Dutch Goverment publicizes paper about cyberthreats and security
Wanneer: 24/12/2011 - 19:49
Het artikel is in Engels geschreven, omdat de doelgroep voornamelijk Engels leest en schrijft. Voor het eerdere artikel kan je naar onze website gaan: http://artikel-140.nl/ . Het rapport is eveneens te vinden op onze website.
Just a day after we publicized a call-out to build a bridge between hacktivists and grassroots activists, the department of justice and security publicized a 60 pages thick paper about security threats and security.
We posted the paper on this website and translated some parts...
Snapshots:
Because of the the great importance of cybersecurity there has been a national cybersecurity strategy created. This paper is the realization of adequate actual threat and risk analysis. With the publication of this paper, we made the first step to get in action.
"Also hactivists and scriptkiddies are busy with disrupting and abusing IT. Terrorists are using IT primary for their purposes, like propaganda and to gain more members. Players like the state, private organizations and civilians are the potential targets for threats."
Hactivists are out to publicize of confidential information about the government and to sabotage private organizations. The targets of hactivists is quite unpredictable and there's no difference either the target is public or private, almost all the time personal information is in the game. The threat is small, but is growing bigger.
Hactivists:
Hactivists are people who have an ideology and are using digital tools for their 'cause'.
A known example are groups who change websites on big scale with their religious messages. The skills of hactivists don't have to be very high, but the effects of their actions can be big. The 'threatning' hactivists are quite busy recently with the result of the rising of Anonymous and LulzSec. Anonymous has been really active in the end of the year 2010 with DoS attacks against organizations who in their eyes are wrong in the affair of WikiLeaks.
Also it should be noted that there was a combination of scriptkiddies and hactivists in these attacks. The hactivists picked out the targets and the required means. The scriptkiddies (sympathizers) gave their computers to support the attacks. The trend is to attack vulnerable websites, to take the data and to publicize this by means of sites like pastebin.com
LulzSEc is a hackersgroup who are not like Anonymous, politically motivated. LulzSEc is a hackersgroup who unlike Anonymous, are not politically motivated. LulzSec is aiming to hack to get attention. In some cases they operate together. This was the case for example with the 'antisec' operation: A wave of attack against security company’s, forensic,research and other government institutes. The victims where Scotland Yard, multiple American police departments,NATO and an Italian High Tech Crime Unit.
The actions of Anonymous and LulzSec are inspiring other hackers and hackergroups or are creating revulsion. A hackersgroup who became active in The Netherlands is antisec_nl. This group is held responsible to hack a Dutch datingsite Pepper.nl. Antisec_nl and publicized a lot of personal data. The Team High Tech Crime of the Dutch Police arrested several people in this case.
Scriptkiddies
Scriptkiddies are just trolling and are in need of a kick. These are the people with a bare minimum of knowledge, but are interested into hacking and malware, which can do a lot of damage.
Because of their lack of knowledge they are depending of existing tools to practice their activity. This group on itself does not form a big threat. This group is available to be mobilized by hackers or other parties.
Publication of personal information and confidential information
During the writing of this rapport there have been several incidents reported, where on a illegally way there has been gained access to personal digital information or confidential information. In some cases this information has been publicized. Like the company HBGary, a company that wanted to get the names behind Anonymous has been victimized with a precision attack, where a lot of confidential information has been stolen and publicized. Organizations who are fighting against cybercrime are have increasingly become targets of cyber attacks.
Disrupting of online services:
In recent history, all kinds of institutions and companies have been victims of digital attack.. Some of the attackers did this out of ideology. The case by the wiki-leaks affair. Sympathizers of WikiLeaks(Anonymous) have been attacking websites like Paypal and Mastercard. The company’s that stopped the money transfer to WikiLeaks, got attacked by DoS attacks.
Conclusion:
This paper is 60 pages thick and all in Dutch. We guess you get the picture. The rest is detailed work about botnets, DoS and malware. The target audience of this article is more up to date about the subject then whats described in the report.So there is no need to translate it. In Dutch this paper, explains a bit more of the possible threats and attacks. With the arrest of the activist Joke Kaviaar and the attack on her website, we can expect more repression by the government. Politically motivated hacks, exploits and so on are now on a rising tide. The year 2011 was the grand-opening. The rest is up to us.