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Verizon Says Hactivists Now Biggest Corporate Net Threat
alphadogg writes "Hactivists — not cybercriminals — were responsible for the majority of personal data stolen from corporate and government networks during 2011, according to a new report from Verizon. The Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigation Report found that 58% of data stolen in 2011 was the result of hactivism, which involves computer break-ins for political rather than commercial gain. In previous years, most hacking was carried out by criminals, Verizon said. Altogether, Verizon examined 855 cybersecurity incidents worldwide that involved 174 million compromised records. This is the largest data set that Verizon has ever examined, thanks to its cooperation with law enforcement groups including the U.S. Secret Service, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit and police forces from Australia, Ireland and London."
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Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Anyone stealing personal data is a "cybercriminal". Sounds like they are playing with words.
The truth is that hactivisism alone is not a sufficient cause of corporate data breaches. A variety of issues come into play: corporate laxity in IT, a preference for fast deployment of services over careful security scrutiny, absence of strong legal consequences against corporations for permitting data breaches, programming languages/environments that make it easy to deploy vulnerable services, lack of fine-grained data permissions at the hardware/network/OS level, etc.
Remove any one of those factors, and the rate of data breaches would likely go down significantly. I'm not sure where Verizon gets off picking just one of them.
Maybe I'd have an ounce of sympathy if Verizon (or any ISP/phone company) didn't constantly fuck over their customers.
What goes around comes around...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Maybe the number one threat is acting like a douche. How many large, successful companies are targetted when they don't act like that? Hey Sony, get a clue.
This is a really dangerous distinction. Crime is crime. Politically motivated crime is - what? Terrorism? I don't like where this is going.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
When you are hacked by an activist, they will make sure that you and the rest of the world know about it. Criminals, on the other hand, try to be as subtle as possible. Some victims might not even realize that they have been breached, and even if they do it's much easier to cover up. I don't think activism surpasses crime, it's just much more visible.
"Hacktavists" are just a highly visible boogeyman. Useful for scaring white people that watch network news and the politicians that cull their votes.
Visible, but hardly a blip compared to the massive spam, fraud, phishing, trojan, and malware ops that the real blackhats run. These things are complex and deep and ever present, so they're useless for scaremongers.
Want a real data set that will turn up evidence of massive economic fraud? Get ahold of Verizon's billing data.
Well, good thing then, that it's easy to protect yourself against hacktivists. Just stop being dicks.
May we live long and die out
Easier definition:
Terrorist: Someone who doesn't agree with you, wants to go to war with you but lacks the funds for a big enough army to actually call it a war.
Criminal: Someone who does something against the interests of society but lacks the money to change the laws accordingly, or someone who does something against the interests of those that have the money to change the laws.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Indeed... especially in this case.
Think about how the data was generated: the data comes from reported incidents of network compromise.
EVERY hacktivist compromise will be reported by the victim, as the hactivist group has already reported it and they have a responsibility to disclose such things.
I'd bet that most intrusions and data extractions conducted by other groups (organized crime, government special ops, industrial espionage) are never reported to Verizon, therefore they wouldn't show up in the statistics. For that matter, most of these intrusions likely go completely unnoticed. Considering we've just been finding out in the last year about intrusions that have been ongoing for TEN YEARS, who's to say how many like these are still in the "unreported" category?
Without all the rhetoric, Verizon's study is really saying that intrusions reported for political reasons are more highly reported than those that both the intruder and the victim have no desire to make public. Any other conclusions involve too much conjecture (on the same level as the RIAA losing billions to piracy) unless more data is provided.
there's a difference between hacktivists and cybercriminals? sounds like a false distinction to me.
I consider corporations like RIAA & MPAA, BSA, and politicians lobbied by corporations to legislate censorship, spying & restrictions of internet usage the biggest threat to internet. Patents & restrictions on writing software are a close second.
When downloading or uploading information or cracking copy protection can ruin your life worse than committing grand theft or murder, I consider that action immoral and unjust. And I will consider any corporation supporting & pushing this kind of legislation a valid target.
While I agree that unlawful implies criminal, lawful doesn't necessarily mean right, and unlawful doesn't necessarily mean wrong. These days the laws are broken mess, and even when they aren't only the rich can afford to defend themselves, rendering justice system broken.
--Coder