Anti-.gov hacker group is back at work

By William Jackson

GCN Staff

JAN. 23- A hacker group with a penchant for defacing .gov and .mil Web sites, was back at work last week, attacking 26 national and state government sites, including two U.S. government sites.

In a poorly spelled message, the group, PentaGuard, made the hyperbolic claim that the attack was ?the largest mass defacement in the history of mankind.? They said the sites are ?totally unusefull? and ?Who needs them anyway?? PentaGuard also posted a series of personal messages.

The messages appeared Jan. 19 on sites for the Veterans Affairs Department?s National Cemetery Administration and the Alaskan office of the Interior Department, as well as a California State Assembly site and sites for the United Kingdom and Australia. They remained up for only a short time before being fixed.

The group appears to attack at random targets of opportunity in the .gov and .mil domains. Earlier this year it defaced the State Department?s Freedom of Information Act site and the site for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Information Management, for the Army?s European Command. Those sites were replaced with separate antigovernment messages. It also has attacked Navy, Air Force and Treasury Department sites. The messages make no demands and present no serious protest