In less than 200 words, I compiled very interesting information on the subjects of website defacing and hacktivism. Enough information is provided to you in order to answer my question which follows at the end. I would like to know your personal views.

Website defacement [2] is the substitution of an original home page by a system cracker/hacker. It is illegal in most countries as is considered an unauthorized computer access, data modification and denial of service. Crackers/hackers are usually defacing websites to spread messages and beliefs. Some of them are politically, socially and religiously motivated – given the term hacktivists – and some other just deface for the thrill.

A website defacement can create serious problems for companies as it they affects negatively their public image on the internet and in general. Victim companies may stop their transactions in order to repair the affected computer systems and thus lose money. It can also make their existing customers or potential future customers to lose faith in the company as it is evidence that their web server was broken into due to lack of security.

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Since November 2006, in UK is an offense to launch DoS/DDoS attacks, which experts had previously called “a legal gray area.”

What follows is my brief personal view on this subject.

Such attacks should have been considered illegal for over 10 years now because they cause significant financial losses to businesses as they affect the availability of data and services – A very unethical thing to do…

Causing many problems for all the parties involved in the supply chain…

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Both Kevin Mitnick (http://www.defensivethinking.com ) and Kevin Poulsen (http://www.securityfocus.com & http://www.wired.com ) are currently successful in the Information Security field because of their past computer crimes [1] and the attention that they received through the news media. They are not the only ones though!

Their professional success that followed after serving jail time, created a trend that young “wannabe hackers” follow: They expect a bright future career and in order to achieve that, they hope to get busted for hacking.

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In my opinion, Microsoft all the past years, since the first version of Windows until the latest Vista release [1], focuses mostly on adding new features than maintaining a secure kernel.

Microsoft is also the operating system (OS) market dominator, meaning that is the main target for crimeware/malware writers – responsible for a very big percent of worldwide cyber-crimes.

Which OS do you prefer for more security? Linux,Windows or any other? Read More » » »

I think one root of the problem is how fast scammers can register domain names and have the fake websites – e.g. for PayPal etc… – up and running in seconds. The root of the problem is the automated process of the domain name registrations.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the registrars have to do something in order to protect the individuals from phishing scams. The current situation is: A complaint about a scammer’s domain – e.g. payppaal.com – has to be legally resolved and it takes ages until the court’s final decision to take the domain name down, while phishers need only a few minutes or hours to setup their scam websites and steal dozen of credit card details. Read More » » »