4 ms·

It's sad that someone would hack a site like this. The only thing they could possibly want are the email and password combinations. I hope they are stored in a

It's sad that someone would hack a site like this. The only thing they could possibly want are the email and password combinations. I hope they are stored in a secure way.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
madez 11y ago
Think about agencies, not private actors — then this site makes a perfect target. Recruit and subvert are basic tasks for these agenices, and to do so you need information about the candidates. This website had probably a significantly higher proportion of interesting prospects.
- cautious_int 11y ago
  But what information was even held on the website. Wasn't it just a public listing of usernames with the score. According to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181773 then don't even store emails anymore.
88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago
There are plenty of other motivations. It could be: 1) a novice hacker looking for experience 2) an automated bot that scanned IPs for some vulnerability and acted on its own when it found one 3) someone looking to extort the owner for money 4) someone with a personal vendetta against the owner 5) someone looking to secretly plant bitcoin mining software on the servers (who got caught) 6) someone looking to alter their own score to help them get some sort of math job I could probably go on for a while, but you get the point. It's hard to ascribe intent to this sort of thing without more information.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Or 7) someone who did it for teh lulz. While rare, this also happens. But I agree; it's hard to guess motivations behind the attack without more info.
  - brownbat 11y ago
    8) Waterholing targeting a user or group that frequents the site? I like #2 though, or as I'd put it: flotsam of the internet, like how slammer ended up at davis besse.
- qopp 11y ago
  5) The Bitcoin mining thing is a bit of a historic artifact, today you could barely achieve a cent per month on even the very fastest of cpus
- S4M 11y ago
  As Project Euler is completely free and has a positive impact on the programming community, it would be very sad if the reasons for the hacking were 3) or 4).
- fibo 11y ago
  I would discard 1) cause a real hacker, even if novice, would enter without damaging or stopping the service. He/She would maybe report to the owner the vulnerability or even would keep it secret.
0x0 11y ago
It was posted elsewhere that visiting the hacked site triggered downloads of "flash_updater.exe" type trojans, so maybe one reason for the hack was to spread malware.

It's sad that someone would hack a site like this. The only thing they could possibly want are the email and password combinations. I hope they are stored in a secure way.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

madez 11y ago

Think about agencies, not private actors — then this site makes a perfect target. Recruit and subvert are basic tasks for these agenices, and to do so you need information about the candidates. This website had probably a significantly higher proportion of interesting prospects.

cautious_int 11y ago
But what information was even held on the website. Wasn't it just a public listing of usernames with the score. According to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181773 then don't even store emails anymore.

88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago

There are plenty of other motivations. It could be: 1) a novice hacker looking for experience 2) an automated bot that scanned IPs for some vulnerability and acted on its own when it found one 3) someone looking to extort the owner for money 4) someone with a personal vendetta against the owner 5) someone looking to secretly plant bitcoin mining software on the servers (who got caught) 6) someone looking to alter their own score to help them get some sort of math job I could probably go on for a while, but you get the point. It's hard to ascribe intent to this sort of thing without more information.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Or 7) someone who did it for teh lulz. While rare, this also happens. But I agree; it's hard to guess motivations behind the attack without more info.
- brownbat 11y ago
  8) Waterholing targeting a user or group that frequents the site? I like #2 though, or as I'd put it: flotsam of the internet, like how slammer ended up at davis besse.
qopp 11y ago
5) The Bitcoin mining thing is a bit of a historic artifact, today you could barely achieve a cent per month on even the very fastest of cpus
S4M 11y ago
As Project Euler is completely free and has a positive impact on the programming community, it would be very sad if the reasons for the hacking were 3) or 4).
fibo 11y ago
I would discard 1) cause a real hacker, even if novice, would enter without damaging or stopping the service. He/She would maybe report to the owner the vulnerability or even would keep it secret.

0x0 11y ago

It was posted elsewhere that visiting the hacked site triggered downloads of "flash_updater.exe" type trojans, so maybe one reason for the hack was to spread malware.