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MalSec's "friendly" defacement of The Security Centre's website points out the need to beef up web security.

A Cayman Islands security firm got a bit of unsolicited web security advice on March 30 from MalSec, a group of "malicious security" hackers who recently broke into a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate. But unlike some of the nastier site defacements done recently by members of Anonymous' #AntiSec collectiveincluding takedowns of two Federal Trade Commission sitesthe MalSec hackers left the site itself intact, posting only a replacement home page to advise the company, The Security Centre Ltd., of their vulnerability.

The hackers posted a new index.htm home page on Security Centre's site to override their PHP-powered site maintained by web design firm NetClues, which proclaims Security Centre "Cayman's premeir full-service provider of security services and systems."

"Whilst no harm was done to the original site," the hackers wrote on their replacement home page, "we urge you to secure your site before claiming to be 'the best of the best' in any kind of security. We were not firsttraces of previous security breaches were found." The page gave instructions on how to return the site to normal, and advised the company to "please oversee your security before somebody else with more harmful intent does. You can thank us later <3."

In a Twitter post attributed to MalSec, the group pointed to the defacement, and wrote "We aren't just madhakkars with no souls! That's for the gingerhackers. We see a hole we fix it. unless urlame." After claiming responsibility for a hack of a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate, the groupposted a file alleged to include the hashed passwords of senators and cracked passwords of the lawyers that work with them.

Ars Technica attempted to contact Security Centre about the defacement on Saturday by e-mail, alerting them to the fact that the site was still defaced. There was no response from the company, but the site was restored about an hour after the email was sent.

Photograph by Sean Gallagher

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Hackers politely deface security firm website, suggest fixes