A US Air Force airman has been charged with using his time in Korea to hack into a string of high profile web sites.

At least that's the story being carried by securitywatch.com, which reports the hapless 24 year-old has been charged with hacking 113 Korean web sites.

More Airfix than Top Gun, the first class airman, and premier league plonker, is said to have bragged about his exploit and even used his PC at Korea's Osan Air Base for hacking. The man, known only as 'R', was arrested by police at his girlfriend's house while allegedly in the act of hacking another web site.

The story falters here by stating R's portfolio of hacks included "35 Korea-based venture companies" (so where did the 113 figure come from?) but recovers by suggesting our eponymous anti-hero was a member of the whp defacement posse.

Records on defacement archives like Alldas.de do show a group called whp has been active in defacing Korean web sites of late. The whp crew has hit 22 web sites, all running Linux, in the last month and all the defacements seem to be in English.

Surprisingly for a story of this type it hasn't been picked up elsewhere. So is it true?

We tried e-mailing fearsome (fearsome@programmer.net) who's address appears on many defacers without any luck. We then considered phoning up the airbase to ask if it was missing an airman. Good sense prevailed on that one and we decided that wasn't a conversation we wanted to have straight after a long bank holiday weekend.

Stuck for any ideas about who we might talk to confirm the story we decided we'd run it anyway and let you decide whether it's true or not. It's one of those stories that so good it ought to be true, even if it isn't... ®

External Links

The whp crew's Korean hacking spree (what do they have against Linux anyway?)
Securitywatch.com: US airman nailed for cracking 113 Korean websites