Just a few days ago, the infamous hacker group called "Anonymous" has hacked into the system of the European Space Agency (ESA). The group leaked thousands of passwords and personal data of the agency's subscribers for no reason other than for fun.
Reported just last Monday, Dec. 14, 2015, a group of anonymous members has hacked the ESA'S internal system and released over 8,000 passwords and subscribers' personal information to the public. The login names and the passwords of the agency's employees and some of its bosses have made their way online as well. They are all posted on the site www.JustPaste.It.
Personal data, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. were all posted on the site. Email addresses along with login names and passwords were also made available for the public to hack. The data posted in JustPaste.It are divided into three distinct parts categorized as "Registered Users," "Database Schemas" and "ESA Collaborators." Each of these parts specifies an exact ESA component.
The "Registered Users" list contains all the names and personal data of the people that subscribed to the site, while "Data Schemas" contains over 8,000 names, email addresses and passwords of the "oc_4 subscribers." The leaked passwords and login names were very organized, allowing anyone who visits the site to access an account as quickly as possible.The very last part, which is the "ESA Collaborators," contains all the data about the organizations that back up the agency. It also has other information such as future planned space explorations.
According to Anonymous group itself, it has acquired the data through the use of SQL vulnerability in order to sort data from the agency's subdomains. Some of these subdomains are sci.eas.int, exploration.esa.int and due.esrin.ease.int.
Mr. Steve Regan from CSO then analyzed that 39 percent of all the leaked data passwords contains just three characters, 16 percent contains a combination of eight letters and characters, and just 20 percent of the passwords leaked contains 20 or more characters.
When Anonymous was asked why it targeted ESA, all it answered is that since Christmas is coming, the group had to do something for fun, something for "lulz."
