What Could Hacker Do To The JW.Org Site?

by frankiespeakin 22 Replies latest social current

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  frankiespeakin

  I really don't know anything about what Hackers do.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_security)

  In the computer security context, a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network . Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, challenge or enjoyment. [1] The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground and is now a known community . [2] While other uses of the word hacker exist that are not related to computer security, such as referring to someone with an advanced understanding of computers and computer networks, [3] they are rarely used in mainstream context. They are subject to the longstanding hacker definition controversy about the term's true meaning. In this controversy, the term hacker is reclaimed by computer programmers who argue that someone who breaks into computers, whether computer criminal ( black hats ) or computer security expert ( white hats ), [4] is more appropriately called a cracker instead. [5] Some white hat hackers claim that they also deserve the title hacker , and that only black hats should be called "crackers".
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  Simon

  Hackers are usually looking to exploit a vulnerability caused by either a software bug that hasn't been patched or a configuration error by a sys-admin.

  Exploits can be valuable so criminals will pay for them. Because of this they are less likely to be used against non-commercial or non-political targets.

  Any organization with sufficient resources normally has the capability to secure themselves against the threats they are likely to attract.

  I would not advocate criminal activity aganst the WTS -they do enough damage to go after then legally.
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  Apognophos

  I'm sure the Society has reasonable security in place. As Simon indicated, the only purpose served by malicious hacking is to sell your work to criminals (or for kids to boast on the Internet). And since it's a crime, they will go after the hackers if they can. I doubt there's any scandalous material that can be found there, anyway.
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  Island Man

  I have this fantasy of a group like Anonymous hacking jw.org and covering it with TTATT and a graphic that says "mene mene tekel parsin"
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  frankiespeakin

  Yeah maybe if the site got hached they would put up some banner saying something like this:

  "Jehovah's Celestial Chariot Ran Into Brick Wall Closed For Repairs"
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  88JM

  Probably the easiest thing would be DNS poisoning to get it to redirect users to jwfacts or something. The org might catch on pretty quick though.
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  OneEyedJoe

  Hacking a site and replacing it with your own content is a higher level attack than most. Usually hacks are about stealing information or taking a site down. As for the first one, the best that you'd be likely to get from the site is the BOE letters, which are always leaked anyways.

  What I'd like to see (and I posted this in another thread about the site) is someone write a script to basically spam the "request a visit" form with random information that appears valid. Realistically, it wouldn't even need to be spammed all that much to make a significant impact upon the minds of the brothers in the congregations. If half of the visits they go on turn out to be people who claim that they didn't ask for it (or, as the case may be, commercial addresses or vacant houses, etc) then the R/F will start see that 'mother' isn't infallable. If you spam it enough, it would likely result in them throwing away real requests, which would put a damper on their recruitment efforts.

  Another attack would be a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, in which you just get a bunch of computers to make page requests (or even just ping the site) overloading the servers. The trick here is you need a large number of computers to execute the attack, and this in itself requires either a large number of people willing to risk getting in trouble with the law, or someone who's gotten trojans on a lot of computers and can use them to carry out the attack.
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  disposable hero of hypocrisy

  It'd be interesting if hackers could get into the hq database and see personal records, lists of paedophile reports etc....
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  OneEyedJoe

  If they're smart, any damning evidence would all be on an isolated network, or would (at the very least) be accessible only via VPN with two-factor authorization. The latter is pretty standard for corperate networks these days, and the former would just make good sense when you're potentially liable for billions in damages from victims.

  That said, the delusion that they're backed by the almighty himself can make people do some pretty reckless things.
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  sir82

  There's not exactly a lot of potential profit in hacking the JW.org website. Why would anyone (outside of an "apostate") even bother?

  Or do you mean an ex-JW hacker?

  The ex-JW population is pretty small, relatively. There probably are not that many that could do it.