Slashdot Mirror
Virginia Health Database Held For Ransom
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post's Security Fix is reporting that hackers broke into servers at the Virginia health department that monitors prescription drug abuse and replaced the homepage with a ransom demand. The attackers claimed they had deleted the backups, and demanded $10 million for the return of prescription data on more than 8 million Virginians. Virginia isn't saying much about the attacks at the moment, except to acknowledge that they've involved the FBI, and that they've shut down e-mail and a whole mess of servers for the state department of health professionals. The Post piece credits Wikileaks as the source, which has a copy of the ransom note left behind by the attackers."
...since Virginia is for Lovers. The hardest part will be determining weather their prescription was for C1A1iS or V1AGR4
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The Internet. A miracle of the 21st Century, providing high quality information and education to all, breaking down social barriers and creating a new info-democracy the likes of which our fathers could only dream about. Few would disagree that the Internet is a wonder of the modern world, and one of America's greatest contributions to science.
However, as with all emergent technologies sooner or later, abuse by the uneducated masses causes the need for regulation to arise. As more people adopt a technology, the more likely that technology will be used by irresponsible individuals who try to spoil things for the rest of us.
This is why the time has come to introduce licensing for Internet users.
* Hunting
* Fishing
* Watching TV
* Driving an automobile
* Using a PC
* Carrying a firearm
* Building a house
* Selling an alcoholic beverage
* Staging a rock concert
* Trading in securities
* Developing software
What do the activities listed above have in common ?
The answer is that all are potentially dangerous activities for which one must obtain a license if one wishes to remain on the right side of the law.
It is surprising to me that one potentially dangerous activity is conspicuously missing from the above list. We all accept without question the need for regulation where dangerous technologies are concerned (as the list clearly demonstrates). So why should the Internet be exempt ? What is so special about 0s and 1s travelling along a wire that makes us give it 'special treatment' ? Why should this important resource not enjoy the protection from abuse that regulation would undoubtably provide ?
In the old days of the Internet, its usage was confined to academia, and the military. Back in those days, one could be fairly sure that Internet users were responsible citizens, who would not abuse their 'net access, after all our educators and defenders are people we knew we could trust.
These days, with the explosive growth in Internet usage, it is impossible to control who goes online. Indeed, many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) market themselves on how 'easy to use' their service is. You are just as likely to find senior citizens, children, teenagers and housewives online these days, as you are to find a world class physicist or a military intelligence officer.
As you would expect, with such a large number of uneducated people given unrestricted access to such a powerful tool, the results have not always been pleasant, and abuse has run rampant. You can find bomb making instructions, Islamic fundamentalist propaganda, pornography, hate sites, left wing and right wing extremism, pornography, fascism in all its different and elaborate disguises, Radical androphobic feminism, autism, pornography, questionable politics, pornography, blasphemy against Jesus, and yet more pornography.
This is the mere tip of the iceberg, since the Internet is estimated to have as much as 100 Gigabytes of this kind of offensive material, and it is growing larger by the week, as more and more uneducated people rush to 'get online' so that they may 'surf the web' with their equally poorly-educated beer-swilling redneck buddies.
As with all technologies, the Internet has matured to the point where regulation is not just desirable, it has become inevitable. You don't need to be Kreskin to predict that unless the Internet is regulated, and regulated quite heavily, it will soon collapse under the sheer weight of pointless traffic Britney Spears fan sites, uninteresting personal home pages and the extra load placed on the 'net infrastructure by illegal protocols such as Aimster Napster, Bearshare Gnutella and the like.
As with automobil
Why would the "cyber-terrorist" post an email address as the ransom contact? Isn't he/she just going to get spammed now?
I don't know, why don't you send hackingforprofit@yahoo.com an e-mail and ask them?
Oops, did I just post hackingforprofit@yahoo.com without obfuscating it? Here, let me fix that:
hackingforprofit(at)yahoo(dot)com
My apologies to hackingforprofit@yahoo.com if this results in an increase of SPAM.
My work here is dung.
Did they also threaten to release the Da Vinci virus?
The attackers claimed they had deleted the backups, and demanded $10 million for the return of prescription data on more than 8 million Virginians.
Damn, I'd pay $10 mil for data on more than 8 million virgins. That's more than you get for martyrdom in the... oh, read it wrong. Never mind.
== Jez ==
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That make me very happy I get all my medication from the 2 dudes on the streetcorner.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
How he expects to receive any money is beyond me... .
A good plan would be to identify two similarly hackable situations, crack one and post a ransom note on the main page. Then kick back and read Slashdot to figure out how best to exploit hack situation number two.
We give the best advice.