Hacking for Hype

When I first set out to write this month's article I had intended to discuss web site defacement. This seemed particularly appropriate in light of the latest media frenzy over United States Government sites being targeted by Chinese hackers. In fact hundreds of US sites were hacked by Chinese hackers, as were hundreds of Chinese sites by US hackers. This article was supposed to discuss the reasons hackers "deface" web sites -- whether for fun or to make a political statement. The article would wrap up with some clever and sometimes witty quotes that hackers actually placed on defaced web sites. Yet after researching the topic at least one insight into the mind of a hacker became very clear.

Anyone willing to deface -- call it vandalize -- Internet web sites, ranging from the "Script Kiddies," who use easy-to-use tools that exploit common unpatched vulnerabilities, all to way up to the Unix guru hackers which just enjoy the "challenge," possess one thing in common. Namely, they seek attention. They want the world to see their "work." The "Chinese Hackers" had already "won" once the press started publishing stories about them. A professor of mine theorized that terrorism would cease if the media stopped publicizing attacks. While that might be impossible in the real world, (for example, how could anyone keep the "World Trade Center Bombing" a secret?) believe it or not, it's not as hard to keep web site defacement attacks quiet in Cyberspace.

Say a major US site, www.someussite.com for our sake, got defaced. Imagine Someussite.com gets a thousand hits per minute. Then say the webmasters are alerted immediately and have the site restored in 5 minutes. So 5000 visitors will see the "hacked" page. But this event will pretty much be kept under wraps unless the Associated Press publicizes it in news stories. What about smaller sites that would take a full day to respond? Well those sites might only receive 1000 visitors a day. Usually larger sites have more staff and faster response time while smaller sites get fewer hits and can respond slower. Either way it wouldn't be unreasonable to go years without ever hearing of web site defacement -- that is if journalists can keep their pencils down. Without publicity "political vandalism," which accounts for a very large percentage of all web site defacements, would no longer be worthwhile.

Don't misinterpret this to mean we should amend the First Amendment and take away "Freedom of the Press." But by all means, do interpret this to mean that just because journalists have the right to report web vandalism, they still are acting recklessly when they report it. Indeed arguably those that report these events are at least partially responsible for their continued occurrence. I, for one, don't want to be included in this group. That said a more appropriate article to write would be one that discusses different security tools and sound security practices which help to prevent web site defacement. And so I begin my research for future articles -- this time focusing on how to prevent these attacks.

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