Friday, February 27, 2009

Political Motivation Still Top Motive for Web Defacement

Breach Security, Inc has released its annual report analyzing web page defacement. The study found that although financial motivation for web attacks is increasing, political and ideological motivations are still the primary drivers:
"On the other end of the spectrum, the ideologists use the Internet to convey their message using Web hacking. Their main vehicle is defacing web sites."
...
"When further analyzing defacement incidents, we found that the majority were of a political nature, targeting political parties, candidates and government departments, often with a very specific message related to a campaign. Others have a cultural aspect, mainly Islamic hackers defacing western web sites."

The report also looks at who is targeted most often for web defacements:
"Government is a prime target due to ideological reasons, while universities are more open than other organizations. These statistics, however, are biased, to a degree, as the public disclosure requirements of government and other public organizations are much broader than those of commercial organizations..."

"On the commercial side, Internet-related organizations top the list. This group includes retail shops, comprising mostly e-commerce sites, media companies and pure internet services such as search engines and service providers."

THE WEB HACKING INCIDENTS DATABASE 2008

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The hackers that carry out web page defacements, are oftentimes extremists who believe any method/means to make their point, is justified. If defacement is the most damage they can do, that's better than making bombs or doing something that will physically hurt someone.

However, I believe saying that
defacement is the main method of political hacktivism - is incorrect. More correctly, defacement is the easiest and most public method of electronic political hacktivism.

Other methods are much more damaging (virtural sit-ins - passive DoD attack, active DoD attack using bots, hijacking or redirecting domains, email or forum junking, auto dialing phone lines, mass email delivery, website spoofing, and others).

Check out www.CinnabarSweets.blogspot.com to find out about some of these methods and how others are using them WITHOUT breaking the law.

Anwalt said...

This post is really informative for me and this is right that political motivation still top motive for web defacement. The other are also very involve in this but most effective is political.