These attacks on Yahoo! and the like raise a lot of questions that the media seems not to be asking. Who's responsible and why the hey are they choosing a DoS attack? It seems to me that whoever it is is primarily looking for attention... this is all over the evening news, whereas a lot more serious things such as security threats, like that Hotmail password fiasco awhile ago, was passed over by the media (as far as I've heard). Reno and Co. are all "well, we'll hunt down these rabid hooligans for the law-abiding public and string them up". WHY all of this is happening would be a better question.
Hackers probably are NOT responsible, unless they're just well coordinated script kiddies. As an AC rightfully pointed out, "No selfrespecting hackers past, present or future would/will/should find any sort of fulfillment in performing such an attack, seeing as this has no bearing on the 'free flow of information', actually it's quite the opposite." I've seen a lot of posts in various places by hackers who try to find security holes and such in order to alert major companies, and they end up getting ignored... such as recently the AOL AIM account theft thing. The only good possibility that any true hackers are actually responsible would be trying to show companies/the public how weak security on these sites actually is. But, DoS attacks have nothing to do with security, only capacity. So, well-coordinated script-kiddies... But so well-coordinated...?
I concur with what someone said about the government's call for more internet regulation being too well timed. These attacks, which are essentially undefendable because they are about sheer volume and nothing else, but make a big public splash on TV by felling giants like Yahoo, and pose no real security threat, come right after a call for government regulation of the internet? Uh, can you say Big Brother Alert? Nobody has claimed responsibility, which means that the attackers want the public's feeling of unease to remain nonspecific. That means building worries about the internet's dependability, essentially by driving home how much the Law of the Jungle rules the online world. Now, why would someone want to do that? I'm guessing, to make ignorant people look to a regulatory force to stop the Big Hacker Baddies. Anti-government-surveillance paranoia isn't my usual thing, but at the moment, it seems like the most likely explanation. So far, the evidence doesn't seem to add up to anything else.
But somebody needs to give the mainstream media a clue. They're just villainizing hackers and making the FBI, govt, etc look like saints as usual. Not that hackers are all good, or the FBI, govt, etc is all bad. But all the evening news did was make people like my mom call up their family techs (me) and panic. Ugh.
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These attacks on Yahoo! and the like raise a lot of questions that the media seems not to be asking. Who's responsible and why the hey are they choosing a DoS attack? It seems to me that whoever it is is primarily looking for attention... this is all over the evening news, whereas a lot more serious things such as security threats, like that Hotmail password fiasco awhile ago, was passed over by the media (as far as I've heard). Reno and Co. are all "well, we'll hunt down these rabid hooligans for the law-abiding public and string them up". WHY all of this is happening would be a better question.
Hackers probably are NOT responsible, unless they're just well coordinated script kiddies. As an AC rightfully pointed out, "No selfrespecting hackers past, present or future would/will/should find any sort of fulfillment in performing such an attack, seeing as this has no bearing on the 'free flow of information', actually it's quite the opposite." I've seen a lot of posts in various places by hackers who try to find security holes and such in order to alert major companies, and they end up getting ignored... such as recently the AOL AIM account theft thing. The only good possibility that any true hackers are actually responsible would be trying to show companies/the public how weak security on these sites actually is. But, DoS attacks have nothing to do with security, only capacity. So, well-coordinated script-kiddies... But so well-coordinated...?
I concur with what someone said about the government's call for more internet regulation being too well timed. These attacks, which are essentially undefendable because they are about sheer volume and nothing else, but make a big public splash on TV by felling giants like Yahoo, and pose no real security threat, come right after a call for government regulation of the internet? Uh, can you say Big Brother Alert? Nobody has claimed responsibility, which means that the attackers want the public's feeling of unease to remain nonspecific. That means building worries about the internet's dependability, essentially by driving home how much the Law of the Jungle rules the online world. Now, why would someone want to do that? I'm guessing, to make ignorant people look to a regulatory force to stop the Big Hacker Baddies. Anti-government-surveillance paranoia isn't my usual thing, but at the moment, it seems like the most likely explanation. So far, the evidence doesn't seem to add up to anything else.
But somebody needs to give the mainstream media a clue. They're just villainizing hackers and making the FBI, govt, etc look like saints as usual. Not that hackers are all good, or the FBI, govt, etc is all bad. But all the evening news did was make people like my mom call up their family techs (me) and panic. Ugh.