Creative Endeavors

The Nike corporate Web site was taken over by hackers today who replaced the content with a message about the “inequality” of the global economy.  The Web page posted by a group calling itself “S-11″ completely obscured Nike’s site.

The page said “global justice is coming–prepare now,” and it called for action at September’s World Economic Forum 2000 in Melbourne, Australia.  The top of one page on the site contained the words “shut down the world economic forum.”

The 2000 Olympic Games are set to begin Sept. 16 in nearby Sydney, Australia, and Nike is a major corporate sponsor.  Nike computer technicians were regaining control of the site, spokesman Vada Manager said today.  “We’re backtracking now to find out how this happened,” one manager said.

Basically what happened was … They got nailed.

Awhile back, a friend of mine suggested that we do some “Instant Messaging” using AIM as the primary source.   So I downloaded the program and we went about the process and everything seemed just fine for awhile.

Then I started noticing my computer was running slower and slower, and finally, I started nosing around the innards of the thing, and to my surprise. I found it loaded with Malware, trojan horses, hundreds of cookies.

I found one MP3 player that I had never downloaded, and on the properties it listed “Anon” and the source, “Anon,” and I got even more suspicious. I looked at my temp files folder, and found all of these websites I had never personally visited, pictures of people that I had never seen before and did not personally know, email messages.

I had become a victim.

If you are one of the hordes of AOL Instant Messenger-using Simpsons fans who playfully added Chunkylover53 – Homer’s AIM user name – To your AOL buddy list, listen up.

In the past couple of days, you may have noticed Chunkylover 53 become active, posting an away message. If you clicked on the away message to see what Homer had to say, you would have seen a link to a new Web episode of the Simpsons.

If you checked on the link, you got an error message.

Unseen, you also got hijacked by a Turkish botnet. Right now your PC is probably busy spreading spam attacks and forwarding any sensitive data you type on any web page on to these cyber crooks.

This particular infecton has a very effective rootkit, so the only way to get rid of it is by reinstalling your PC operating system (which is what I did, and as we all know, this isn’t a pleasant experience by a long shot).

So unfortunately, If you are one of the hordes of AOL Instant Messenger-using Simpsons fans who playfully added Chunkylover53 – Homer’s AIM user name – To your AOL buddy list, you have some work to do.

Might be time to start changing your passwords while you are at it.

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