Increasing concerns about hacking
British police and online security specialists are both agreeing that the recent steam of high profile hacking activity, on a major scale and targeting major companies who on the face of it will have very strong security, is extremely worrying.
Hacking seems to be major news and this week is no exception. This week, a teenager from Essex in the UK has been charged as being involved in some of the major hacking recently, but clearly there are many other individuals involved due to the scale of attacks and the resources needed for some techniques to succeed. So called “denial of service” attacks tend to require a concerted and perhaps co-ordinated bombardment of a site to overload it, which can involve many thousands if not millions of computers at the same time. This does not mean thousands of hackers are necessarily involved, but a number will be needed to recruit the computing power needed by spreading viruses or such like to involve many other computers.
The experts also advise that the hackers tactics are changing and evolving. They are developing new techniques and in the case of organised criminal hacking for profit, are adopting a much more planned approach, testing organisations weaknesses before launching a final attack to obtain what they want, such as bank details. Hackers are apparently also now using tactics involving social networks, which of course have become the pre-eminent way for people to communicate on the net, save for by email.
One aspect providing some encouragement/comfort for law enforcement agencies and large companies is the fact that the hackers group often destroy themselves from within due to some members often getting “spooked” eventually and turning informant or due to arrogance or competitiveness. There are some signs that this is happening with the hackers thought to be behind at least some of the major attacks recently.
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