Los Hackers on the Loose Latin American Sites Vandalized

By Margarita Martinez The Associated Press B O G O T A, Colombia, Feb. 15  Internet vandals are wreaking havoc in Latin Americas fast-growing cyberspace frontier, knocking out everything from a newspaper portal in Colombia to the governments election Web site in Peru. From Mexico to Argentina, hackers have left behind mocking graffiti on Web sites theyve violated, boasting of their programming prowess and sometimes making political statements. Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who is the center of an international custody fight, was the subject of Web vandalism in Havana last weekend. He Belongs in Cuba He doesnt belong in the United States of America. He belongs in Cuba, with his family, wrote the hacker from Team-Echo, who said he broke into the Cuban Meteorological Institutes site to expose its lax security. Internet vandals caused millions of dollars in lost business to major U.S.-based Web portals, including Yahoo! and Buy.com, this month with saturation attacks that made them inaccessible for hours (see related story). In Latin America, its even easier to break into many Web sites because Internet culture is relatively immature and authorities are generally ill-prepared to respond, experts say. The security of Latin American portals is extremely weak. Adequate measures have not been taken to protect them, said John Galindo, whose Bogota company, Digiware, provides security for Web sites in Colombia and Ecuador.

Teen Attackers Many Latino cyber-intruders are simply teenagers testing their mettle, while others are professionals who delve deep inside corporate sites without leaving a trace, Galindo said. In the past week, 13 attacks were recorded on Latin American sites by a attrition.org, a U.S.-based group that catalogues Internet defacements (see Web links, right). In Argentina, seven were recorded in a single night, said Gustavo Aldegani, director of the Information Technology Security Group in Buenos Aires. These are attacks by enthusiasts who try out [software] tools they download from the Internet, said Aldegani. Favorite targets in Argentina have included the Web sites of e-commerce companies and major corporations, he said.

Peru Site Crippled Perus election offices Internet pages remained crippled today, three days after teenage Brazilian hackers broke in and altered the names of monitors for the April 9 presidential vote, authorities said. In Colombia, the leading newspaper in Medellin, El Colombiano, had its Web site knocked out for two hours earlier this month. They left us a note on the main page, saying basically We found a little doorway, said Fernando Quijano, the news editor. Seven of the 27 attacks registered in Peru over the past six months originated in the United States, according to the president of the National Informatics Society, Cesar Vargas.

Blame Canada In Colombia, keepers of the governments Industrial Development Institute said they believe the hackers who defaced their Web pages with skulls and drug-related messages in fractured English last month were either French or Canadian. Mexico and Brazil currently have about two-thirds of Latin Americas Internet users, 3.8 million and 1.5 million, respectively, according to the technology analysts at International Data Corporation. Cyber-vandalism has received little attention from Latin American governments, which have done little to address digital crime, said Galindo.

Special Unit Colombias equivalent of the FBI created a special investigative unit in 1997 for electronic crimes. But it has focused on money-laundering, and the countrys penal code doesnt even address cybercrime. So Internet entrepreneurs often have to fend for themselves. The Web portal bogota.com opted for a typical solution after a 14-year-old hacked its site a month ago, replacing its logo with a picture of cartoon character Homer Simpson. Instead of trying to prosecute the youth, bogota.com asked him to help improve its security  free-of-charge.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/hack000216.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 17, 2000