Hackforums Website Defaced by Egyptian Hacker
The number one online hacking forum in the world, Hackforums, was defaced earlier this week by an Egyptian hacker with the online handle Eg-R1z.
Hackforums is the largest information security forum online for whitehat and blackhat hackers alike. Hackforums has over 440,000 registered members and users teach each other through the way the forum operates.
The popular online forum allows for the community of hackers to interact freely and upgrade their accounts for additional features throughout the forum. Upgraded members get access to extra content and can interact further with the community. All in all, hackforums is built for anyone from starters to expert hackers, or anywhere in between.
On the 27th, hackfourms.net went dark with a defacement message reading:
“[403 Forbidden Error] – You might be blocked by your IP, Country, or ISP.”
That’s really nasty msg guys , don’t u think so?!
Just sending greets from Egypt
i-Hmx , H3ll C0D3 , Egyptian.H4x0rZ
./Eg-R1z Cr3w
–picture of deface page–
The administrator and owner of the forum, Omniscient, noted hackers managed to hijack the DNS. It appears the hacker just hosted a small image on the page and did not do much damage to the forum itself.
The forum administrator Omniscient is known for restricting whole countries, VPN’s, proxies, TOR, and most ways to obfuscate the IP address from accessing the site. He says it helps mitigate attacks, stop scammers, and stop users from evading their ban. As the forum is based around hacking, the administrator gets a lot of flack for his actions and many users state it isn’t about evading attacks, but about the freedom of information. If on a VPN, proxy, or similar network, hackforums will display a small text image stating: [403 Forbidden Error] – You might be blocked by your IP, Country, or ISP. The reasoning behind the attack appears that the hacker did not agree with Omniscients action to ban a large portion of IP addresses.
In regards to the attack, Omniscient posted on the official hackforums Twitter account:
Don’t worry your HF info is secure. I’m dealing with the issue now. No worries. We’ll be online asap.
— Omniscient (@HackForumsNet) August 27, 2014
This is not the first time HackForums.net has been defaced or hacked. In the past HackForums has also been attacked by a number of hackers with online handles imLulzPirate, b0x, SYRIAN-HACKER and KTN.
Credit for the photo and deface page mirror: zone-h.com/mirror/id/22830003
