Are hackers affected by lunar cycles? The question arises after we were sent a screenshot of the defacement of space.com yesterday morning. The attack happened hours before an annular eclipse reached Europe.

Coincidence? We think not. There's a lot of talk about zombie bots (PC infected by malware and under the control of hackers) but what of werewolves? Admittedly the defacement of space.com made no mention of lycanthropy but security vendors are always fond of talking about "silver bullet solutions" to hacker threats. There's even been a werewolf virus.

This might all sound a bit thin but if college profs can get financing to do studies on gay cows then surely the links between malicious hackers and shape shifting merit closer inspection. And while they're at it the putative study might also want to consider why the major virus outbreaks of the year (Nimda, Blaster, Zotob etc.) always hit in August. We suspect virus writers getting bored during their summer holidays from school or college might be behind this one. ®

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• Political hackers deface Novell SUSE sites (3 October 2005)
• UK tops zombie PC chart (again) (19 September 2005)
• MS UK defaced in hacking attack (6 July 2005)
• NASA hacker jailed (28 June 2005)
• Wibbly Wobbly Web casts shadow over eclipse (11 August 1999)
• Real world eclipsed by Web cast (23 July 1999)