Website hacking is not new. However, hacking government, defence, e-commerce or similar websites can benefit the hacker in the black market, in terms of the sensitive data that he gets his hands on. But hacking an information website is something new.
According to Ars Technica, the Wall Street Journal was on the blink July 22 during the later half of the day. A hacker, who names himself as the ‘w0rm’ had intruded the WSJ website and offered its contents in the black market for just 1 bitcoin.
Andrew Komarov, CEO of cybersecurity firm IntelCrawl told the Wall Street Journal that the hacker was offering the information and server access details, using which, anyone who got the information in hand can add / delete / modify articles, insert malicious codes into webpages or add / delete users in the database.
According to Andrew, w0rm is the same hacker, previously known as Rev0lver and Hash, who is a Russian hacker. He had earlier tried to sell access to the BBC servers last year and attacked the servers of Vice Media this year.
He also posted a screenshot that showed the e-mail address, username, and hashed password for the database admin on a wsj.com server on Twitter.
WSJ took their servers offline to prevent further intrusion and also a spokesperson said that there was no evidence of damage to the customers and data.
IntelCrawl confirmed that the intrusion was carried out with the help of the SQL injection vulnerability.
Image courtesy: WSJ, Facebook
