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RELATED VIDEO CNN's Marsha Walton reports on the continuing attacks on government Web sites by hackers Windows Media 28K 80K
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June 2, 1999
Web posted at: 2:47 p.m. EDT (1847 GMT)

(CNN) -- The threat has been made.

Some hacker groups angry with the FBI say every site on the Internet that ends in ".gov" will be a target. That means every U.S. government Web site, from the Senate to NASA to the Fish and Wildlife Service will have to beef up security.

The FBI site has been inaccessible for most of the past week, the Department of the Interior and the General Services Administration are two of the latest to be defaced.

A member of Forpaxe, a Portugese group claiming responsibility for some of the intrusions, told CNN in an online chat: "Hacking is a means to inform ... at the same time, we get what we want."

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Computer security expert, Russell Shumway says what these groups often want is attention.

"It's the equivalent of spray painting something on a wall ... the nice thing about defacing a dot-gov site if you're a hacker is that you immediately get a lot of press for doing that. "

Government Web sites are commonly set up for information purposes. Usually the government Web servers don't connect to sensitive records so they often have less security than e-commerce sites that process personal and credit card information.

Shumway says any successful penetration has a price.

"The primary risk to the government is not the loss of confidential data, it's the public image loss. "

After being forced to shut down its site last week, FBI official Tron Brekke said finding those responsible is a high priority.

"It is no prank, and if we find out who did it we will seek to prosecute," Brekke said.

While recent attacks have resulted in inconvenience and embarrassment, some of the hacker groups claim they have the ability to do far more damage.