"What's going to happen this weekend?" asked ABC's KidZine area on AOL, October 11."Ask the CRYSTAL BALL" was their answer.
Did the crystal ball see the pending visit from two malicious strangers? "Some hackers got into ABC Kidzine's 'back door'," one staffer remembered that Wednesday. The strangers took one look around, and left their assessment of the network's content dir ectly below the ABC logo.
"This surprise sucks." Having a sense of humor didn't help ABC -- even though their welcome screen had advised users to "Get the JOKE OF THE DAY and start the weekend right!!!" But they weren't the only vicitims -- amazingly, at least two other AOL content areas also had their content altered that night -- including part of Steve Case's monthly update!"Hex" and "Glaze" also left a message in the title bar at keyword "Jewish". And a very suspicious message was left in the "Monthly Highlights" section of Steve Case's Community Update. In fact, after the attacks, a user named "JustHacked" ran through chat rooms repeating the same text, over and over again....
JustHacked: Keywords: Steve Case, AOL Live, Reebok, LSI, OnQ, Kidzine, JCOL. Within minutes, the seven keywords became "unavailable" to users, some displaying an "Under Construction" image...
Obviously, a tight-lipped AOL wouldn't be confirming attacks on keywords Steve Case, or the Lifestyles and Interest area. But three of the remaining attacks have been confirmed. That brings the total to eighteen.At least.
Spin magazine, the New York Times, Geraldo Rivera, Business Week--all have fallen to the population of on-line vandals. And now they're joined by ABC.
Watch for more updates on the AOL Watch mailing list!
Other Recent Hacks
The Hub (3/31/97) GameWiz (4/4/97) GameWiz (Again!) (4/25/97) FTP sites of several AOL employees (4/26/97 through 4/28/97) The New York Times (4/29/97) AOL Glossary (5/9/97 through 5/23/97) Stats Store (5/17/97 through 5/19/97) Thrive (6/12/97 through 6/13/97) Kids Kicks (6/19/97 through....) Fantasy Realm 6/23/97 through....) Spin magazine (8/10/97) Digital Cities San Diego (8/16/97) Business Week (9/18/97) MoneyWhiz (9/27/97) Geraldo Rivera (10/3/97 through 10/4/97) Jewish Community (10/11) ABC KidZine (10/11)
In addition, hackers hit AOL's Court TV area last November.
