Hackers play Asteroids on US government websites

Hackers – operating under the flag of the Anonymous movement – have hacked various US government websites in a continuing protest over the treatment of Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who commited suicide earlier this month.

And what have the hackers done with their unauthorised access to the websites? They’ve embedded a secret Asteroids game.

Swartz, you will remember, was facing trial on charges that he used MIT’s network to grab millions of articles from the non-for-profit academic journal archive JSTOR, with the aim of republishing them without restriction.

Anonymous hacktivists have threatened to leak sensitive government information in protest over Swartz’s death, but while the world is waiting to see if they do publish confidential stolen US government data their Asteroids antics are getting more attention.

The first website to reportedly fall to the…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.