NYTimes.com down for some users; paper suspects “external attack” | Hacker News Reader

NYTimes.com down for some users; paper suspects “external attack”

gigaom.com

94 pointsAaronn30 comments

Perhaps more critically, twimg.com (and now Twitter, it seems) has also been compromised. Both share the MelbourneIT registrar.

$ whois -h whois.melbourneit.com twitter.com -> now owned by sea@sea.sy (Syrian Electronic Army)

The name servers for the Times have been switching back-and-forth for a while. I've chronicled most of it at https://twitter.com/semenko

Ouch.

If twitter is compromised, sites serving twitter js (which is a lot of sites) are potentially compromised too. I've just checked and at least some widgets from twitter are down at present (all?), twimg.com is not responding.

DNS and registrars is a bit of a weak point at present in site security, as once they have that, they can serve users whatever they like. It would be even more damaging and hard to detect if they just tweaked content slightly for a few hours by adjusting some words in stories for some countries rather than hijacking sites.

Well, luckily, Twitter's domains & cert are added to the Chrome HSTS pins list, so Chrome should just serve a scary security error.

Looks like their WHOIS data has reverted to normal. Not sure the NS records ever changed (though the contact data did).

One HN'er suggested a tweak to HTML where a hash of the js is taken along with the <script> tag to allow the browser to verify if the js has been modified. Of course this assumes that the js is static and that there are no upgrades to the code.

Another option would be to do this as a service but then you'd immediately have another attack vector as well.

In everything associated with the situation in Syria beware of the possibility of false-flag operations.

This hack appears to be genuine.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/24/tech/syrian-electronic-arm...

I'm not claiming the hack isn't genuine.

We are now publishing at a backup site: http://news.nytco.com

Why the heck are both Twitter and the New York Times using a in the context small Australian registrar? (MelbourneIT)

edit: looks like MelbourneIT do DNS for a ton of big names. really really weird.

I'm wondering this, too. Does MelbourneIT have some sort of service or reputation that makes it attractive to large companies like Twitter or NYTimes?

"Syrian Electronic Army claims to have taken control of Twitter.com domain registration"

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100988772

Tweet with some info regarding Twitter & NYT:

https://twitter.com/jaesonschultz/status/372456943312330753

OpenDNS blocked the Syrian domains and updated its DNS resolvers to omit them:

https://twitter.com/davidu/status/372482424313110529

Verify at:

http://www.opendns.com/support/cache/

nameservers changed at registrar, gltd reports accordingly.

nytimes.com. 172800 IN NS ns27.boxsecured.com. nytimes.com. 172800 IN NS ns28.boxsecured.com. ;; Received 114 bytes from 192.41.162.30#53(192.41.162.30) in 17 ms

OK, then, the key question is: which registrar are they using and how do that registrar's security get compromised?

NS records pointing to Syrian Electronic Army - http://viewdns.info/dnsrecord/?domain=nytimes.com

You can still get to the New York Times by going to their IP address: http://170.149.168.130/

Hacked by the SEA

I alternately get the message "Hacked by the SEA" (to my dismay I've been informed this is the Syrian Electronic Army, not the Symbionese Electronic Army...), or a redirect to http://www.boxsecured.com/high_cpu.html - a 404 error saying hi_cpu.html is not found.

NYTimes DNS has been hyjacked to redirect to SEA Blog (Syrian Electronic Army). Here I mirror the front page and some of the linked content from the English version of the page. You can see the page yourself by using FireFox or another browser besides Chrome that allows you to accept non-standard and mismatched certs. The JavaScript doesn't appear to be malicious, but I'm not an expert.

_ * Latest News *

Syrian Electronic Army Facebook Page | Number : 220 After the Facebook management shut down the page number 219 The new page link : https://www.facebook.com/SEA.Official.220 .. Read More...

Syria Tube is a page on the social network Facebook

it was created in 4/4/2011 in order to publish all the videos of what happening

in Syria and the right news about Syria

The new page link after the Facebook management closed the main page:

https://www.facebook.com/Syria.Tube.Official

https://www.facebook.com/SEA.Official.220

_ * Latest Hacks *

Time, CNN and WashingtonPost Websites Hacked

The Syrian Electronic Army hacked today into Outbrain service and take control of admin panel. The security breach affects CNN, Washington Post, Time and more high profile websites. Outbrain is a content recommendation service whose widget offers to help internet publishers incre.. Read More...

Time, CNN and WashingtonPost Websites Hacked Publish date: 2013-08-15 17:10:34 | Views number: 1559

The Syrian Electronic Army hacked today into Outbrain service and take control of admin panel. The security breach affects CNN, Washington Post, Time and more high profile websites.

Outbrain is a content recommendation service whose widget offers to help internet publishers increase web traffic at their websites. It does so by presenting them with links to articles and other content.

The admin panel of Outbrain is hosted in the local server. However, the SEA hackers managed to login into the panel with the help of VPN and access panel.

Zone-H Mirrors : http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/id/20533795

http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/id/20533808

ScreenShots of the Outbrain Administration Pa

_ * Media *

Syrian state television claims that a pro-government group has hacked into two social messaging networks and seized records of local users.

Such a hack could expose Syrian rebels and other activists who depend on the networks to publicize army crackdowns on their hometowns and communicate with each other. Landlines and cell phones are believed to be tapped in Syria.

State TV says the social networking site Tango was hacked on Sunday by the Syrian Electronic Army.

The Syrian Electronic Army is a shadowy group that supports President Bashar Assad's regime.

There was no immediate comment from Tango.

Syrian media says another network -- Truecaller -- also was hacked last week.

Truecaller said in a statement posted on their website that it had been the target of a cyber-attack.

Source: Fox News

Some website's talked too about the attack:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/21/pro-assad-group-hack...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Syrian-Electronic-Army-Hacks-...

http://www.idigitaltimes.co.uk/articles/492642/20130720/syri...

http://hackread.com/mobile-messaging-service-tango-hacked-by...

http://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Tango-messenger-hacked-Syri...

http://threatpost.com/sea-hacks-messaging-app-tango-steals-u...

_ * Leaks *

Office of Qatar Emir's mother forces ISP to block SEALeaks website from Google searches/Qatari DNS

Office of Emir's mother forces ISP to block SEA | Leakks website from Google searches/Qatari DNS And here is the reply of the ISP: The Syrian Electronic Army obtained the emails after it hacked into Moza mail system .. Read More... SEA Publishes Turkish Ministry of Interior Emails and Passwords

Latest Hacks | Media | Leaks | Mobile Version

From The Pictures Library ::

From The Videos Library :: SEA gave a visit to Social Flow Website/Accounts

Office of Qatar Emir's mother forces ISP to block SEALeaks website from Google searches/Qatari DNS

[image of email] http://i.imgur.com/gFJQX4W.png

Publish date: 2013-06-29 16:00:20 | Views number: 4862

Office of Emir's mother forces ISP to block SEA | Leakks website from Google searches/Qatari DNS

And here is the reply of the ISP: [image content broken]

_ * Battalions *

Vict0r Battalion | The Shadow Battalion | Th3Pr0 Battalion

http://blog.thepro.sy/ | https://www.facebook.com/SEA.Vict0r.2?_fb_noscript=1

_ * Martyrs *

Martyr Mohammed Qabbani

Martyr Lorans Barakat

_ * About SEA *

The Spark of the Launch

The SEA created in 2011 when the Arab media and Western started bias in favor of terrorist groups that have killed civilians, the Syrian Arab Army and the destruction of private and public property, was the Arab media and western form a cover for the continuation of these groups, their actions through the blackout on terrorism in Syria and paste all charges Army Syrian and charged with murder and sabotage... Read More

The Mechanism | The Funding | The Vision

Reply on news.ycombinator.com