Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/07/08/hackers_score_another_victory/

Hackers score another victory at Freeserve

Holes still evident despite assurances

By Tim Richardson

Posted in On-Prem, 8th July 1999 16:05 GMT

Freeserve's portal was the victim of another hack attack yesterday, raising more fears that it has failed to seal a hole in its defences. Anyone who tapped in http://www.freeserve.net/index.html was faced with "Jon's Cheats and Download Page" instead of a genuine Freeserve page. The trespassing page -- which was still viewable this morning -- has now been taken down and replaced with a "404 not found" error message. The problem appears to have something in common with a similar security breach last week concerning a "serious security flaw in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0". At the time, Dixons-owned Freeserve confirmed that a bug responsible for compromising the security of its service had been squished. A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that the relevant patches had been applied and that the system was now robust. No one from Freeserve was available to comment on yesterday's piece of vandalism. ®