In what is being perceived as a slap in the face of Internet authority, the NetDevilz, a hacker group from Turkey attacked the websites of two critical oversight organizations on the Internet, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
The hackers ensured that anyone visiting specific domains of the ICANN and IANA received a message that read, “You think that you control the domains but you don’t! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN! Don’t you believe us? haha :) (Lovable Turkish hackers group)”
This is not the first time the group has hacked into websites. Earlier on June 18, the group had also hacked into the DNS of Photobucket.
The NetDevilz seem to have chosen their targets with care and precision, because the two organizations attacked control some of the most vital aspects of the Internet, including allocation of IP addresses, managing the root zone servers of the domain name system, and also exercising control over the registration of domain names.
The domains that the hacker group hijacked included icann.net, icann.com, iana-servers.com, iana.com, and internetassignednumbersauthority.com. The hijackers directed all traffic to these sites temporarily to Atspace.com, specifically, 82.197.131.106.
The IP address mentioned above is the one to which the NetDevilz had directed traffic during the earlier Photobucket DNS attack. That organization had not given out an official statement on the attack at the time.
With their latest actions, The NetDevilz have shown that no one is safe from hacking. The obvious message is this – if we can hack into the websites of ICANN and IANA, we can hack in anywhere.
Speaking about the attacks, a spokesman for ICANN said the attacks had been handled within 20 minutes. He said that an investigation was underway at the organization’s registrar to figure out how DNS records may have been altered. There was no comment, on the other hand, from representatives of IANA.
Internet hacking has been on the increase. In May, hackers had also gained temporary access and control into the website of Comcast. The timing of the ICANN and IANA attacks is significant; it has not even been a day since the ICANN announced its decision to provide custom domain names to users.
News about the hijack first came through from researchers working with Zone-h. Zone-h is a security firm that keeps track of attacks launched through the Internet and in cyberspace.
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