Manish Kumar
Bhubaneswar: Hackers seem to have chosen the website of Centurion University from the state as their target. This comes in the wake of the recent hacking case of the Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) website.
Some active online hackers’ groups have now started discussing ways to hack into the examination portal of the university. Some futile attempts have already been made by some young hackers who are now seeking the help of other hackers from the state.
A youth named Firdoesh Ali Khan confessed January 22 at 8 pm in a secret Facebook group of hackers named ‘webinj3ct0rs’ (visible only to members) that he tried to hack into the exam portal of Centurion University but failed to do so. Khan asked other hackers to help him in his attempt.
“Hello Guys need some help please. http://117.240.237.9/eod/admitsave. php?i=1 Please help me out for this very hard to inject (sic),” he has said in his Facebook post on the group site, According to cyber experts, the whole conversation talks about the use of local file inclusion (LFI) injection often used in hacking. Screenshots of the secret conversation are in the possession of Orissa POST.
The injections are often used by hackers to get password file stores in the sensitive path of the server, which has access to the server root/administrator.
Experts believe data manipulation could be one of the reasons behind the attempt. “Hacking of the examination portal of the varsity website could be used by some applicant who could try to manipulate the examination results through hacking,” said Dinesh Mohanty, cyber expert from the city-based Institute of Ethical Hacking & Forensic.
Youth need to understand that they invite trouble by such acts. However, they seem to have learnt hardly any lesson from the infamous OUAT case” he added.
The Centurion University case comes after Orissa POST recently revealed that many online groups are actively working to hack into websites of some universities and government departments. PNN
