Web-based hacking is increasingly evolving into a form of organised crime, as hackers target organisations with the aim of blackmail and extorting money, a South African IT security expert says.
Barry Cribb, IS Digital Networks managing director, explains that a new trend is for criminals to threaten companies with disabling their online systems if their demands for money are not met. He says the extortionists also threaten to expose confidential information.
While he is not yet aware of this happing locally, Cribb believes this threat is building in SA. Globally, Europe, the US and the UK have seen a considerable increase in this phenomenon.
"Recently, a UK-based online betting service was targeted by hackers who threatened to shut down the site a day before the Grand National race meeting unless their demands were met. Organisations in such situations find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They are often not prepared for such attacks and have no contingency plans. Many of them thus end up meeting the hackers` demands."
But Cribb notes that the prevalence of extortion by hackers is difficult to quantify, as many organisations are reluctant to report any security breaches, even those not involving extortion.
He says that there are many Internet service providers (ISPs) who have suffered repeated defacements of their clients` sites or had multiple bogus pages posted by attackers on their shared servers and yet have not encouraged their clients to improve security.
Defacement
"One ISP recently told a client that the bogus pages posted on their site were 'test` attacks done by the ISP itself. Yet the bogus pages were also posted on a hacker defacement mirror by two different attackers on two separate occasions boasting that they had carried out the attack. Despite this, both pages were present on the site months after the postings," Cribb states.
"When another client queried why their site was offline, they were told that 'it was being moved to a faster server`. Yet the site was one of 200 successfully attacked on the same day, as posted by hackers."
Cribb stresses that hiding from vulnerabilities in security will not make them go away and other hackers, wanting to demonstrate their skills, will repeat their attacks, particularly those posted on defacement mirrors.
However, Cribb says that one of the most disturbing developments recently is the number of "hacker training sites" on the Web, such as "how2hack", "hellboundhackers" and "hack4u". Such sites offer "hacking challenges", testing everything from basic Web-hacking and Javascript hacking, to application-cracking and more.
"These potentially criminal communities help each other through IRC chat channels and build teams of people willing to share their knowledge and collaborate to solve hacking challenges.
"The problem is not going to go away. The young and the curious, not to mention criminals, want to test their skills and these sites soon become no more challenging than the latest computer game. Soon they want fresh challenges and bigger companies to hack, causing more havoc."
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