or anything.

    Old news. The Seti at Home people have gotten much better about posting updates - sometimes multiples per day. Take a look at their Technical News link off the main page.

    That still isn't justification.


    ...phil
  • You haven't worked with research folks, have you?

    The PI is the guy who gets the grant, controls the research and gets his name first on the papers. He only responsible to whomever got the grant. They tend to be hard to work with.

    He won't accept "MS bug"-he'll say "Then why did you spend my money on that piece of s**t server". He won't accept that you have a day off. There will be yelling involved-talk to anyone who works as a "grant monkey"-try your local research hospital, or large tech oriented university.

    Oh-and NOBODY works hourly in a research facitlity-mainly because nobody works 40 hours.

    It's not a life I'd care to live. I've done some contract work for them, and while it paid well, I'm not eager to jump back in.

  • if he/she is right on the edge, and a comment on /. pushes them over...my guess is they'd find a way to go that extra foot all by their lonesome selves.


    ...and just because it's a holiday and I don't have to work...
    I can think of a situation where it would be "nice" to tell someone to go kill themselves. It would be that situation where my preposterous exclamation caused them to see the craziness in their actions (the ones that caused me to tell them to take a flying leap) and perhaps change them. I can think of numerous situations where the phase "Why don't you go kill yourself" could cause bundles of sarcasm induced laughter. "Oh, I dropeed my pen" "WDYGKY" HAHAHAHAHhahahhehehehe........

  • Arrg (Score:1)

    by CoolAss ( 62578 )
    Why hack SETI? The only purpose SETI has is to further mankind. Those who choose to hack should choose more wisely.

  • well, 555-1212 is a viable number, it would be more like 5B6-44C6, or 1232-1298773
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • I'll have a mirror up for you all at http://www.gashalot.com/setihack [gashalot.com] if anyone wants to see this and it's gone from the SETI servers.

    This is actually one of the funny website hacks that I have seen recently, instead of one that uses some 3l33t h4x0r sp34k trying to free Kevin Mitnik (or however you spell his name).
  • Like what, styrofoam?

    it would probably be more cost effective to *trade* with us then to try and destroy us.
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Its probally just there go at joke... It is pretty funny...

    Its indepenence day.. Alf, alien...
  • I was sleeping and missed the whole thing. heh Did anybody mirror the page before they fixed it?

    I had forgotten about Seti@Home, come to think of it I still have a flashing icon for it on my taskbar... I'll get back to it sooner or later.

  • You assume that someone who suffers a moral deficit and hacks a non-offensive site would act in a benevolent manner and give directions on how to fix the security flaw. Such people are more likely not to act in that manner as proven by their previous actions.
    It is also possible for them to screw up and delete something important unknowlingly.
    If they want to hack, go have a hacker war and hack other hacker sites.
  • Seriously though, if your system is so "mission critical" that any of these problems are an issue, you really shouldn't have the seti@home client running on it in the first place...

  • Whoever they were, it was friendly (Score:3)

    by edgy ( 5399 ) on Sunday July 04, 1999 @06:48AM (#1818837)
    If you look at the source of the page, you can see the following:

    //---! original index.html is backed up as index.html.old !---//

    (took out greater-than and less-than signs)

    Looks like the crackers were just having a little bit of fun. I found it kind of amusing. If the page is gone, at any time later, im gonna mirror it at http://high.amvalue.com/~edgy/seti [amvalue.com] in case anyone misses it.
  • Go read Drake's equation. ... Solve for 1 and see the numbers that are required, just to prove the point.

    Not possible. You can only solve an equation when you are missing only one variable. Since Drake's Equation relies on the values of 11 variables, and you're specifying one, you're left with trying to simultaneously solve for 10 independent variables. I think we can safely put that in the "too hard" basket :)

    Cheers
    Alastair
  • Actually, chances are that it _is_ a real hack. The reason it has not been fixed yet is probably due to the 4th of July. Most (all?) universities in the US are closed on the 4th of July and a large majority of people take the time to celebrate with friends and family. I'm sure it will probably be fixed sometime early on Monday.
    ---

  • All wrong (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You've got it all wrong!
    It didn't get hacked -- that's the message from outer space that they found!
  • I think he was talking about sites that say "Burn the Jews etc". And are you saying that to stop the KKK, Jews should renounce their religion? btw there are very few atheist countries. North Korea is one of them...
  • Yes, but this is only true if you aren't diligently running tools that maintain offsite hashed indexes of the contents of your machine so you can tell if anything critical has been modified.

    Primary investigator? What planet are you on?
    The boss will want to know 'what happened'. The guy will say 'some kind changed our page to a picture of alf. He left everything else alone, i've already verified this. It was due to a bug that MS didn't reveal until yesterday, and it was my day off. It's been fixed now. NO harm done.
    That'll be 24 hours overtime.



  • Millville, NJ Cape May, NJ Fulshear, TX and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia all lost power today (that's all I know of). And SETI@Home was hacked by aliens.

    PLease tell me if you know of any other power failures. And be sure before you say.
  • Uhm, ok. Well when I viewed the story (the first 3 times) there were no comments posted. After I submitted my post it let me view the other comments posted... heh either something was screwy or somebody read my mind.

  • I remember a while back... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember a while back /. was hacked. Did you
    guys ever find out how they gain access?

    Stephen

  • The speed of light is certainly not constant, it was never claimed to be.

    It is the speed of light in a vacuum that was supposed to be constant, but I believe that is being called into question recently by new experimental evidence? (correct me if I'm wrong)

    In any case, this thread is fairly offtopic, and should end here. As for SETI@Home being cracked, this was obviously not a malicious hateful cracker. Really, it could've been a hell of a lot worse. Stop acting like it's the end of the world. It was a joke, and an easily repaired one, that surely didn't damage SETI and probably helped them out quite a bit by pointing out their security hole!
  • It's for fun, you humourless nut. Like turning the MIT Dome into R2D2. It's not necessarily evil or harmful if it's done for fun.
  • if the KKK is so religious then why do they target Jews (a religious group) burn crosses and black churches?
  • I thought SETI was for us to find other intelligent planets and then try to exploit them as much as possible and then try to feed these intelligent civilizations with occident-centric beliefs and values and bring them to submission. When asked why we do it our response would be that it is for our national security and what we are doing is for the good of the universe. Hey, what's good for us must be good for them too right? We might even make them try to convert to Christianity and tell them that Jesus also died for their sins.

    I wonder what would happen to the Miss Universe pageant if we discovered and started interacting with extraterristrial civilizations, I could just see Miss Universe being a scaly sextapedal creature from another satellite.



  • Read the comment on Slashdot. Apparently all you had to do was view source to find the backup.
  • That is correct. Saying that the speed of light is constant is like saying that the speed of that 747 flying above me is constant and will never change.


  • Yeah, and like Columbus, once we have found them we should rape and pillage them if they can't or haven't already destroyed us for our natural resources.

    Aliens: We must begin our landing sequence and destroy these two legged creatures so we can mine their planet for very precious sheep dung!

  • > Finally, the art of language is one of the
    > greatest achievements of humanity. Quit
    > mangling it.

    art -
    4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : FINE ARTS (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art

    He was merely using his creative imagination. To each his own I guess.....
  • If there are any phenomena that leave traces in the radio signals earth receives from space (sort of what radio telescopes are for), analyzing those signals and checking out the prospects winnowed from the data is likely to reveal those phenomena.

    So, attacking the SETI problem, which (obviously) interests people enough to participate in the analysis, will IMO much more likely result in announcements of natural galactic-scale masers (or something sounding like that), than the discovery of ET. Which will greatly interest, at least, the astronomers and astronomy mavens.

    I think the term for this is marketing :-)
  • IIRC, the Casmir Effect - two conducting plates placed near each other, which excludes from a vaccum between the plates virtual particles with wavelengths longer than the plate separation - is one way to raise the speed of light in the affected region.
  • Destroy humans to protect sheep?

    Now thatwould be ignoring symbiosis!
  • Evolution in action?
  • If you think the hack was funny and/or harmless, then there is no reason to go off like a lunatic trying to kill the invaders off just because they were able to get into your computer. The fact is, it's always going to be possible to do that in one way or the other (whether just through technical expertise or through such techniques as social engineering); it's better to have "good" hackers do this, do no harm and point out the security hole, than to have crackers do this and force you to change the root password and bring the site back up from backups.
  • for other reasons, of course. Long about 9:00 or 10:00 I turn on the TV in hopes of finding some really cool cartoons on. However, I find some sports shows, some Saved By the Bell-ish shows (talk about the worst show of all time) and a whole bunch of Infomercials. What's happened? What will the children of tomorrow do about cartoons? They will be deprived of so many wasted Saturday mornings.
  • Of course porn benefits mankind.

    It stimulates the development and the initial use and survival of the newest technologies, supporting them financially until they become cheap enough, or, umm, penetrate the market enough to take off into general use. And then pretend that it never happened.

    Examples? VCRs, Video cameras, streaming video...

    Some complain of the bandwidth used, as if the internet connection purchased with their dollars should take precedence, but these are the same people who will be later using and enjoying the technologies for less erotic uses.
  • Well when I went to the Seti@home web page I found that they had all ready put the normal web page back. So then I went to 2600 at www.2600.com the place to find all the web pages that have been cracked, all thought I don't recommend it for someone under 18 'cause some of the hacked site they show show it all if you get what I mean. Also I don't agree with the people who cracked Seti@home when they could crack some site that is worth hacking like the nazi, kkk, porn site, any anti religion site, Microsoft (he he just kidding, but then again maybe not) or any other site that is like that. chow (^_^)
  • People have the right to express their opinions on topics, to be sure. But hacking sites is just wrong, and downright infantile. There are vast forums available to issue protests in legally, without resorting to illegal methods.

    As for finding anything by looking at noise, of course I expect them to find something! How can they find it if they don't listen? The odds may be no better than winning the lottery, but you can't win if you don't play!

    seti@home is a beautiful concept. My computer has millions of spare cycles per day that would otherwise be wasted. So, I am not wasting fossil fuel, I am putting it to good use. And hundreds of thousands of other people feel the same way. The possiblility of the greatest discovery in the history of humankind...hmm, let's see...do I want to be a part of it? Hell yeah!
  • I know that I'm not the most up to date with popular culture. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would explain how "peckerwood" is racist? Please do not respond to this post, but rather email it to me. I have a feeling that it won't be suitable for a public forum such as this
  • Perhaps he meant things like the remarkable lack of medical treatment for the elderly some countries, for example kidney dialysis?
  • You know, it would be rather nice if the SETI project would now distribute a utility to check if people are running the SETI client or a hacked copy of what they thought was the SETI client.
  • I'm not trying to cause offense here, but have you stopped to remember that old people are *meant* to die. It's how life works. You get born, you breed, then you die.

    Keeping old people in a world of pain for what amounts of purely selfish reasons is wrong.

  • ALF (Score:1)

    by NateKid ( 44775 )
    Does anybody know if there's a copy of the hacked website posted anywhere? My proxy won't let me go to www.2600.com and see if a copy's been posted there (I might get fired for checking) and I'd love a picture of Alf for my desktop wallpaper.
  • Even when it's just to go to the toilet ? Or make a cup of coffee ? Or answer the phone ?
  • The page is fixed, but the alf.jpg is still right where it was. I can't really think of why they might have left it there. It DOES mean that they most likely DIDN'T do a full restore of the site from a backup, as someone earlier said they might.

    This really could be a hoax or some other kind of "sanctioned" event. I bet, at the least, they're laughing about it; if they regarded it as a serious threat I doubt they would have left an image file in their root www directory that someone else had put there.
  • they are also gauranteed ~Freedom from Democracy~
  • And are you saying that to stop the KKK, Jews should renounce their religion?

    Ofcourse not. That doesn't make sense, it doesn't work that way. All I said was that religion promotes ignorance, and quite often hate as well. At least christianity does, and that's where the KKK come from.

    Now before you start jumping down my neck, I'm not saying that all christians are KKK's, far from it, but there's no denying that the KKK is based on christianity.

    And where did you get this jews stuff from anyway? I see absolutely nothing about jews in either my post or the one I was replying to.

  • Posted by rdobbs:

    The data that is being sent out is prone to corruption. However, it doesn't really affect the project as the packet, once returned, is compaired to the original data and checked for integrity.

    If it don't fit - the datagram is tossed, and the packet is resent to another client for reprocessing. SETI has the original telescope radio data somewhere offsite - because if they didn't, the whole project would have been destroyed years ago...
  • Of course old people die. Age is an incurable condition, so far. Duh! I would not argue that if, fully informed of what treatment is or is not effective for a possibly fatal condition, and offered it they should not have the option to choose death instead.

    Perhaps from an evolutionary perspective, "You get born, you breed, you die" is all that is important. But this logic indicates persons who are sterile, women who have reached menopause, and so on should be excluded from public health programs. Morally, I reject this eugenics approach.

    In human society a person's contributions can extend for their entire lives. They do not become of less worth to society as they age, and limiting the choices available for them is as objectionable as any genocide based on discrimination by sex, race, et cetra. But excluding them from treatment is no better than murder being excused by other conditions they may have.


    "Selfishness"? Give me a break. Goodness, the money saved by excluding the sick elderly from treatment using your excuses, and the inheritances transferred more quickly to their heirs, just seem terribly convenient, don't they? What an amazingly convenient, cost-saving coincidence. Not.
  • Posted by JPFunk:

    They moved the original index.html to index.html.old, so at least they were nice about the hack. Amusing, anyway...
  • Posted by Napalm4u:

    Okay i agree maybe people would see the kkk site more. I have many people in my family who faught the nazis during ww2. Alright?, I hate these Bastards! Hate is tearing apart this country, just the other day there were shootings in chicago, during the bombing of kosovo there was a string of firebombings in LA of Jewish Temples.

    This country makes me sick. Everyone here thinks that the constitution says they have the right to do all this crap. The other day i saw that there was a Neo-Nazi protest somewhere in the south. I can't believe that, all those flags and pictures of Hitler. A man that killed is directly or indirectly responsible for 26 million dead russians and postilby 100 million more dead.
    Why?

    About the anti religion sites: I mean all those Anti Islam, Anti Hindu places.

    I used my post to say that I hate all kinds of oppression.

    This planet sickens me, i dunno maybe i'm just bitter
  • Fixed it? I saw it after seeing your comment, so you're obviously still asleep...

    I dare say they'll have a mirror up at HNN before long, though, in case you really do wake up too late.
  • I am not meaning to say that humans will never find aliens, it is just that with our current technology the only ones that we would find are the ones that want to be found and we would not need seti@home for them.
  • As of 12:50 EST Alf is still there. Better hurry!
  • Finally :)

    someone with common sense...

    If some of you are that paranoid, run TCP dump on a machine while it's xmitting SETI@Home data...
    And please, dont turn /. into The Globe or some crap like that :)
  • Think about it. Some 15 year old kid thought it might be fun to use his "hacking" skills to make a joke. He's probably in a "hacking" ring full of immature kids just like him. It is sad, though, to see SETI hacked.
  • I beleive that the cracker wants to show that SETI@home is silly, just like ALF. Do you really expect to find anything by looking at white noise? I am all for the progress of humankind but is this really doing anything more than wasteing fossil feuls.
  • It's still not at all nice, but it's much better than 1 0wn u sh0\/\/ts 2 fuDpack0r and syb0rpHag3 ha ha ha.


  • Perhaps it's a funny way of saying 'Your site is insecure?'
    The original site, as they say, was backed up. Restoring it is probably a matter of 'mv backup/* .'
    no big deal. Kinda funny.
  • How exactly are the myriad users of the Windows versions going to do this thing?

  • ALF (Score:2)

    by metalman ( 33387 )
    Excuse me, Alf was one of my favorite shows!

    And I think that anyone else out there who is being honest would admit that too..
  • You know. You're right? Tell me, where do you live? I want to spray paint your house. Just for 'fun'.

  • How are we wasting fossil fuels by simply capturing cpu cycles which would otherwise be wasted on NOP's? It's a far more egregious waste of energy to have the countless PC's which are on for say 15 minutes while their users go grab a cup of coffee to simply sit and do nothing productive!

    Admittedly the SETI project (note that it is currently a test, and not really geared to a large scale survey) has little prospect of finding signals from intelligent life. Does this mean we should never look?

    How wasteful would it be for the human race to have missed its one opportunity for contact with an alien civilization, simply because we were too bullheaded to even listen!

    drudd

  • hell yea, perhaps it was an inside job, and just made it on the 4th to be funny
  • As a Sysadmin I would have no trouble with this. Of course, you would have to accept a CYA memo from myself, recommending the rebuild, noting the possible damage and liability, and releving me from any responsibility for your decision to do otherwise.
  • If they left the car where it was, but changed the presets on the radio to Country & Western stations - now that would be malicious.
  • Hey, if they make us prosperous, humans will follow them anywhere.

    And bite them, of course, as Mark Twain observed.

  • Security Concerns (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This raises, at least in my mind, concerns over the integrity of the data that SETI@Home is sending out... Remember the fiasco about duplicate data? And now their webserver gets hacked...

    What's to say that their data server hasn't been hacked, and random sections deleted, or tainted?

    -- BluKnight, who forgot his password
  • whoa, chill, it is not that bad, perhaps they wrote in a told them where the hole was but did a little joke on their way out.
    cos they (as far as it looks) have have damaged nothing but bought a humourous index page instead, and hey they even told what the other one was. i mean what would you like them to do? spend their time completely taking down some important site

    and SETI further mankind? how will it?

    by that claim, a porn site that gets some guys motor running shouldn't be hacked cos of its gonna further mankind ???
  • The alternate text for the alf image says "Gordon Schumway"... I wonder if Gordon knows the hacker (or is the hacker, though probably less likely).
  • RC5 cracking is something which makes use of the unused cpu cycles. and that has some real use
  • most likely, seeing as Gordon Schumway is Alf's name on his home planet.
    perhaps Alf and ET got on their computer (which according to ID4 is compatible with the Mac) and thought they might drop some hints...
    have they logged their ip? cos it could be past 255 (like in the movie 'the net').
    0-255 reserved for earth, and the rest for the aliens... :P

  • Re:ALF (Score:1)

    by zztzed ( 279 )
    I'll admit it. ALF was one of my favourite TV shows... when I was five years old.
  • nah, easyier than that. all they need to do is to rename index.html.old back to index.html, nothing else has seemed to be effected

  • Re:Arrg . . . silliness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And what would that be ? RC5 has outlived it's usefulness. It proved that rc5-56 could be cracked in a reasonable amount of time and that, by logical extension, all crypto was crackable. Nobody doubts that 64bit will eventually fall, and that the time to crack it will lessen to a point when it will eventually be crackable in a practical timeframe. Bovine fought the good fight, fought hard and WON. Now it's time to move on.
  • you are the one comparing him/her to a terrorist..
    what i would compare him to is a humourous poster on a door. cos if you look around you'll see that nothing else has seemed to be effected
  • Was the site really cracked? I would expect the site would have been fixed by now if that was actually the case (of course, they might all just be sleepyheads over in Berkeley.. ;-)

    Maybe it's just a publicity stunt or whatever..

  • bwahaha! That was funny. I take SETI very seriously and I almost feel out of my chair.

  • whoops, i meant i'd compare him/her to someone who puts a poster on a door. and they also had enuff decincy(sp?) to tell us where the orig is
  • I went to the homepage and now ALF's back.

    Did they hack the page again?
  • The waste of fossil feul that I am referring to is from people who leave there computer on overnight all the time. Also what were they trying to test? If people would use the program, if their servers could handle the load generated, or what.
  • to crack 64 as you said. but looking at noise in space, i'm yet to see the point in that?
  • Yuk yuk. Now put the original home page back, please.
  • http://www.pinball.nu/setihack/index.html

    Enjoy
  • Posted by Napalm4u:

    Why don't they do something constructive and hack the assholes on the KKK site???? White power, nazi, and anti any religion sites should all be hacked!

    This pisses me off!

  • hmmm.. (Score:2)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    That hack looks an awful lot like Microsoft's new homepage [min.net]..

  • come on (Score:2)

    by cale ( 18062 )
    For all those taking this too seriously I have one thing to say (well maybe two) lighten up. I don't see it anywhere even close to destructive. Hell, they backed up the old index.html file, what more do you want from them? I found it funnny, its not like it will take them hours and hours of effort to restore. I just hope the people who did it tell the seti people how they did it so the security hole can be fixed. Other than that I think most people just need to lighten up. Though I am glad to see that a good number of the geeks out there do have a sense of humor about things like this that were just ment to be funny.
  • If you downloaded code from SETI@Home and ran it without reading the source and compiling it yourself, then you should be worried that their security is so lax. Perhaps you really installed a trojan that is even now uploading your /etc/passwd file to a cracked ftp server somewhere. If you installed it behind a company firewall, you should be even more worried.
  • .....and he must die!
  • This isn't how they gained access, but it is a link to the mirror [attrition.org] (if you want to see it).

  • Re:Funny. (Score:3)

    by eriko ( 35554 ) on Sunday July 04, 1999 @08:38AM (#1819001) Homepage
    Unfortunatly, not. If you site gets cracked, you can't assume anything on the machine is safe-you need to wipe it, reinstall, apply every patch that you can find, and then grovel over a backup of the hacked site to see if you find a new hole. It's an enormous PITA.

    It may be funny to the joker who decided to post it, and it does seem harmless, but the sysadmin who runs that machine has just found himself with a minium 48 hour job-and then, of course explaining to the boss-no, the Primary Investigator, what the hell happened, and why he didn't stop it.

    (The PI is the guy who got the grant. They are not noted for thier sense of humor-or proportion)


  • You guys are missing the point. Now, this has been said before, but I'll say it again. As a sys admin, you have to worry that since the machine was cracked, there are other security holes (read: trojans). Just because the crackers put a nice little comment in the index.html saying the old file was copied to index.html.old doesn't mean that something more malicious wasn't done. Who knows. But there are other ways of notifying the admin other than leaving your mark in such a manner as this.

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