Defacer's Challenge: Unsecured Sites Targeted During Hacking Contest

Computer hackers vying in a global contest on Sunday defaced a slew of Web sites, but the damage was confined to the Internet's backwater of small, unsecured sites, security officials said. The "Defacer's Challenge" got off to a quick start . . . Computer hackers vying in a global contest on Sunday defaced a slew of Web sites, but the damage was confined to the Internet's backwater of small, unsecured sites, security officials said. The "Defacer's Challenge" got off to a quick start on Sunday with 300 attacks reported minutes after the 0600 GMT official start, said Roberto Preatoni, founder of Estonia-based Zone-H.org, a site that tracks hack attacks.

"There were no big names," he said. But he added his own site, www.zone-h.org, was knocked offline for much of the day because of a high volume of legitimate visitors and apparent attempts by hackers to bog down his computer servers.

According to the contest Web site https://www.defacers-challenge.com which was taken offline last week, hackers were urged to prove their skills by defacing as many Web sites as possible during a six-hour span on Sunday. Points were awarded for the number and type of computer servers they infiltrated, the rules stated.

The link for this article located at CNN is no longer available.