Hackers Leave Mark On Big Bang Experiment
A spokesman for the world’s most powerful physics experiment said part of the computer system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was hacked into last Wednesday.
A group known as the "Greek Security Team" hacked into a computer connected to the system.
The hackers put up a message on the facility’s website, according to a spokesman for Cern, the lab that houses the LHC.
The spokesman said no harm was done but the incident has highlighted the need for security in the LHC’s network.
The hackers had targeted the computer network of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS), a huge detector that analyses data from the particle accelerator.
The LHC is attempting to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, in which the universe was created.
Engineers were searching the hacked computer for possible malicious damage as the world watched while the first particles began circulating in the LHC.
The CMS website displayed a page with a mocking message, in Greek, which included the line: "We are 2600 – don’t mess with us".
The CMS webpage www.cmsmon.cern.ch, can no longer be viewed as a result of the attack.
The compromised computer was not connected to the accelerator itself, said Cern spokesman James Gillies.
"The computer is used to monitor one of the experiments at the LHC, it’s nothing to do with the LHC accelerator itself or any of the control systems," he said.
"It seems it was not a malicious hack and it was quickly detected and corrected but this sort of thing keeps you on your toes."
The LHC had a general access network and a more restricted access network, which controls the sensitive systems, Gillies said.
The experiment involved 10,000 scientists at 500 universities in 80 countries and that keeping on top of systems security was "not a trivial task".
"As far as I understand there was one user somewhere – who wasn’t a hacker – who uploaded something on to this machine and inadvertently introduced a weakness that allowed people to get in," he said.
He said the IT department is constantly reminding the experimental collaborators of security issues regarding the network and will continue to do so. "This may have strengthened their message."
The hacking community often uses the number 2600. It is believed to have originated in the US in the 1960s with the discovery that a tone of 2600Hz played down the line could be used to access restricted parts of the national telephone system.
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