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Web Site Attacks Are On The Rise
Nicholas Roussos writes "According to recent numbers from 2004, website attacks are on the rise, and many of them are being performed by mischevious school kids. Some of their favorite targets include U.S. government and military websites."
I have certainly seen the number of attacks rising on our academic computing resources as well as my blog. Tracking IPs leads to lots of cable modems from Comcast and such which could be zombies, but given the lack of sophistication from those IPs, I have to wonder. Most of the attacks from these cable modem IPs are scripts directed at Windows vulnerabilities and buffer overflow attacks, but a few coming from Taiwan and Korea as well as some in the Balkans are fairly sophisticated that sometimes appear to come via compromised computers from other universities for example. Depending upon how sophisticated they are, I have reported some of them to Federal authorities who have the resources to subpoena logs and go after folks intruding into Federal resources. Interestingly others have also recently reported intrusions followed by blackmail which are likely not the domain of script kiddies. Certainly, comedy aside, one wonders if many of these kids have any idea of what they could actually be dealing with. Back in 1982 (we were 12), all that happened to us after hacking into government computers was my friend Lance getting his Apple ][+ confiscated followed by a job offer 9 years later from the same folks who confiscated his computer back in 1982. Now however, hacking into even an educational system could net you serious Federal penalties depending upon the system one hacks into. One admin friend of mine at a certain government lab is absolutely militant about this stuff. It has become her all consuming hobby to track these folks down and allocate whatever government resources she can muster to prosecute intruders into her systems. Woe be unto those that intrude into one of Melissa's systems.
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We have an, unpublicised tech support website for our company use only. On looking at the weblogs, it looks like 80-90% of all traffic is attempted hacks. We even went as far as contacting the ISP of one particularly keen individual, they, of course, weren't in the slightest bit interested.
Just because your paranoid doesn't really mean they aren't out to get you
I think that comment is a little misleading...How many 15-16yr olds do you know with a policatal opinion like being called schoolboys?
Indeed, some good fodder for movies back then, but a slap on the wrist. What behavioural change might one expect if some existing statutes were pulled into effect, such as child endangerment, contributing to the deliquency of a minor, etc, where parents don't keep up with what their kids have been doing on the computer?
Seems entirely reasonable that at some point someone will drag the kid away from the parents/home to be placed in some child welfare state. Legal experts opinions welcome.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar