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June 24, 2009, 02:37 PM ET
Hackers Rebuke Obama Via Oregon University Computers
Instead of reaching the Oregon University System’s Web site this morning, visitors found an angry message directed at President Obama.
Diane Saunders, a university spokeswoman, said hackers had redirected the system’s home page to a site claiming to be “from Iran.” The message was up for approximately 90 minutes before an employee arrived at work and found the breach.
The Web page, which was sent to The Chronicle and the Associated Press by the university system, told “Stupid Fly Catcher Obama” to stop talking about Iran and the recent Iranian election, which has prompted protests since the June 12 vote.
“Iran’s election doesn’t have problem and Moosavi with his tiny brain will be in jail in near future, so don’t pay your time and money for him and for his fans,” the site reads. “70-80% of Iranian people hate Moosavi nowadays… We never cheated in elections and even Moosavi knows that.”
A message sent to the e-mail address listed on the Web site was not returned. Ms. Saunders said the hackers were most likely able to access the university Web page through ClickHeat, a free program that documents what areas of Web sites are being clicked most. She said the program does not automatically update solutions to problems that are found, and the university had not downloaded the most recent security update.
The university will pay more attention to updates for ClickHeat and five other third-party programs it uses that do not perform automatic updates, and Oregon State University is trying to find out exactly how someone was able to access the Web site, she said.
Ms. Saunders said she did not know why the university system’s page was targeted. “My guess is that hackers have ways of finding vulnerable entry points in Web sites,” she said. “I don’t know if this was a random or purposeful selection of going through our site.” — Marc Beja
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