A team of script kiddies have invited a possible fatwah by defacing the Web site of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The site (http://web.president.gov.ir) , which normally carries pieces on President Khatami latest weighty pronouncements, was replaced with a smiley face and taunts by the hackers, mOsad and R.S. (infernoZ), that "your security is SUXXX!!!. The defacement has been mirrored by Attrition and is available here (http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2001/01/16/web.president.gov.ir),

Chris McNab, network security analyst at MIS Corporate Defence, said the attack was the work of "opportunists" who likely exploited a simple flaw in the site's Internet Information Server 4 web server.

"This attack was mounted by people who probably only know a handful of techniques. They probably scanned all the systems in gov.ir and then ran an exploit script, which is available on sites like Packetstorm," said McNab. ®

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