They claim to be exposing software manufacturers' sloppiness and alerting the public to security gaps. But many playful citizens use the advisories to cause mayhem before companies have time to formulate solutions. Moreover, two L0phters are members of Cult of the Dead Cow, devisers of the highly effective Back Orifice 2000 programme. Nominally a play on Microsoft's Back Office network server package, BO2K allows the user to muck about quite seriously with the contents of other people's computers without them knowing it. Tongue in cheek, maybe, but Mr Hunker can afford to take the broad view.
Interesting content is monitored and analysed.
Once again, everybody's at it. Oxford University's geopolitical website, Oxford Analytica, recently reported waves of info-war activity. In return, the Indonesians tried to crash an Irish Internet service provider hosting the East Timorese country domain code. During the Balkan conflict, America was infiltrating Yugoslav missile sites to manipulate their radar returns while Serbian hackers crashed Nato's website with multiple hits. The Tamil Tigers have been pranging Sri Lankan embassy sites since 1995.