Anonymous attack on Attila Hildmann: hosting provider hacked

The conspiracy theorist Attila Hildmann, who became known as a vegan chef and is now strongly right-wing, was the target of a hack by the Anonymous collective. The hackers actually wanted to take over the Schwurbler’s website, but in the process immediately gained access to the entire hosting provider.

Anonymous hacks Hildmann: Operation Tinfoil

Anonymous once again gained full access to the website of extremist conspiracy theorist Attila Hildmann. As part of “Operation Tinfoil” (in German: “Operation Aluhut”), the hacker association is blowing the whistle on a major attack on conspiracy theorists. The goal is to take over their online presences and thus curb the targeted disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories.

In a usually casually worded post, the hackers clarify their entire approach and reveal everything they discovered while combing through the hoster of the Attila Hildmann website.

They describe in detail that they scanned the web presences hosted by ProSite for security vulnerabilities. In the process, they came across a vulnerable Joomla installation. Initially, no progress was made by sealing off the individual sites.

Through root access to all ProSite databases, it was then possible to disclose the entire database of the provider:

But what is that at ProSite, please? This is a noodle sieve, but not a hoster.

Every single step and access is neatly recorded by Anonymous in screenshots, including ultimately unencrypted, personal customer data such as credit card data.

According to the assessment of the hacker collective, this violates not only the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR, but also the binding credit card security standard PCI-DSS of the payment service providers. Even the CVC security number would be clearly stated at ProSite in the same database table without further protection mechanisms.

“Your website we have”

The Anonymous hackers had replaced Hildmann’s website with a so-called defacement. This is the deliberate defacement or disfigurement of websites. Hackers illegally gain access to sites and leave behind their artist name, messages to allies or political statements.

In the meantime, the conspiracy theorist’s website has been completely taken offline. In addition, they took advantage of the widespread access and, according to their own statements, blocked access to the administration system as well as the data center and caused chaos in the administration.

Furthermore, according to their research, Anonymous found evidence that the CEO of ProSite also belonged to the lateral thinking scene. Additional motivation, therefore, for the hackers to take further action here.