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Hackers infiltrate undergraduate film group’s site

The infiltrator left a brief message, indicating that he or she goes by the name g4br131 and is part of the iLeGaiS-TeaM, a group of hackers.

University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said that OIT has not confirmed the source of the breach. She added that “we do not have any knowledge of what made that website a target.”

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James Hamm ’08, chair of UFO, said he also did not know why g4br13l attacked the website. “There’s no real motive except to mess stuff up,” he said.

The website should be back up within the next few days, Hamm said.

Computer science and public policy professor Ed Felten said in an e-mail that some hackers “are just vandals who get pleasure from causing trouble. Others hijack sites as a way to gather private information for profit.”

Brian Kernighan GS ’69, another computer science professor, who is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian, said that hackers can be “kids [who want] to show that they can do something” or “people who have some grudge or axe to grind.”

“This one has the feeling of kid,” he said of the attack on the UFO website.

In general, when people hack websites, “they exploit some kind of security flaw in the software that runs a site, or in the management of a site,” Felten said. “This is the technical equivalent of finding an unlocked door or a window with a weak latch.”

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Felten said hacks in websites that are part of a network can put the rest of the network at risk. Even though Felten and Kernighan both said they needed more information in this case to determine whether the rest of the Princeton network would be put at risk, Kernighan noted “it’s not a good sign when one site is compromised. There might be some kind of vulnerability that can be exploited for others as well.”

The hack, however, should not affect Princeton students directly. “There wasn’t any information that could’ve been stolen. It was all public information,” Hamm said. “Nothing personal was up there.”

Felten said that protecting a website from hackers means “being vigilant about how the site is set up and what is happening on the site.” Kernighan explained that “almost all computers are vulnerable,” adding that it is important to “keep up to date with bug fixes and security patches.”

“It amounts to cleanliness,” he noted.

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After a breach, the speed at which a website recovers “depends on the nature and extent of the breach,” Felten said. “Sometimes a site can be up and running again within an hour. Sometimes it takes days. In the worst case (which probably isn’t happening here) it can take weeks.”

Kernighan described hacking as a “subculture,” explaining that “hackers run in groups” and that some have “cute names,” as is the case with iLeGaiS-TeaM.

The UFO shows feature films at the Frist Campus Center. It is a subsidiary of the USG.