Hackers Invade Arts Center Website by Inserting Malware & Spyware Tool

The website of Pendleton Center for the Arts in Pendleton, Oregon (US) was hit by a cyber attack during the 1st week of July 2009, as reported by eastoregonian on July 14, 2009.

By cracking an easy password, a hacker invaded the Arts Center website and acquired control over it after inserting a malicious code into it. Moreover, the attacker also planted spyware on the infected website.

All visitors accessing the Arts Center website during the 1st week of July 2009 found that their systems had infected with a malicious program as well as had got loaded a spyware.

Meanwhile, investigations conducted into the Arts Center hacking incident haven't yet succeeded in locating the hacker, although one finding reveals that it was a Russian hacker who compromised the site.

Roberta Lavadour, Director of the Arts Center, who noticed the problem, alerted people that they should not access the website. He simultaneously notified the site's hosting company Eastern Oregon Telecom (EOT) about the incident. Consequently, EOT got engaged into repairing the affected site, as reported by eastoregonian on July 14, 2009.

Rob Naughton from EOT said - the reason behind the problem was very ordinary. The password for the Arts Center site was very easy to crack, as reported by eastoregonian.

In fact, Lavadour stated that the incident taught her a lesson. An ordinary word they used as the site's password for years helped the hackers to enter without difficulty, so now they have set a complicated alpha-numeric password.

Actually, security specialists worldwide recommend that individual users as well as websites should create alpha-numeric passwords since these passwords cannot be easily cracked. As a matter of fact, several software programs can be found on the Internet that help in cracking passwords. Anyone buying these, experimenting and learning from them could effectively bring down a website.

In the end, security specialists comment that cyber crime is growing with every passing day since computers, in increasing numbers, are going online each day; hence, end-users should take the required precautions.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 8/5/2009