A computer enthusiast who defaced Intel's Web site twice this week told The Register about the techniques he uses to break into prestige Web sites and what motivates him to tweak the nose of system administrators in the IT industry.

The-Rev, of cracker group sm0ked crew, has contributed to the defacement of sub-domains on Web sites belonging to Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and Intel twice this week alone. SmOked crew, which also includes a member called splurge, had a pop at Gateway and the New York Times this week just for good measure.

In an e-mail interview, The-Rev said he used the same exploit to break into Intel's site twice in as many days, which he did to ridicule Intel security after he was called a "script kiddie" in a story on the attack.

"I used the same exploit to deface Intel the second time. It was done to insult Intel after calling us 'script kiddies' in a article [on VNUnet]. We showed how lazy Intel's admins are and how we 'script kiddies' could break into Intel not once, but twice," he told us.

The message posted on the sub-section of Intel's site, which normally carries support material, reads in part, "Intel 0, sm0ked crew 2".

SmOked crew targets large, well-known IT companies, where they often find lax security, particularly in applying an IIS patch which addresses the Unicode bug, a vulnerability which Microsoft itself failed to adequately guard against when it was broken into by a hacker called Dimitri late last year.

The-Rev said: "I usually use the Unicode bug to deface my targets. This bug has been around a while, yet many admins don't take the time to patch up their systems."

He added that he himself hopes to become a systems administrator eventually. but not until he's had a bit more fun.

"Defacing is very addictive at first. When you deface a top domain, it gives you power within the defacing community. This leads to meeting new people, which leads to learning more on computer security in general. Eventually, when I learn enough about computer security, I will get rid of my 'handle' and become a system administrator, as most top defacers do," The-Rev said.

However, Web administrators will have to remain vigilant for a while.

"I love IIS hacking much more than *NIX [Unix] defacing. It's just my style. I do know a bit about *NIX defacing but I choose not to use this knowledge at this time," The-Rev told us.

"For now I want to be known as an NT/IIS defacer. It's a hard job but someone's got to do it."

According to Netcraft, all the sites except Compaq ran Microsoft's IIS Web server on a Windows NT4 platform. Compaq used the relatively unknown Simple, Secure Web Server 1.1 on a Windows NT4 platform. ®

Samples of The-Rev's work are mirrored on attrition.org here (search for sm0ked crew), and more samples of his work are mirrored on the defacement site Alldas.

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