Thanks to phluid for telling me about this. :)
The company web site of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick (www.defensivethinking.com) was compromised early last week by a man in Alaska pointing out that the web system had a little known vulnerability. A patch was applied within 2 hours of discovery.
The compromised computer is a public system on a network separate from production systems at Defensive Thinking. No customer information was released nor was in danger of being compromised.
"From the moment we launched we"ve seen a daily, consistent and significantly more complex than average number of network vulnerability attacks coming from almost every country." said Mitnick
"I suppose if you were a young hacker and wanted to prove your skills, this is the place to go. It reminds me of the movie "The Gunfighter."" he added.
Being such a public target offers an unexpected benefit to customers of Defensive Thinking: all attacks are investigated and cataloged giving the company a unique perspective on current attack methods – many of which are unpublished and unknown by system and software manufacturers.