Hackers? What hackers?
p2pnet.net News:- What do business leaders and bank bosses have in common?
They each try to pretend there’s no such thing as hackers.
“Most businesses do not report cyber attacks to law enforcement authorities, fearing the disclosure would harm their image and benefit rivals,” the Washington Post has FBI director Robert Mueller saying.
But, “This reluctance has become especially important at a time when identity theft is growing rapidly and terrorists are increasingly using the Internet,” he told attendees at the InfraGard national conference for “private companies that share security tips and expertise with the FBI”.
Today, “a command sent over a network to a power station’s control computer could be just as deadly as a backpack full of explosives,” Mueller went on.
His comments were based on an annual survey conducted by the FBI and the private Computer Security Institute that found only 20% of businesses reported computer intrusions last year, a figure that’s held steady for several years.
And the reasons most cited for sitting on hack attacks were fears centering on the potential loss of business to competitors, and damage to a company’s image among consumers, adds the Post.
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See:-
Washington Post – Businesses May Not Report Cyber Attacks, August 9, 2005
August 10th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Perhaps a clearinghouse site is needed to rat out businesses that DO NOT report hacks. If your bank or credit card company got hacked and failed to report it to you then you found out about it via a third party would that not erode your confidence in them? These hacks HAVE TO BE MADE PUBLIC in order to limit them. Duh…
Greedy a-holes shooting themselves in the foot as usual.
August 10th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Mostly these business are wanting to give the user a false sense of security. Our product is safe will be the claim. We use encryption to ensure safe transmittal of your private and financial information. What they don’t do is try to help average Joe, who is no computer expert, with the ability to protect their own system to secure the most untrustworthy part of the whole system. In fact, you never hear a peep about it.
Encryption, gobs of security, passwords, nothing does any sort of good in this aspect without security at the very beginning of the transaction, the users computer. What they don’t tell you is that if you have a keylogger in your computer, none of this works. Your information, that everyone including you wants to protect, is already compromised BEFORE you start the transaction. Keyloggers read what keys you press and usually what mouse strokes you make while you are on line. It is then later harvested to some unkown site. Reading the key strokes happens before any encryption, any password, any sort of security happens and therefore all are unknowingly suspect to give away that info to the very people they are wanting to protect you from.
Instead those same business will claim their part is great and disown any individuals security when push comes to shove. I also suspect those businesses have no alternatives to the methods they now use. If the methods now used have no other choices then it is far easier and cheaper not to acknowledge the problem and if a customer should actually say something, then it will always be the users fault.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
“…terrorists are increasingly using the Internet,”
They always did. They were probably using it before you and I were. “Terrorists” are just like you and me – they use whatever technology is around them and always have.
I don’t know why the mainstream media is so alarmist when describing how terrorists have seemingly “moved” on to the previously safe (yeah right!) internet.
Anything that allows people to communcate with each other is “dangerous” to some people.
August 11th, 2005 at 5:07 am
The terrorist are using it so we must buckle it down is what they like to say.
August 11th, 2005 at 8:16 am
It’s called liability. Organisations refuse to apologise for anything, reasoning that it implies they’re liable for it. Even if they are, and the courts have just decided that, they will NOT apologise, for fear of “making it worse”.
So of course hackers don’t exist. If they did, the banks might become liable for anything these non-existent hackers might or might not have done to or with any info about the banks alleged customers and any money these alleged customers might or might not have had in accounts with the banks.
Assuming that customers exist of course. If the banks believe customers don’t exist, it would certainly explain their apparent attitudes towards their customers. “They don’t exist, so their complaints don’t exist, so we can charge them anything we like and ignore what they say about it.”
August 11th, 2005 at 8:19 am
It’s called liability. Organisations refuse to apologise for anything, reasoning that it implies they’re liable for it. Even if they are, and the courts have just decided that, they will NOT apologise, for fear of “making it worse”.
So of course hackers don’t exist. If they did, the banks might become liable for anything these non-existent hackers might or might not have done to or with any info about the banks alleged customers and any money these alleged customers might or might not have had in accounts with the banks.
Assuming that customers exist of course. If the banks believe customers don’t exist, it would certainly explain their apparent attitudes towards their customers. “They don’t exist, so their complaints don’t exist, so we can charge them anything we like and ignore what they say about it.”
August 11th, 2005 at 11:04 am
Terrorists are also using mobile phones.
I heard they also use the postal system.
August 11th, 2005 at 11:06 am
However this must be tempered by the fact that hacking is overestimated by security concerns in order to generate more demand for their business.
The security threat is vastly overestimated by the military and homeland security types in order to increase their funding, and create the fear and hysteria they need.
August 16th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I think I just saw one yelling across the street.