Hackers take down domain registrar

Lulzsec have attacked Australian-based web hosts and released the details of 62,000 email and password combinations to the public

Hacking group Lulzsec has successfully attacked Australian domain registrar and web host DistributeIT.

The group's targets appear to be international; it made another Distributed Denial of Service attack on the CIA earlier this week.

A report on DistributeIT's website stated that the attack was not made for personal gain.

"The attack was a deliberate attempt to take down the DistributeIT business, and doesn't appear to be specifically aimed at stealing client data for gain," it said.

"The attackers were coordinated in their approach and set out to do as much damage to our systems and software as possible, which they achieved successfully."

The hackers needed just a short time to destroy drive header files on DistributeIT's servers. Thereby, they ensured that they caused the maximum possible disruption in the amount of time they had before the firm's network was shut down by its engineers.

DistributeIT added that they couldn't understand the motive for the attack.

"We are very upset over the loss of business to our valued clients, and the magnitude of this attack affects us all. We are still in the dark as to the true motives of the attackers, however at this time we cannot afford to dwell on these matters," it said.

Lulzsec describes the goal behind its activities as no more than "for the lulz" or, in plainer English, to have fun.

Following its latest spate of hacking, which included a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on the CIA website, Lulzsec posted the details of 62,000 email and password combinations to a peer-to-peer filesharing site.

"As always, LulzSec delivers: 62,000+ emails/passwords just for you. Enjoy," it posted to its Twitter feed. The file had been removed from the site by the time of writing.

This post was quickly followed by appreciative posts from its followers, one of whom tweeted: "Cheers for the paypal account with £250 in it! ;)"