Lori
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Joined: 23 Jul 2005
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 Posted: 05/09/08 - 04:49 Post subject: Hackers attacked epilepsy forum causing migraines and seizur |
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Hackers don’t usually attack to cause physical pain on their victims but rather earn money. For example, a few months ago, some hackers exploited a simple coding vulnerability in Sen. Barack Obama's Web site and managed to redirect users to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's official campaign site.
However, a most recent hackers’ attack seem to be malice rather than earning when they bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site and posted hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images with different colors. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.
The links and images were presented as helpful but in turn, they triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in the site visitors who viewed them.
The hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software and managed to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site's support forums.
It is apparent they were out to create seizures, reported senior director of Web and print publishing for the foundation.
Because of this attack, legitimate members are no longer allowed to post animated images nor create direct links to other sites, and it is now moderated around the clock. The FBI is also investigating the incident.
This hackers’ attack was obviously not about profit as the harmful pages didn't try to push down code that would allow the hacker to gain control of the victims' computers. It was pure malice.
A similar attack occurred this year, when a piece of malicious code was released to disable a software that reads text aloud from a computer screen for blind and visually impaired people. This attack was made to disable the computers of people using illegal copies of the software. |
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