Westboro's Sites Still Hacked

Infosec Island notes that Westboro Baptist Church's dozens of websites remain offline more than one month after the initial attack by the famed hacker Jester.

The sustained DoS attacks which began on February 21st represent a duration record for the hacktivist who is best known for his regular attacks on militant Jihadi websites as well as for an attack on the WikiLeaks website in late November of 2010 that forced the organization to shuffle Internet hosting providers. The Jester uses a DoS tool he calls XerXeS to perform an application level attack which can be performed by a single low-spec machine with relatively few packets, whereas traditional TCP-based DoS attacks require multiple machines. The XerXeS tool has been employed to disable multiple WBC websites in a relentless campaign to hamper the church's continued use of the Internet to broadcast hate speech.

The hackers group Anonymous, which is apparently not involved, says that Westboro's initial claim of a pending attack by them was a publicity hoax.

(Tipped by JMG reader Jay)