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Web Consequences

Poor internet security can have a major impact on a corporations public profile. The examples below are drawn from the on-line press and give you an idea of what can happen if somone can get unauthorized access your website.

"Tuesday 22nd May 2001
DEFACEMENT HACKS OVERLOAD WEB SITE

Security site Attrition.org announced today that it will cease keeping copies of defaced web pages in its archives - simply because an enormous increase in successful hacking and defacement attacks on web sites in the last 12 months has overloaded its staff. The volunteer-run site, which has been reporting web site hacks and keeping copies of defacements for the last 6 years, said that the recent growth of hacking incidents had led to a chronic work overload. Attrition reported that on several days last month, for example, more than 100 web sites a day were defaced by vandals. This was three times the total number of defacements for 1995 and 1996 combined. The site will, however, continue to keep statistics on site hacks and continue to provide commentary and articles on high profile defacements, significant trends and "other activity that warrants attention". Attrition's statistics show that between August 1999 and mid-May 2001, web sites running Windows NT or Windows 2000 accounted for 61.3% of all site defacements - though according to UK site Netcraft, Microsoft's web products account for only 20% of all web servers."

Source - Australian Cybermalls News

"From: wildeman ® 6/10/2004 2:01:25 PM
Subject: More grubby ALP behaviour post id: 3064
By Ms. Elliot for ALP. Even by Labour standards, this is appalling.

-----------------

The Minister for Children, Larry Anthony, has become emotional during a radio interview concerning a National Party web site in Western Australia.

The site was infiltrated earlier this week with explicit messages about children posted.

The site has since been taken down.

But the Labor candidate in Mr Anthony's northern New South Wales seat of Richmond, Justine Elliot, has demanded he and the Nationals leader John Anderson apologise for not ensuring the site was monitored properly."

Source - ABC Online News Forum

"Hactivism

By Arun Pradhan

Several weeks ago, surfers visiting Australian political parties' web sites might have been surprised to see the Liberals' site defaced and full of links to pornography sites. As well as severely embarrassing the Labor Party staffers who had encouraged such acts, the security breach reflected the growth of what has been dubbed “hactivism”.

In this case, it did not take much effort. The Liberals left their site wide open so that a range of party members could make changes to it. This proved too big a temptation for many other people.

But accessing web sites is often more complicated, and the hacking aims and abilities of groups and individuals around the world are becoming more sophisticated....."

Source - Green Left Weekley Online Edition

"The Golden Age of Hacktivism

Niall McKay

On the eve of Sweden's general election, Internet saboteurs targeted the Web site of that country's right-wing Moderates political party, defacing pages and establishing links to the homepages of the left-wing party and a pornography site.

But the Scandanavian crack Saturday was not the work of bored juveniles armed with a Unix account, a slice of easily compiled code, and a few hours to kill. It advanced a specific political agenda.

"The future of activism is on the Internet," said Stanton McCandlish, program director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "More and more, what is considered an offline issue, such as protesting the treatment of the Zapatistas in Mexico, is being protested on the Net." ...."

Source - Wired News

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