Twitter Hackers Take Down Baidu

snydeq writes "The group that took down Twitter last month has apparently claimed another victim: China's largest search engine Baidu.com. Offline late Monday, Baidu.com at one point displayed an image saying 'This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,' according to a report in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party and other Web sites. The Iranian Cyber Army first gained notoriety with its Dec. 18 Twitter attack. Baidu's domain name records were the focus of the hack. On Monday, the company was using domain name servers belonging to HostGator, a Florida ISP, instead of the Baidu.com nameservers the company normally uses."

Hackers are no longer "cool"

[tixxit]

When I was in high school, I'd read something like this and the first thing that would pop into my head would be: "cool!" Now the first thing that comes up is: "what a bunch of assholes." Has hacking* finally lost its mystique? I just see these guys as a bunch of idiots who enjoy defacing property and crave attention (ie. vandals). * If the pejorative use of the term offends you, just pretend I used some other word that is more suiting

Re:!Florida, Texas.

[cravey]

It's not an ISP either AFAIK. They claim to lease servers from ThePlanet.

Forgot to log in. :/

Re:Alternate Associated Press Article

[Ethanol-fueled]

TFA:

"Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas," where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, while noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were "complex."

One particularly ugly consequence that the articles does not mention is this: [factsanddetails.com]

In some places men are marrying their first cousins and even their sisters through deals made with relatives because that is only way they can find a wife. The practice is so common that some communities are referred to as "incest villages."

Re:Hackers are no longer "cool"

[Yvan256]

Oups, I meant "Hackholes" (Hackers + Assholes).

Ho ho ho! But seriously...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Chortle. (Don't see why this was modded "interesting" rather than "funny".)

But seriously:

I'm wondering how long it would take for the Chinese authorities to notice if a similar hijack took the searchers to a site that LOOKED like the real one but:
  - gave them uncensored search results
  - with the links that would be blocked by the Great Firewall redirected through unblocked proxies.

Obviously launching this from anywhere INSIDE China would make the perpetrator a likely candidate for involuntary organ donation. But can you imagine the trial of someone from OUTSIDE China who was caught after perpetrating such a thing? THAT might set some interesting precedents.

It's so kind of them to offer...

[zullnero]

Their security services basically for free (if you don't count the downtime). They're doing a great job exposing all those backdoors to everyone who would otherwise be fine just quietly exploiting them as often as possible to potentially do things far more nefarious.

"took down Twitter"? Come on!

[NeverNow]

I understand Slashdot has lowered its standards, but such a post is embarassing. Twitter wasn't taken down. It was a case of local DNS servers poisoning. Bit of a difference.