Saddam's Inbox Hacked

MotorMachineMercenar writes "Wired News is reporting that Saddam Hussein's email account ([e-mail]) has been hacked into. The account had a five-letter login with the same password. Messages in his inbox sent from all over the world included everything from death threats to business propositions to offers to sell him WMDs. A choice quote from the article: 'One AOL user sent Saddam a one-word message: 'Imminent.' Attached to the Aug. 6 e-mail was a photograph of an atomic mushroom cloud.' I wonder what the login was." You'd think it was "press," password "press," but if it were that obvious I think someone would have said so.

Hoax?

[RAMMS+EIN]

I can't help but think this is bogus. What exactly is _Saddam_'s Inbox? Does _he_ read that mail, or do his subordinates? Anyway...interesting, no matter if it's true or not.

Security

[monthos]

If Only his security for the weapon inspections were so easily avoided.

Surprising noone made a custom email virus to forward all his emails to that said person or find out any 'plans' he might be making....

Have I been trolled?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Well duh. This is basically the equivilent of someone cracking the "secret" password to Santa's email box on northpole.net.

This isn't Saddam's address. It's his press handlers address. That's like judging me based on the feedback send to my [e-mail] address.

Could it be a plant?

[CoolVibe]

As in, something some cockamany person set up to "discredit" Iraq more? I'd really like to take a good long hard deep look at the mail headers of mails in the inbox to check for forged stuff...

I think it's a hoax.

According to the USA Patriot Act

[Dutchie]

Breaking into a government system constitutes terrorism. I wonder if this applies to breaking into foreign government systems.

I wonder what Saddam thought about South Park

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Saddam ever see the South Park movie? Did government flunkies keep the news from him? Did he think it was funny? Childish? Offensive? Or did he not care?

Somebody has to know about this.

Re:I wonder....

[sql*kitten]

Party on

You know, I can't help but thinking that in another time and another place, Saddam and Dubya would have been good buddies, probably frat brothers. They both have an insatiable appetite for the good life, they both make all their money from oil, they both affect a religious piety when it suits them, they both love to be a "man of the people". This isn't as unlikely as it sounds, George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.

What the world really needs is for one of Dubya's daughters (not Jenna, the other one) and one of Saddam's sons to fall in love. Then, after many Baz Luhrmann-esque antics their fathers can be reconciled, and live happily ever after on a ranch in the sovereign state of Texraq.

Still vulnerable?

[m0i]

It looks like uruklink.net is still vulnerable:
-port 110 is opened
-it reveals they're running Ipswitch IMail 7.07
-this software has a known overflow and exploit on the web client side
-http://mail.uruklink.net:8383/ is opened.

What are their sysadmin waiting to shut down 110/8383? Wake up!

Side note, it's funny to see that they are running an american OS and mail software..

Journalistically speaking,

[Jerf]

To play Devil's advocate, from a journalistic point of view, Wired's primary responsibility is to validate the source of the info. Once that is done, you can make a very good case that this is, at least potentially, the sort of thing that People Must Know, which overrides most other considerations.

The contents were probably awfully mundane, perhaps too much so to qualify for The People Must Know, but one could imagine at least in theory that they might have found something interesting in there.

There is precedent for this: For a big example, consider the Watergate scandal. The New York Times wasn't "supposed" to be in possession of that material, and they certainly weren't "supposed" to publish it, but The People Must Know overrode their reservations, and most of us would consider that the right decision based on the info they had at the time.

On the other hand, hacking into my email and telling the world about it would be unethical; there is no need for anybody to know what's in there, so they'd just be rumormongering.

What, you say this "The People Need To Know" is an awfully fuzzy [jerf.org] criterion to be using? Damn straight! These ethical things are hard.

(Remember, I'm playing devil's advocate here; I don't believe it's black and white, but I do think there is a strong kernel of truth here.)

Ominous date

[f97tosc]

Attached to the Aug. 6 e-mail was a photograph of an atomic mushroom cloud.' It is probably not a coincidence that Aug 6 was the 1945 date that the nuke was dropped on Hiroshima.

Tor

Here is the WHOIS note contact [e-mail]

[Brigadier]

Kinda wierd to think the most clear and present danger to the free world uses a yahoo address for there administrators.

Registrar:domaininfo.com
Domain Name: URUKLINK.NET

[Owner of domain name]
osama khalid
27 april street
baghdad, 0000
IQ

[Administrative contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[Technical contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[Zone contact]
khalid, osama
27 april street
0000 baghdad
IQ

Email: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Record created: 29 May 2000
Record last changed: 22 Nov 2001
Record expires: 29 May 2005

Nameserver: nic1.warkaa.com (62.32.60.1)
Nameserver: nic2.warkaa.com (62.32.60.2)

Re:I wonder....

[grammar fascist]

I think you both forget that Osama's entire family has disowned him.

Gotta love guilt by association.

Re:No more hacking Saddam's inbox?

[Jouster]

I love it!

The changes are propogating across DNS now... "webmail.uruklink.net" is now a private address in the 10.0.0.0/8 class A!

Non-authoritative answer:

Name: mailserv.uruklink.net
Address: 10.0.0.16
Aliases: webmail.uruklink.net

Jouster

an aside

[Luyseyal]

A friend of mine was in the Gulf War -- US Army infantry. He said he and all his buds were "encouraged" (i.e., berated by the sargeant until they did it) to sign a waiver and receive an injection of non-FDA-approved anthrax vaccine. I've wondered if this had a possibile relation to Gulf War Syndrome. Any idea?

-l

Re:Here is the WHOIS note contact [e-mail]

[danimrich]

They even use Frontpage!
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage5 .0">

Does this mean that M$ is bad or that Saddam's web "designers" are stupid?

Re:I wonder....

[Zigg]

George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers.

As damning as this may sound, it should be remembered that Osama is the black sheep of the family [ananova.com].

Yeah, whatever.

[Find love Online]

Doing bad things with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons before we knew the dire consequences of using them is one thing. But it is another thing to use such weapons on civilians when you know exactly what the effects will be.

So you're saying it's somehow more morally acceptable to experiment on unwitting people who have done nothing to you then it is use tested and proven poisons on people who are in the middle of an uprising? It's not like Saddam was out gassing people for fun, "His own people" were trying to overthrow him.

We used biological, chemical, and radiological substances we thought would hurt people on innocent people to make sure it worked. Saddam used weapons on people trying to overthrow him. One of them is worse then the other, and it isn't Saddam

dosent saddam have a public key?

[gimpboy]

really though, i'm surprised he doesnt give out his public key so people can encrypt the messages they send to him. this would at least create a pain in the ass for the cia.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Gulf War Syndrome, which was at first completely
> ignored and lied about, and finally recently
> acknowledged (although we still don't know what it
> is, nor do we know whether the government really
> knows or not - there have been accusations of
> experiments on our own soldiers).

According to William H. Dufy (author of Sugar Blues)
the Gulf War Syndrome was caused by diet coke left
under the sun at 40/50 degrees C. What happens
is this: Diet Coke contains Asparthame. Asparthame
normally is bad for your health (just as plain
white sugar), but under the sun, and with the other
chemical crap diluted in Coke, it turns out to become
methanol, which is the major cause of intoxications.

Not only it was noticed after the Gulf War (and
never brought to the media, since Coke sponsored
the war providing soft drinks for the poor military
personnel),
but also in several occasions by the FAA (Federal
Aviation Authority) on their reports.

I suggest everyone to read that book.

Re:Yeah, whatever.

[statusbar]

Not only that, the Kurds that Saddam gassed were fundamentalist muslims that are now in full support of Osama Bin Laden!!! We dropped bombs on supporters of Bin Laden in Afghanistan. What's the difference?

--jeff++

Re:Hoax?

[Daniel Quinlan]

Yeah --- the guy they voted for got to be President.

Yes, this is "funny" here in the United States and people can crack jokes about the U.S. needing a "regime change" and such, but the truth is this:

• We change our regime every 4 years.
• If you didn't vote and vote for Saddam, you may be tortured or killed. Why else would the man get 100% of the vote. As an extreme example, I really doubt the Kurds in Iraq wanted to vote for the guy who used chemical weapons on them.
• We can complain about our government without being killed or tortured. I'd like to see the people who protested against the Bush administration (in Washington D.C. with the free press watching over police and protesters alike) go to Iraq and do the same thing about Saddam. And if you're an Iraqi and the CNN cameras are away (they will be, since the media's movements are controlled in Iraq), good luck with your protest!

Anyway, joke ha ha. Try laughing about Iraqi election rights if you live in Iraq. Democracy means that you can vote for someone who is not guaranteed to win. Yes, that means that Al Gore didn't get picked and that the guy you didn't like did win. Enjoy it.

Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!

[Fjord]

One thing to consider is that a lot of these atrocities don't come out in the open until many years later. 50 years from now, there may be someone else in another forum saying "I really don't think it's fair to compare the X of today with the US of 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago"

Plus, a lot of these were less than 50 years ago. The Sarin, Soman, Tabun and VX civilian tests were from 1962-1973 and the Native eugenics was in 1976. That was only 12 years before Saddam used Sarin on the Kurds.

The original poster is certainly wrong when they said GW is worse than Saddam, but GW's only been in power for 2 years, Saddam's been there for 23. I think if you add up all the atrocities the U.S. government has done in the last 23 years (known and unknown, to it's own people and to foreigners) it would outpace what Saddam has done in that time, but then again, the U.S. has a lot more influence over the world.