http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9134519 [While interesting, these reports always remind me of grade school math teacher notes, "Nice job! but since you didn't show your work, C+" - WK] Tuesday, January 21 2003 by Matthew Clark Although digital attackers are motivated by profits and peer pressure an increasing number of hackers are driven by ideological values claims report. In a report released on Tuesday, the UK-based e-security company mi2g said that computer attacks on Western organisations are on the rise, partly because of radical groups and individuals based in predominantly Islamic countries. Retaliatory attacks targeting Islamic countries are proportionately low in most instances or negligible, mi2g said. Citing the potential war in Iraq as well as the War on Terrorism, Russia's conflict in Chechnya, the Israel-Palestine issue and India-Pakistan tensions over Kashmir, mi2g said that certain geo-political issues were motivating "radical hacker groups." Anti-capitalist hackers were also named as an active group within the politically motivated hacker community. According to the company's research, the top ten hotbeds where computer attacks originated in 2002 were Brazil, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Italy, UK, Indonesia, Turkey, Libya and the USA. Meanwhile, the top ten victim countries for 2002 were USA, Brazil, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Denmark, Australia and South Korea. With close to 32,500 attacks on US targets mi2g said that American organisations suffered from major ideologically motivated attacks originating from Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, the UK, Turkey, Libya and Morocco. Reduced scale hacker attacks also originated from France, Italy and from within the US, the report noted. In the UK, where over 5,500 attacks were recorded, foreign attackers came mainly from Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey. But surprisingly, most UK attacks originated from within the UK and US, the report said. Meanwhile, there were over 800 attacks in India, mostly from Pakistani hackers as well as by groups originating from Morocco, Indonesia, Libya, Turkey and Egypt. In Israel there were about 380 attacks, primarily originating from Libya, Morocco, Egypt, France, Pakistan, Indonesia and Italy. "The overall number of attacks on Israeli computers declined in 2002 because security was tightened progressively," mi2g said. "Disgruntled or disaffected individuals -- employees and sub-contractors -- have the greatest potential to cause serious damage in colluding with third parties," commented DK Matai, chairman and chief executive officer of mi2g. "Current events are polarising communities along ideological lines. Hacking is a remote crime but it does require local presence for serious damage to be caused." "As the events in the UK show, digital risk management needs to address the threat from within and without simultaneously. Policies not designed for the 21st century are failing," Matai continued. " Executives need to rethink their strategy." Other details in the report showed that overt digital attacks worldwide have risen from 4,197 in 1999 to 87,525 in 2002. January 2003 is set to be a record-breaking month for overt digital attacks. Of the 87,525 attacks worldwide recorded by the company in 2002, 32,689 were on individuals or small businesses and organisations, while 46,853 were on firms with turnover of less that USD7 million. About 5,767 were on firms with turnover of between USD7 million and USD40 million and 2,200 were on larger entities. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jan 22 2003 - 06:42:14 PST