E-C-H-E-L-O-N  M-A-G-A-Z-I-N-E
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....]NEWS

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Y2K WEB SITE HACKS
==================

A few sites were hacked in the run up to the millenium, 2 of which
were hacked by "Team Spl0it". Railtrack and Lloyds of London were the
victims, and Mister-X is believed to be the hacker behind both hacks.
#hackuk #rootworm and others were given shouts on both "attacks", and
all the sheep in Wales...

The Railtrack site stated something along the lines of "All train 
services have been cancelled from 31.12.1999 until 3.1.2000 due to
Millenium Bug difficulties". 

Nice one. In fact the stupidity of both companies who were hacked is 
imense. Railtrack re-constructed their site slowly, forgetting to
remove /owned.htm meaning that we can now still see one of the hacked
pages! Lloyds of London quickly put their site back online, but forgot
to even bother preventing further hacks. The security and passwords 
remaind the same, meaning that Mister-X re-hacked it with a message:

"I owned you once already. Get the message: SECURE YOUR SITEX"

All this shows is that the real millenium bug lies with the Sys-Admins
and not the computers...


RECENT BUSTS AFTER THE CONSTRUCTION YARD BBS IS SHUT DOWN
=========================================================
--> See our article on this.


MILLENIUM BUG HASN'T BITTEN JUST YET
====================================

Very few Y2K problems were reported. A few hickups did happen, a hydro
electric power plant in Australia shutdown and various old credit card
readers had problems. As for telephone problems, the BT network and
all mobile networks experienced overloading which meant that some calls
could not be completed, with some One2One customers experiencing 
outages for a short period of time.

As for international telephone networks, Belize telecom reports that
all exchanges are working correctly although the operator service had
experienced large volumes of calls. China telecom's home direct 
services (0800 890 086) were offline for approximately 2 hours and the
BT route to the Philipines was jammed for most of New Years day. 

Despite the mishaps, mostly due to large call volumes and negligence
of humans, the millenium bug itself caused few problems. Problems may
surfice in the next few weeks, as it was estimated that 55% of Y2K
bug problems would occur after the first 2 weeks of January.


BT CHANGES ITS ROUTE TO THE BAHAMAS
===================================

Yes, BT have changed their route to the Bahamas. It might have been in
response to dynamics giving shouts to their home direct in a recent
article in F41th or perhaps rates on the alternate routes are now 
cheaper.

Calls previously went UK --> USA --> BAHAMAS and were C5-R1 signalled.
Now, Bahamas calls go via the new satellite link from Switzerland 
directly to the Bahamas, inaugerated in 1998: 
	UK --> SWITZERLAND --> BAHAMAS

This link is R2 and SS7 signalled, and call set-up times are slightly
quicker than the old route. Another reason may be the extra requirement
for direct UK --> USA trunks due to companies like One.Tel making calls
to the US a viable possibility (3ppm) unlike under BT where the rates
are extorsionate.

SIDE NOTE, ROUTES THAT WENT SS7 IN '99: 
Iceland, Brazil, Bahamas, Antigua, Pakistan (from US), Uruguay 
(from US) and Spain (from NZ).

 


