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press release
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Online Terrorism
Web Defacement -
Cyber Graffiti on a global scale
Research has shown that all websites are potential
targets for hackers.
According to the CERT coordination centre, a part of the US government
funded Software Engineering Institute, the number of security incidents
have consistently doubled each year for the past four years. Security
holes, or vulnerabilities, discovered in computer software and
underlying technology have increased in line with that. Companies
surveyed by the CSI and FBI reported a significant increase in web
defacement activity.
Web defacement is when a hacker replaces or alters content to display
whatever they choose on the hacked website. This might be just their
hacker alias and logo but may also be political propaganda or offensive
material like pornography or violent images. Motives are varied however.
some hackers carry out defacements for kudos, notoriety or just
publicity. Others exercise website defacement as a form of online
terrorism to obtain political goals. With the recent economic climate
and redundancies, companies should also beware of the threat of
disgruntled employees, past or present, attacking their website. This
needn't apply to IT personnel only.
"A more worrying trend is that some vulnerabilities exploited for
defacement can also be used as a springboard to launch other
attacks", says Antony Marcano of etest associates, a consultancy
specialised in website quality and security. "A hacker might
replace a popular and trusted homepage with a different version, perhaps
looking much the same as the original. Users can then be tricked into
divulging credit-card details and passwords or they may have laid a
mine-field of hyperlinks that covertly attempt to download viruses to
the users computer".
Marcano adds, "Many organisations may have their site hosted by an
Internet Service Provider (ISP). They may be assured that it is on a
'secure server', is behind a firewall or uses SSL. These buzzwords offer
little real assurance in the world of Internet security. It's like
having bars on all your windows of your house but leaving the front door
unlocked. The best way to be sure is to have the security of the site
independently validated and monitored."
Repairing the visual damage to your site is relatively
easy. Closing the security holes and correcting the damage to an
organisation's image, brand and the corresponding loss of business, is a
much harder & longer task.
for further information contact our PR team:
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7203 8394
pressroom@etest-associates.com
www.etest-associates.com
notes for
Editors:
etest
associates is a testing consultancy with a
fresh approach to software quality, specifically to software testing and
risk management.
Focussing
on delivering the benefits of testing to the client's business, our
approach goes beyond just the technical aspects of risk reduction,
increasing awareness of commercial risks, facilitating their
reduction.
Our
testing methodology is highly pragmatic and can be customised to fit any
organisation's needs.
The
company was originally founded by two experienced IT consultants, both
knowledgeable in the field of testing and quality management and with
many years practical experience of Internet & IT projects across a
variety of industry and technology areas including banking,
telecommunications and innovative "dot-coms".
etest
associates - the
experts in software testing & quality assurance of Internet, Intranet, web
applications and information systems.
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