Hot-and-Bothered Hackers Take on the Feds

As long as none of these guys is Chinese, there's no harm done. A few days after the FBI executed search warrants on suspected hackers' homes in Dallas, Houston and other locations, the hackers struck back -- first at the FBI's own website and then at the home page of the U.S. Senate. Visitors to the Senate page on Thursday (all three of them) were redirected to the hackers' own "MOD" web site and greeted by some taunting hacker wit: "Who Laughs Last?" Visitors to the FBI site got nothing at all -- a steady stream of hacker-generated hits had overwhelmed the site's servers and rendered the page unreachable. Nyah Nyah Nyah!

The mischief is typical of the nicer sort of hacker -- out to prove a point and tweak a nose, but not to do any serious damage. Not that these targets were particuarly sensitive anyway; a list of Senators' bios and some tourist info about crimefighting feds are hardly the kind of data that, say, Wen Ho Lee might find use for. Both sites have been pulled down temporarily so that technicians can boost the government's defenses. Let's hope it works -- Buddy and Socks' e-mail could be next!