Honest Hacker Cracks F1 Malaysian Site

Here’s a good change from the usual security news that depict one worm or Trojan as the apocalypse, turning PCs into zombies and proud members of botnets. A hacker calling himself CuciOtak defaced the official website of the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix that is to take place this weekend. No claims and demands, no message, just a single picture of what seems to be a powder detergent box with a good punch line: Brain Wash: Removes even the TOUGHEST Propaganda.

Security firm F-Secure was the one with the find, and detailed that the means by which this came to be was that CuciOtak most likely modified the DNS information for the www.malaysiangp.com.my website and by that redirected all visitors to the spoofed page. This might come off as wrong, but I sincerely admire this guy who made no attempt to serve malicious code to those interested in Formula 1. He is probably just trying to make a name for himself, the way hackers used to do in the good old days when the pages considered to be the most secure started being attacked.

"There were no exploits or malware on the site. That would have been really bad, as this site must get tons of traffic right now," said F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen. Formula 1 has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon in the past years, and the money going into it amounts to huge numbers. Just one circuit made a profit of £13.6 million in 2006, now multiply that by the total number of tracks and you’ll get just a glimpse of the cash. There’s advertising involved as well, nobody can miss the various brands on the side panels and on the cars themselves.

Despite causing some inconvenience to the fans, this type of hack would be preferred any other day over the ones delivering malware, and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see it.

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