Articles by ecothrust at Technorati Headline Animator

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Hacker's Upsurge Spreads Uncertainty

http://bit.ly/7XwAG

Over the last one year hacker's have won several notable victories over the defenders of digital data called the cyber security experts. The most celebrated of the hackers is undoubtedly the Wiki Leaks that was established as a non profit organisation five years ago with an aim to act as whistle blowers against   backroom deal making  by people in authority. As a matter of fact its creator Julian Assange surprisingly emerged as a public figure of immense respectability among the masses despite the US and Swedish Governments trying best to defame and arrest him. Unlike most hackers he emerged with the image of the saver of democratic rights, after the April 2010 publishing of footage of Apache helicopters shooting down unarmed journalists in Baghdad three years ago.



 Claiming a database of over 1.2 million documents hacked painstakingly during the period 2006-2010 the website tied up with major media houses like New York Times and the Guardian to publish leaks authenticated by the established media.on a regular basis which the US and other Governments have been unable to stop despite threats and legal impediments.

The hacker attacks through DDoS or the  Distributed Denial of Service that first hit headlines when a 15 year old  Canadian boy brought down  several internet giants like Yahoo, CNN,eBay and Amazon ten years ago was back into the limelight last year. Several attempts on credit card majors visa and master card took place that crippled their services for hours due to flooding of requests to operate cards that created a huge overload and brought down their servers first to a crawl and then to a halt.

Internet search giant has complained several times of Chinese hackers stealing passwords and hacking into its G mail service to compromise and stop mails of activists and Chinese rebels. However the attacks have continued despite Google protests and threats to withdraw from mainland China, that Google eventually found was too big to ignore.

The continuous and repeated cyber attacks on Sony passwords starting from its PlayStation Network password theft is making people doubtful about the capability of cyber security experts to match the growing army of hackers. Since then hackers have attacked Lockheed Martin the famed US Defense supplier and the IMF though both attempts have been only partly successful and detected in time to avoid damage. Citibank and several Spanish Banks have of late been attacked by hackers, despite the fact that some arrests have been made in Spain.However the hackers are growing increasingly confident after notable successes and is giving a lot of headache to cyber security experts worried about the dual menace of data theft and disruption.




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