Hackers shut down FBI Web site
Senate page also attacked
Reuters; The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Hackers apparently retaliating against FBI raids overwhelmed the agency's Internet site this week in an electronic attack that has forced it to shut down the site, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said yesterday.
The hackers also forced the U.S. Senate Web site to be taken down after they defaced it in an attack on Thursday.
The FBI, which investigates computer hacking and helps safeguard the security of the U.S. government's computers, said the Web site -- www.fbi.gov -- went down Wednesday evening. It remained down yesterday and FBI officials did not know when it would be back online.
They said the FBI was investigating the attack as an act of retaliation after search warrants were carried out this week in Seattle, Houston and parts of California in an investigation into computer hackers.
They said the FBI has yet to identify any suspects responsible for the attack.
The officials emphasized that the hackers did not actually penetrate the FBI's Web site or change any files there.
They said the hackers apparently ran a program on another computer that flooded the IBM computer hosting the FBI site, as if millions of Internet users had tried to read the Web site.
Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, described its site "as a public relations tool" containing press releases and speeches. "There's nothing on it that is in any way sensitive or classified," he said.
On Thursday, hackers defaced the Senate's Web page before it was taken down.
An obscene message left briefly on the site blamed the attack on what it said was the FBI's harassment of specific hacker groups, including the group that boasted of breaking into the White House site earlier this month.
"Who laughs last?" the message said in part, adding that the intent was to rebuke "our friends at the FBI."
Earlier this month, a grand jury in northern Virginia indicted Eric Burns, 19, on three counts of computer intrusion. Mr. Burns is reportedly known on the Internet as "Zyklon" and is believed to be a member of the group that claimed responsibility for the attacks on the White House and Senate sites.
Mr. Burns was accused of breaking into a computer used by the U.S. Information Agency between August, 1998, and January, 1999. The grand jury also said Mr. Burns broke into two other computers, one owned by LaserNet of Fairfax, Va., and the other by Issue Dynamics Inc. of Washington.
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