Cryptome hacked, founder e-mail account ransacked

Cryptome.org, the well-known whisteblowing site, was hacked during this past weekend, and all of its content (approximately 7GB of data) was deleted by the hacker who then left a message on the defaced home page.

The hacker, who goes by the handle “RuxPin”, has supposedly contacted Wired.com and said that two other members of the hacking group Kryogeniks were actually responsible for the breach.

They supposedly managed to steal the password for one of the email accounts belonging to founder John Young nearly a month ago, when the system that stored the passwords was breached. Having the password for the email account that was listed as the contact address for the site, they simply used it to ask for a reset of the password for Cryptome’s hosting account.

Once the password was reset, they changed it and effectively locked Young out of the Cryptome account, while they were free to wreck havoc inside. In the message they left, there was also a note for Young, saying that the hosted data has not been altered, and that they actually like Cryptome and needed the site just because it was popular.

But Young is not worried about the rummaging through or the deleting of the content, since it is open source and they have backup. What he is really worried about is the fact that, along with the content, they managed to download a repository of email correspondence between him and his sources (some of which are supposedly WikiLeaks insiders) – who, in theory, can be revealed by tracking the email addresses.

And it’s exactly for that reason that Young vowed to hunt down these hackers, because accessing his private email and the Cryptome account without permission is a crime.