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Islamic script kiddies aim killer blow - at Bristol bus timetable website

West (of England) travel info crayoned over by idiots

Bristol residents looking for bus and train timetables were confronted by a message from Islamic militants following a defacement of the TravelWest website.

A self-styled "Arab Security Team" called Darkshadow sprayed digital graffiti on Bristol-based travel information website www.travelwest.info.

Local reports speculate that Tunis-based Darkshadow may have mistaken the innocuous journey planner site for a better-known site supporting travel around the Western world.

The defacement didn't last particularly long and normality was restored to the website by Friday morning (2 January), the Bristol Post adds.

The defacement itself featured white Arabic writing on a black background. The group maintains a Facebook page, providing evidence that travelwest.info is just the latest in a growing list of scalps.

The whole incident smacks of common-or-garden defacement, which, of course, is a hobby for numerous groups of script kiddies that has been going on for years and is mostly motivated by mischief and the desire to claim bragging rights.

Darkshadow haven't done much bragging about taking out travelwest.info as yet and it's unclear whether or not it was simply looking to deface any vulnerable website or whether it got the wrong target.

Back in March anonymous hackers were caught boasting about defacing a counterfeit Yorkshire Bank website. That was awkward but less embarrassing than an incident where hacktivists mistakenly fired their DDoS cannon against a French rugby fansite instead of their intended target, the German stock exchange.

In turn, that incident was nowhere near as unpleasant as the time when geographically mixed-up Algerian hackers defaced the site of Belvoir Castle, home of the Teddy Bears' picnic, instead of their presumed target, Belvoir Fortress – a Christian outpost during the Crusades. ®

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