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Just protest it Nike falls victim to Web hackers with a political message
Posted: Wednesday June 21, 2000 09:20 PM
BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) -- Nike called in the FBI to investigate a computer hacker attack that diverted access from its Web site on Wednesday to a site that calls for disrupting an international economic forum in Australia. Nike computers were never breached and its electronic security protected all online customers for Nike products, said spokeswoman Corby Casler. "We've got some pretty sharp people running our computers," Casler said. "There were no problems with credit cards or purchases. We want to make that clear." But she said that for more than six hours access to the www.nike.com site was diverted by hackers through computers operated by Internet service providers, including FirstNET Online in Edinburgh, Scotland. Instead of arriving at the Nike corporate site, Web browsers were sent to www.s11.org, a site with a main page that proclaimed "Global justice is coming -- prepare now!" The page included messages urging protesters to gather at the World Economic Forum meeting scheduled Sept. 11-13 in Melbourne, Australia. According to the "s11" Web site, Nike is among the major corporations that will be attending the meeting in Melbourne, which is being held to discuss Asia's economic growth. "Phil sometimes attends," Casler said of Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight. "We're very involved in global economy meetings." The 2000 Olympic Games are set to open Sept. 16 in nearby Sydney, and Nike is involved in both the forum and the Olympics. Casler said neither she nor other Nike officials had ever heard of the "s11" group and nobody claimed responsibility for diverting Internet traffic away from the Nike site to the "s11" site. FirstNET Online posted a notice on the Web saying that about 3:30 p.m. London time it had learned that the domain name www.nike.com had been re-pointed to www.s11.org. FirstNET said it had tried to notify Nike and found that telephone contact numbers were outdated. "We faxed a letter to the Head Office for Nike Inc., and have telephoned three times, but our calls have not been returned," the FirstNet Online posting said. On its site, "s11" says -- with British spelling -- that it is a "network of organizations, affinity groups and individuals that all share a common concern about the growth of corporate power and the direction of globalization." The "s11" Web site calls on people to attend a Sept. 11 protest at Melbourne's Crown Casino, where the economic forum is to be held. Nike has faced repeated criticism by student and labor rights groups for years over conditions at contract factories overseas, especially in Asia and Latin America. The Beaverton-based athletic shoe and clothing company has worked to improve conditions, hiring monitors and creating executive positions to deal exclusively with labor rights. But Knight recently pulled all his donations to his alma mater, the University of Oregon, for joining the Worker Rights Consortium, a New York-based labor watchdog group organized mostly by college students.
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