Al-Qaida Website: "Hacked, tracked and now owned by the USA" - 08/14/02 11:41 PM
August 12, 2002
Al-Qaida's website was hacked, with the use of tools like Snapback (for domain registration), whois and traceroute, as well as an online translator.
The hacker, John Messner, knew Al-Qaida was operating as "Al Neda" in Kuala Lumpur. Before Al-Qaida could change its registration to India, Messner used Snapback to transfer ownership of the site to himself. He put a copy of Al-Qaida's site on the server, so terrorists didn't notice the move for 5 days.
During this time, he traced all Al-Qaida-related terrorist websites. Messner then replaced the site's content with a US Great Seal. On the original article, you can learn about how Messner tracked the terrorists and how hard it was to convince the FBI he was right.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54455,00.html
Al-Qaida's website was hacked, with the use of tools like Snapback (for domain registration), whois and traceroute, as well as an online translator.
The hacker, John Messner, knew Al-Qaida was operating as "Al Neda" in Kuala Lumpur. Before Al-Qaida could change its registration to India, Messner used Snapback to transfer ownership of the site to himself. He put a copy of Al-Qaida's site on the server, so terrorists didn't notice the move for 5 days.
During this time, he traced all Al-Qaida-related terrorist websites. Messner then replaced the site's content with a US Great Seal. On the original article, you can learn about how Messner tracked the terrorists and how hard it was to convince the FBI he was right.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54455,00.html