AIX, the Unix-based operating system from IBM, is not a traditional target of Web site vandals. In fact, on most defacement lists, AIX barely warrants a mention and usually accounts for far less than 1% of the known attacks. The last week, however, has seen a turnaround, with an almost 80% increase in AIX-based defacements in the past week alone.
The Alldas archive, a listing of known Web site defacements, lists just 75 known AIX-based hacks over the past 18 months out of a total of more than 22 000. At less than a percent of the overall total, AIX defacements in no way compare with the 65% attributed to Microsoft Windows. What is significant, however, is that of the 75 AIX defacements in the past 18 months, 60 of them occurred in the past six days.
The most likely cause of the sudden upsurge in AIX defacements is the more than 30 AIX exploits posted to the hack.co.za Web site over the weekend.
The exploits were posted by a Polish group known as Last Stage of Delirium Research Group (LSD) and target security bugs in AIX including a number of exploits that can be run by a remote attacker.
One of the victims of the latest series of attacks was an IBM corporate server in Indonesia. Almost half of the defacements in the last week hit targets in the Brazilian (.br) and Mexican (.mx) domain.
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