Teenager Hacker Gains Hold Over FTP Servers Belonging to US Government

According to one recent report, a teenager hacker was able in acquiring admission into numerous FTP servers that United States government owned. Going by the handle 'Fear' and using the id @hackinyolife on www.twitter.com, the hacker's attack was apparently accidental even as he came across a treasure mound most unexpected for him.

Art first, the hacker acquired admission into one server, however, soon he found that there were each and every FTP server's access credentials in it and that all the servers' hosting providers were .gov and .us domains. On the .us servers, there were source codes of different programs, private and public data, as well as other more sensitive details. What was saved on .gov websites, the hacker declined stating.

The '.us' high ranking domain is under the charge of Neustar. The domain .us is used in place of .org, .edu and .com domains. Fear asserts that hacking Neustar gained him admission into the FTP A/Cs associated with all websites whose URLs had the suffix .us.

Like many other companies, Neustar too plays the role of establishing a website, including one having the .us suffix. It, by hosting the website, enjoys unfettered admission into login data. Thehill.com posted this, September 19, 2016.

In the end, the hacker was able to garner several thousand payment card numbers, and several million SSN (social security numbers). He also got hold of the state employees' critical information comprising their names, telephone numbers, government positions and addresses. Seemingly, the FTP websites that the government of United States owns have passwords containing just 5 characters unlike the usual.

The teenager boy did not leave a backdoor with whose aid FTP servers could be accessed except for Florida. However, the Florida backdoor has already been removed. Yet everything happening is causing astonishment, considering that the USA government runs these servers while a lone teenager was able to reach them followed with seizing sensitive data.

With plans for dumping part of the hacked databases, Fear has said that a lot of the FTP servers of US government aren't properly secured, as only 6 among the total 50 States utilize passwords of 5-characters long.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/23/2016