The Unknowns is a self-proclaimed
ethical hacking
A white hat (or a white-hat hacker, a whitehat) is an ethical security hacker. Ethical hacking is a term meant to imply a broader category than just penetration testing. Under the owner's consent, white-hat hackers aim to identify any vulnerabili ...
group that came to attention in May 2012 after exploiting weaknesses in the security of
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
,
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
,
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
,
the European Space Agency
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...
,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
,
Renault
Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufacture ...
,
the United States Military Joint Pathology Center,
the Royal Thai Navy, and several ministries of defense.
The group posted their reasons for these attacks on the sites Anonpaste &
Pastebin
A pastebin or text storage site is a type of online content-hosting service where users can store plain text (e.g. source code snippets for code review via Internet Relay Chat (IRC)). The first pastebin was the eponymous pastebin.com. Other ...
including a link to a compressed file which contained a lot of files obtained from the US Military sites they breached. The Unknowns claim "... our goal was never to harm anyone, we want to make this whole internet world more secured because, simply, it's not at all and we want to help." The group claims to be ethical in their hacking activities, but nonetheless lifted internal documents from their victims, posting them online. They claim this was because they had reported the security holes to many of their victims, but did not receive a response back from any of them. The whole point was to show that these government-run sites have loopholes in their code and anyone can exploit them. The group used methods like advanced
SQL injection
In computing, SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL in ...
to gain access to the victim websites. NASA and the ESA have both confirmed the attack. They claimed that the affected systems were taken offline and have since been patched. At the time this was one of the most wanted hacking groups in Europe and also wanted by the FBI, although they refused to tell if they were investigating the hacks.
Members
The team had 6 not 7 core members:
* Pixiedust, founder, spokesperson, and leader,
* Mr. P-Teo, programmer
*
* Fabien Léac,a French researcher in computer faults and a white hacker
* MrSecurity, a black-hat
hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
, programmer and ghostwriter of The Unknowns
* NeTRoX, a black-hat
hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
, penetration tester and researcher. Joined to the team in late 2015 after the team reunited.
Jail
Zyklon B, who lives in France, was arrested by the French Intelligence Service on June 24, 2012. He was later released because he was just sixteen years old at the time. He has trials taking place in 2014 supposedly. His life is related in a book written by his mother Sophie Léac ''L'histoire vraie d'un jeune hacker français'' (in October 2013) or ''the true story of a French teen-hacker''. A second book is in preparation: ''Hack! There will be cyberwar!''.
Hacked websites and applications
The group has hacked many websites and applications using a series of different attacks. The most notable, however, being SQL injection.
There have been a lot of companies affected by the group, but some of the hacks even for big companies did not make the media (probably due to keeping the multi-country legal investigation a secret). However, the most notable hacks done by The Unknowns, mostly government related websites, did make mass media. The group is still active, and the members are still working together, as they try to make the internet safer.
SQL injection attacks were used on the following:
*
Asian College of Technology
Asian College of Technology, officially the ''Asian College of Technology - International Educational Foundation'' (ACT-IEF or simply ACT), is a private college in the Philippines, located in Cebu City and Talisay City, in the Cebu province.
A ...
*
Bahrain Defense Force
The Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) is the military force of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The Bahrain Defence Force is under direct command and leadership of a commander-in-chief who holds the rank of field marshal. The Government has a Minister of Def ...
*
California State University
The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
*
Christian Mingle
''Christian Mingle'' (sometimes promoted as ''Christian Mingle The Movie'') is a 2014 American faith-based romantic comedy film written and directed by Corbin Bernsen and starring Lacey Chabert as a woman who uses the online dating website Chri ...
*
Deutsche Federal Government
*
European Space Agency
*
ESET
*
French Ministry of Defense
, native_name_a =
, native_name_r =
, type = Ministry
, seal =
, seal_width =
, seal_caption =
, logo = Ministère des Armées.svg
, logo_width = 150
, logo_caption = Official logot ...
*
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
*
Jordanian Yellow Pages
*
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
*
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
*
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
**
Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labo ...
**
Glenn Research Center
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is a NASA center within the cities of Brook Park and Cleveland between Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and the Rocky River Reservation of Cleveland Metroparks, with a subsidiary facilit ...
*
New7Wonders
The New 7 Wonders of the World was a campaign started in 2000 to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. The popularity poll via free Web-based voting and small amounts of telephone voting was led by Canadian-Swiss ...
*
Renault
Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufacture ...
*
Royal Thai Navy
The Royal Thai Navy ( Abrv: RTN, ทร.; th, กองทัพเรือไทย, ) is the naval warfare force of Thailand. Established in 1906, it was modernised by the Admiral Prince Abhakara Kiartiwongse (1880–1923) who is known a ...
*
Sempra Energy
Sempra is a North American energy infrastructure company based in San Diego, California. The company is one of the largest utility holding companies in the United States with roughly 40 million consumers. Sempra's focus is on electric and natura ...
*
Social Democratic Party of Germany
*
United Kingdom Ministry of Defense
*
University of Rhode Island
The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...
*
United States Military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is th ...
*
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
*
United States Department of Commerce
The United States Department of Commerce is an executive department of the U.S. federal government concerned with creating the conditions for economic growth and opportunity. Among its tasks are gathering economic and demographic data for bus ...
*
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ...
*
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
, no information was released. The Unknown contacted
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
with the exploits he/she found and received $1,000 as a reward.
However they have used different attacks:
* Two United Kingdom police servers were exploited and root access was gained to the systems. Not much is known about this attack.
Abolished
The purpose of The Unknowns was to find security issues in high-profiled websites and to get them patched. The information from the hacked sites was released because The Unknowns attempted to make contact with all their targets informing them of the security issues, but they did not receive a response back from any of the websites targeted. Some data was leaked to force these websites to patch their systems.
After a period of hacking high-profile websites, The Unknown disbanded the group in 2012 but reunited it in the early 2015.{{citation needed, date=November 2020
References
List of hacked websites/companies
Hacker groups