http://www.darkreading.com/securityservices/security/cybercrime/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400721 By Tim Wilson DarkReading April 19, 2010 An emerging wave of politically motivated cyberattacks is reaching critical mass and threatens to redefine the way enterprises build their defenses, according to a report that will be published tomorrow. The report, compiled by well-known botnet researcher Gunter Ollmann of Damballa, offers a comprehensive look at the recent trend toward politically motivated cyberprotests, sometimes called hacktivism. While such organized mass attacks on specific targets are best known for being carried out against rival governments (think Estonia or Georgia) and large companies (think Project Aurora), the new report shows "cyberprotests" can be carried out against any organization, and for myriad reasons. "These types of attacks focus on all types of topics, and they can be executed by thousands of users or even just a few," Ollmann observes. "They open a much wider door of potential attacks on corporations, and they are increasingly difficult to defend because they don't necessarily involve true criminal behavior, and they could be carried out by your own customers." The report offers numerous examples of hacktivism in recent years, including the defacement of hundreds of Dutch websites in August 2008 by Islamic protesters over the release of the film Fitna, and last summer's distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Iranian government sites by supporters of defeated presidential candidates who claimed irregularities in the voting. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2010 - Dubai, the premier deep-knowledge network security event in the GCC, featuring keynote speakers John Viega and Matt Watchinski! http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2010dxb/Received on Mon Apr 19 2010 - 22:13:24 PDT
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