The U.S. government and private technology experts warned Wednesday that hackers plan to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday in a loosely co-ordinated "contest" that could disrupt Internet traffic.
An early-warning network for the technology industry, operating with the Department of Homeland Security, notified companies that it received "credible information" about the planned attacks and already has detected surveillance probes by hackers looking for weaknesses in corporate and government networks.
"We emphasize that all Web site administrators should ensure that their sites are not vulnerable," wrote Peter Allor of Internet Security Systems Inc., the Atlanta-based company that runs the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Separately, the New York Office of Cyber-Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination warned Internet providers and other organizations that the goal of the hackers was to vandalize 6,000 Web sites in six hours.
New York officials urged companies to change default computer passwords, begin monitoring Web site activities more aggressively, remove unnecessary functions from server computers and apply the latest software repairs from vendors such as Microsoft Corp.

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Article was found here
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030702.gthackjuly2/BNStory/Technology/

sounds kind of fishy.... could this be a ploy by the dept. of homeland security to make companies and individuals paranoid of the "Hacker" threat. or perhaps Homeland security was looking for some publicity to make it look like they are neccessary.

The Department of Homeland Security is necessary though. I'm not saying we need something to watch specifically for terrorists or whatever, so fleshy and jon, don't eat me alive It's just agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA) which were in various parts of the cabinet, now restructured into one department.

Well, if it is true or not these companies should still remove the unnessecary IIS server modules. I get probably 50 scans a day for IIS exploits. It's just smart of them to do that.

its big news, TechLive had the story, and a lot of tech news sites have this story

perg I couldn't agree more. We should have had it for a long time and hopefully we don't put it on the back burner once the terrorism thing dies down.

As for the massive webattack, no big deal. Secure your systems and keep a backup of your site. Hopefully even if you did get hacked, you could find the way they got in, apply the patch (should have already), and then use your backup.

oh no! I'm doomed! I'm stuck at my dad's house until I arrive monday morning. My website is gonna be hacked! My computer is gonna go up in flames and I lose all my coding! nooooooooOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Meanwhile, gee, thank you mr newsman, I didn't know about this little hacker party that was planned. *starts scanning networks looking for big hack numbers this coming sunday*

heres a follow up article that was on
http://www.securitynewsportal.com/index.shtml

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As everyone will have read by now, this Sunday has been declared a global day for hackers to compete for the 'honor and glory' of achieving the maximum number of web site defacements in a given time period. Now it appears that various things are afoot to derail and disrupt the planned hacker games - namely the underground members that control the Denial of Service zombies and in some cases the various web hosting companies that are enforcing their terms of service against the organizers of this 'event'.

The main web site where the hacker contest was first announce has been shutdown by the ISP where the site was hosted. The organizer of the Hacker Challenge has vowed to return his web site back online shortly and to mirror the site at various locations to thwart the sites all being shutdown again.

In other news, various members of the DOD underground have vowed to bring the contest to a complete standstill by directing Denial of Service attacks against various web site defacement mirrors, such as Zone-H, in order to block the hackers from being able to have their web site defacements recorded for the purposes of the contest. The theory goes that if the hackers can't record their defacements than no one will be able to prove that they were the winner of the hacker contest. The various 'zombie masters' were discussing the Denial of Service attacks as a means to demonstratie "who holds the real power on the Internet and it isn't script kiddies'. Zone-H has already reported that an increase in traffic to their site has been taxing their 500 mhz CPU and they have had to shut down filtered searches to free up some processing power.