Anonymous-linked hacker targets Ottawa, Laval sites
A hacker who took over the City of Ottawa’s website Friday is boasting that he was able to guess the city’s password based on hints provided by an employee of the company that operates the city’s Internet site.
The hacker, who calls himself “Aerith” and claims to be part of the online activist group known as Anonymous, says he received the clues from a network technician after he contacted the unnamed company posing as a city manager who had lost his login information.
According to a log of the conversation posted online by the hacker on Monday, the technician told him the password “looks like part of a physical address” and then said the address is in Ottawa and the word “Crescent” could follow it.
The hacker correctly guessed the password as “100 Constellation Cres.,” a City of Ottawa building in Centrepointe, and with that was able to instruct the technician to redirect the city’s home page to another host server and a page displaying threatening messages and a dancing banana. The hacker’s revelation Monday was the latest development in an often bizarre series of events that included attacks or threatened attacks on a number of websites over what the hacker claims are unjust accusations that an Ottawa teenager was behind a mischief campaign to send police emergency services on false calls in several provinces and U.S. states.
“The police have framed an innocent youth, and failed to investigate the crimes and furthermore, they have failed to provide any shred of solid proof,” said Aerith in a statement published online Monday.
The city would not respond Monday to the hacker’s password claims, but Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson told reporters that personal information was never at risk and the city took its down its site until it could be repaired.
“This is a serious matter and it is criminal activity,” Watson said.
Several other websites, including the Ottawa Police Service, Supreme Court of Canada and City of Toronto, went down for varying periods after the hacker threatened to target them. The Supreme Court said it took its systems off-line over the weekend to make sure they had not been compromised.
Ottawa police said their site would be restored on Monday.
The hacker also went after thecity of Laval on Monday evening.
Aerith published the following Twitter message Monday just before 6p.m. in response to a user who suggested the hacker “visit” the Sûreté du Québec’s website:
“I’m actually thinking of taking down the Laval police website.”
The site was loading extremely slowly as of 7 p.m., but still sporadically accessible. The city of Montreal’s website, meanwhile, was functioning normally.
The Ottawa teenager, who cannot be named because of his age, was arrested on May 8 and faces 60 charges based on complaints from California, Maryland, Florida, Connecticut and New York as well as police forces in Calgary, Halton Region and Quebec as well as Ottawa.
Involved in the investigation were the Federal Bureau of Investigation and well-known Internet security researcher Brian Krebs, who said he was drawn in when someone sent police to his home in early April to deal with a supposed hostage-taking. It was then he turned his attention to identifying the person.
Meanwhile, the teen’s father said Anonymous has found new evidence that will prove his son’s innocence. The father said Sunday he created a website to house what he says is evidence that his son was framed.