The first war of the cyber world is taking place and it is not between two nations, but the angry uprising of Hackers or Hacktivists who believe in free speech on the Internet. Triggered by the arrest of Julian Assange, counter strikes have been initiated against all sites that refused Wikileaks hosting, DNS, and payment services and websites of government officials and departments that tried to stop the redistribution of Wikileaks content.
Wikileaks has released an insurance file probably to protect the life of Julian Assange and other Wikileaks members. The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the Wikileaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. No one knows what the file contains in it.
This event demonstrates the idealism which hackers had in the late 90’s, in reinforcing the importance of free speech, adequately priced services and liberty, is alive and much more powerful. The attack power used is a fraction of the immense potential that can be unleashed if malware unconsciously downloaded by millions of users is activated by their controllers. Such power could cripple the online economy of a country not just a site.
Recommendation:
Popular news events are exploited by hackers to trick people into downloading malware onto their computers. People are lured to fictitious news sites or may be sent mails with a save Wikileaks campaigns or even offered modified copies of the insurance file.
I would recommend reading WiKiLeaks news on reputed websites, not opening any Internet campaign attachment (there is no such official campaign yet) and not to download the Wikileaks file from any site. If you must, get the file from the official site, it may be safer.
No comments:
Post a Comment