Governments, businesses, people caught in hacker crossfire

Collateral damage to governments, businesses and
consumers caught in the crossfire of an unprecedented surge of Internet
hacktivism is starting to mount.

Late last week, the upstart
hacking group LulzSec announced that it had cracked the Arizona
Department of Public Safety’s web site to protest a controversial state law boosting
police authority to detain suspected illegal immigrants. 

The hackers then publicly posted
sensitive police documents and personal information about individual officers,
putting cases and people at risk. “Lost in the media frenzy and the self-promotional
aspects of LulzSec is the fact that innocent individuals are being
affected,” says Alexey Raevsky, CEO of data security firm Zecurion. 

Saturday, the group unexpectedly
announced it was dissolving itself. Sunday, a member of the group told the
Associated Press that the group didn’t dissolve under pressure from law
enforcement, but because “we’re getting bored of us.” The hacker
declined to be identified, but he verified his membership by posting a
pre-arranged message to the group’s Twitter feed. 

Quote from John D’Arcy:

“Given their propensity for
hitting large scale targets, I expect a major government website or that of an
international organization or a multinational company to be next,” says
John D’Arcy, information technology professor at the University of
Notre Dame.
He says LulzSec is likely seeking “targets that would make a big splash
and re-establish their credibility as legitimate hackers in the eyes of the
public.”

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