Boasting coppers regret attacking hackers

AUSSIE FEDERAL COPPERS are regretting shooting their mouths off on telly about shutting down a big hacker network.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, officers went on ABC's Four Corners programme and claimed that they had broken up an underground hacker forum.

Coppers had been using a computer as a honeypot to collect IP addresses on forum members but one of the officers forgot to set a password.

After a raid, the federal police covertly assumed control of the forum and began using it to gather evidence about members.

Neil Gaughan, national manager of the federal police's High Tech Crimes Operation, told Four Corners that it meant that police could operate in a covert activity here fairly seamlessly with no harm to our members with continual and actual significant penetration.

Um, not really. What the coppers didn't realise was that hackers had already cottoned on to their plan. The police were logging on using the account of the admin that the hackers knew had been arrested.

One of them used that to break into the federal police's computer system and accessed both police evidence and intelligence about federal police systems such as its IP addresses.

Messages on other sites show the hackers saying that the cops should not brag about arresting hackers when all they have collared are a few script kiddies.

One of the messages contained several links to screenshots allegedly proving that the writer had access to the federal police's server.

The hacker wrote "I couldn't stop laughing". Police had "left the MYSQL password blank". They were also using automatic digital forensics and incident response tool.

He said that all of his hacking was done within 30-40 minutes. "Could of been faster if I didn't stop to laugh so much," the hacker said. µ