GAO Site Defaced by “Alqaeda” Hackers

A group claiming to be part of a large hacker organization known as the Alqaeda Muslim Alliance compromised several servers belonging to the U.S. General Accounting Office in Washington on Sunday.

The Anti India Crew apparently breached the security of at least one mail server, an FTP server and two Web servers, according to data on the Alldas.de defacement archive.

Instead of the normal GAO information, users going to listserv.gao.gov saw a message, instead, left by the hackers. In it, the AIC admonishes other hackers for using the Alqaeda Muslim Alliance name and warns that there will be more attacks against Indian, Israeli and U.S. Web sites.

“We warned already we will hit us/in/il government servers until [sic] there is peace around us! Long live Kashmir and Palestine,” part of the defacement read.

Indeed, the Alldas site, which archives defaced Web pages, lists dozens of sites, many of them with Indian or Israeli domain names, which the AIC has defaced.

The GAO is the federal governments investigative arm and is responsible for keeping tabs on Congress as well as other government agencies.

Calls to the GAO were referred to the offices CIO, who did not return a message seeking comment.

AIC claims to be one member of the hacking triumvirate calling itself the Alqaeda Muslim Alliance. The other members are Gforce Pakistan and Pakistan Hackerz Club.