A Brazilian hacker going by the name of Pr0s3x has hacked into and defaced the National Science Foundation’s official website. The government agency has restored the website however no official announcement has been made to address as to how or why the hacker may have exploited their website as of yet. It is unknown whether any confidential data had been breached or leaked by the hacker in the process of the defacement.
The government agency does fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Therefore, if any sensitive data had been exposed, the NSF government agency would surely have had reported on it.
The defacement HTML file named “gab.htm” was uploaded to the /prim/ directory and the hacker stated:
National Science Foundation HACKED
By Pr0s3x
BR h4x0r
The deface page uploaded by the hacker can be seen here: https://www.nsf.gov/prim/gab.htm
The website has been hacked before, 2 years ago in 2015 by a Pakistani hacker going by the name of Imam (Cached Defacement Here), injecting a deface page into the same /prim/ directory as Pr0s3x here has. Therefore, going by the pattern here, the PRIM Webmaster Platforms directory might be the vulnerability exploited by both hackers. Allowing them access to upload their deface pages.
After having a look at the hacker Pr0s3x’s previous defacements, it is safe to assume that Government agencies and websites seem to be his go to targets to attack. Therefore any political motives or hatred motives can be ruled out of the question.
Update:- Website has been restored and the page uploaded by the hacker has been removed.