Hacker changes facts of news story on Yahoo!

A news story on Yahoo!’s site was altered by a hacker this week who exploited a security loophole in the portal. Twenty year-old Adrian Lamo changed a Yahoo! story about Russian programmer Dmitry Skylarov to read that Skylarov was facing the death penalty for his alleged breach of US copyright laws.20 Dec 2000

Lamo alerted a security company to his actions which in turn contacted Yahoo! The portal says it has now taken steps that block unauthorised access. Lamo had used scanning software to obtain the URL of one of Yahoo!’s open proxy servers. He then configured his browser to connect to the proxy and entered Yahoo!’s news authoring facility without having to enter a password, by posing as an employee of the company.

Mr Lamo has previously been credited with highlighting security flaws in the Excite@Home network and in AOL’s instant messaging service.

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