http://www.netmag.co.uk/news/default.asp?subsectionid=1&articleid=54889&pagetype=2

13th April 2002

Alldas down but not out

Web site defacement is so popular these days that the defacement
mirror sites, which record what's been hacked on a daily basis, are
struggling to keep up. Attrition.org decided to back out of providing
its mirror service last year, Safemode.org stopped its defacement
coverage a few months back, and then in mid-February this year,
Alldas.de announced on its site that it was closing due to 'total
burnout and frustration'.

The Alldas statement is slightly misleading because some of the team
are continuing with the defacement archive at a new site,
www.alldas.org, but they're going to have their work cut out to keep
it up-to-date. We reported last month that malicious online activity
had fallen after the 11 September attacks but was predicted to rise
again in 2002, so the amount of work required is only going to
increase.

Volunteers run these defacement mirrors, which Attrition.org's Jericho
told is crucial: "A commercial outfit running a mirror is not a good
idea. There is a serious ethical consideration and a lot of questions
need to be asked of why a company would run a mirror." The problem is
that, as volunteers, they can't afford to spend too much time
maintaining their sites, verifying the defacements and fending off the
persistent demands for recognition from hackers. According to
Safemode's Zillion, you also run the risk of breaking the law
yourself: "If you are stimulating defacers then in most countries you
are already committing a crime. Running a defacement mirror means that
you must be willing to deal with many problems and abuse mails for
example, defacers greet and link you on the hacked systems, they mail
you from those systems, they link images from previous mirrored
defacements in new defacements."

Clearly, running a defacement mirror is a task fraught with many
serious problems. However, these mirrors do provide a valuable insight
into the extent and nature of malicious online activity, so we wish
the Alldas team the best of luck.

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