Defacing and cyber-terrorism attacks and protection policies

In the prior post I’ve mentioned about two strategies of attacking which have been used in Cyber war between Palestinians and Israelis. They are Defacing Attacks and cyber-terrorism attacks. In this post I would like to explain about them in detail, also I intend to explain some real examples in the world which happened by using this types of Cyber terrorism attacking.

1. Defacing attack:

Defacing attacks occur when hackers break into a Web-site’s files and alter them by posting obscenities or generally changing the content of the site that is viewed on the World Wide Web.

Some of the most notable examples of this type of attack are:

1. the Anti-Defamation League site, defacement of the Hizbollah Web-site by Israelis at the beginning of the conflict.

2. The Iranian Ministry of Agriculture site

3. the Web-site of Iranian President Mohammed Khatami

4. the site of the U.S. high-tech firm Lucent Technologies because of their heavy business dealings in Israel

2. Cyber-terrorism:

As I mentioned before in prior posts this type of attacks includes the stealing, corruption, or alteration of information contained on a particular site.

Examples in real world:

1. A mild example is the incident in which key files were erased from the Knesset’s Web-site because it involved the destruction of information contained there, although it did not cause very serious impacts

2. Threats by pro-Palestinian hackers, if carried out, to attack major e-commerce sites in the U.S. in response to Israeli hacker attacks, may fit within this category

3. The attack perpetrated against AIPAC by Dr. Nuker (a member of a group called the Pakistan Hackerz Club) comes even closer because, in addition to defacement, 3,500 email addresses were stolen, anti-Israeli messages were sent to these addresses, and 700 credit card numbers were stolen and subsequently posted on Dr. Nuker’s Web-site.

Policy Response:

There have been interesting policy responses in a result of these attacks.

on the part of some international actors, a policy response could be of a more offensive nature.

Another kind of policy which might be used is that governments around the world are training hacker soldiers for the purposes of harassing opponents, espionage, and attacks on vital infrastructures. So the hackers can find the bugs and inform the governments in order to solve the problem, so by this strategy they use hackers to solve the problems rather than using them just for attacking.

Another way of protection is Identify most critical information and host it in the safest possible manner. Not every database or server needs the ultimate level of security. Evaluate the consequences of a breach on a system-by-system basis. Consider outsourcing your most critical systems to a trusted third-party secure hosting company. When considering this option look at network security, physical security and policy security. All three components should be the best of breed to ensure ultimate protection.