Below is a list of US governmental websites which were defaced by crackers – or elite hackers as the media would say – since 26th of June 07 until late February 2008. It is quite interesting to know that most of the security vulnerabilities affecting the following *.gov websites are known for some years now.

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Through the following post I am not purposing to influence you to start defacing, but to briefly give you a better understanding of how and why it is done.

Almost everyday I visit Zone-H’s archive of special digital attacks, I find that at least 1 or 2 attacks were done against US governmental web servers. The domain suffix of the defaced websites was *.gov. Does this fact means that they are totally secure? I don’t think so… Obviously the web servers may host very confidential data. In this case the web server administrators seemed to have allowed threats against governmental assets. Any unwanted consequences that a breach of security can lead to, are mainly caused by the irresponsibility and lazyness of system administrators and web developers.

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Everyday, the security of many high-profiled governmental, military, educational and corporate websites, is broken into by crackers who deface them. Although some defacers protest against wars and other just send greets to their cyberdudes, I believe that their true motive is to get to the top of the lead in “special” defacements. The defacers don’t want to admit this as the real reason for their attacks.

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In less than 200 words, I compiled very interesting information on the subjects of website defacing and hacktivism. Enough information is provided to you in order to answer my question which follows at the end. I would like to know your personal views.

Website defacement [2] is the substitution of an original home page by a system cracker/hacker. It is illegal in most countries as is considered an unauthorized computer access, data modification and denial of service. Crackers/hackers are usually defacing websites to spread messages and beliefs. Some of them are politically, socially and religiously motivated – given the term hacktivists – and some other just deface for the thrill.

A website defacement can create serious problems for companies as it they affects negatively their public image on the internet and in general. Victim companies may stop their transactions in order to repair the affected computer systems and thus lose money. It can also make their existing customers or potential future customers to lose faith in the company as it is evidence that their web server was broken into due to lack of security.

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