Attrition.org, which has long kept track of Web site defacement activity,
announced Monday that it will no longer maintain mirrors of defaced sites.
Attrition, in the words of its staff members, “is a non-profit hobby site
run by a handful of volunteers in their free time.” While it may be a
volunteer effort, the result has become a primary destination for security
professionals and journalists seeking information about the latest hacker
attacks.
But those attacks have been steadily increasing in scope.
“What began as a small collection of Web site defacement mirrors soon turned
into a near 24/7 chore of keeping it up to date,” Attrition said. “In the
last month, we have experienced single days of mirroring over 100 defaced
Web sites, over three times the total for 1995 and 1996 combined. With the
rapid increase in Web defacement activity, there are times when it requires
one of us to take mirrors for four or five hours straight to catch up.”
On top of that, volunteers have struggled to maintain other parts of the
site, turning the “hobby” into a harrying second job.
“In essence, what was once a hobby site run in spare time for fun has turned
into a beleaguering second job,” Attrition said. “A job that comes with more
headache, complaints, criticisms, slander and attacks than productive output
or reward. In two years we have turned away countless computer security work
that could have been fulfilled by a number of us. The abuse and ignorance we
deal with from defacers and defacement victims is staggering, and some of
that abuse spills over into actual attacks. Attrition has been taken down
more than once by massive denial of service attacks which have
inconvenienced our generous upstream provider, hundreds of other colo
customers, and thousands of dialup customers, making our job even more
difficult.”
That is not to say that Attrition is going away. The mirrors will no longer
be maintained, but other sections will remain and will have more attention
and resources thrown their way. Attrition will continue to perform
statistical analysis of defacements utilizing the Alldas mirror, and will
continue to provide commentary and articles on high profile defacements,
significant trends and other activity that “warrants attention.”
The volunteers plan to bring back and revamp the errata section, and also
plan to pay more attention to the image gallery, music reviews, movie
reviews, poetry, contests and ‘Going Postal’ areas.
