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Here's a discouraging piece of news for anyone who's put security professionals Dan Kaminsky and Kevin Mitnick on a pedestal: both men's sites were hacked in apparent coordination with the start of the Black Hat security conference.
The hackers left behind notes indicating that they were trying to humiliate and discredit their targets, accusing them of getting by more on reputation and hype than skill. It's unclear how the hackers carried out their attacks, but they did share some evidence of their success, and Kaminsky seems to have been the hardest hit.
Following the attacks, a file containing all sorts of confidential info was made public, and Dan Goodin reports, "The file posted on security mailing lists claimed to have obtained more than four years' worth of data from Kaminsky, and as proof, it offered a smattering of emails, instant messages, and other communications that laid out sensitive research work and intimate personal conversations."
Also, "multiple passwords Kaminsky used and back-end configurations for Kaminsky's website" were shared, and the site's been offline ever since as a result.
As for Mitnick, he apparently left less sensitive data on the servers that run his website.
Anyway, some members of the security community have come close to applauding the hackers; indeed, Kaminsky himself invited them to share a beer with him at DefCon. Others are a bit terrified that two high-profile figures turned out to be vulnerable, with a common thought being, "Then what chance do I stand?"
In related news, word about MI5's website getting hacked recently spread, but a fresh report indicates that the scary story may have been somewhere between exaggerated and inaccurate.
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