Hackers Take Down CERN Website

By Greg McNevin

September 17, 2008: In a high-profile example of the need for robust web security, CERN, the European lab conducting the first experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), had its website hacked and vandalised last week.

The vandals, calling themselves “GST”, short for “Greek Security Team”, struck just as the first tests on the LHC, which is the world’s largest physics experiment, got underway.

The experiment seeks to re-create the conditions just after the big bang, when the universe was created by running particles around a huge ring and colliding them.

The hackers struck the lab’s website, www.cmsmon.cern.ch, defacing it with digital graffiti reading “We are 2600 – don’t mess with us”. The site was taken down and remains inaccessible, however, according to a CERN spokesman no real damage was done other than that to the pride of its IT security staff.

Unconfirmed reports claim a unnamed CERN scientist said the hackers were “one step away” from reaching a computer that controlled one of the 12,500 tonne magnets inside the collider, however, the prospect of a web server being somehow connected to the internal network of one of the most powerful – and at times controversial – experiments in history seems remote.

That said, the attack does represent quite an embarrassing moment for the CERN IT staff just as the world’s attention is focussed on them, and highlights just how important formidable web security and disaster recovery plans are.

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