From a computer virus named for a stripper to swarming botnet attacks on the Pentagon and Microsoft, The Daily Beast lists the 10 most infamous hacks, worms, and DDoS takedowns in the last 25 years.
The unending cyber assault executed last week by a group of anonymous "hacktivists" instilled fear and loathing in the hearts of network administrators at some of the world's most powerful governments and corporations. It was unprecedented in its scope-attracting thousands of amateur users willing to do battle in the name of free speech on the web.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Bogus Assange Rape Case
But amongst the real hackers out there is a feeling of indifference. These "script kiddies" -as those using software to attack Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal are being called-weren't the cyber warriors the media set them out to be, but amateur, talentless teens launching assaults with the click of a mouse.
The unending cyber assault executed last week by a group of anonymous "hacktivists" instilled fear and loathing in the hearts of network administrators at some of the world's most powerful governments and corporations. It was unprecedented in its scope-attracting thousands of amateur users willing to do battle in the name of free speech on the web.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Bogus Assange Rape Case
But amongst the real hackers out there is a feeling of indifference. These "script kiddies" -as those using software to attack Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal are being called-weren't the cyber warriors the media set them out to be, but amateur, talentless teens launching assaults with the click of a mouse.
- 12/12/2010
- by Brian Ries
- The Daily Beast
Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, opening tomorrow. Anyone who has read the late Stieg Larsson’s vastly entertaining Girl With novels knows that the titular character, Lisbeth Salander, is a hero for our Internet-addicted era: a virtuoso hacker who uses her near-omnipotent mastery of cyberspace to compensate for her generally appalling social skills. Again and again, Salander breaks into closed corporate networks, acquires off-limits records, and all but effortlessly gains open-ended access to hard drives belonging to friends and foes alike. All of which got me thinking, Holy crap, can hackers really do all this stuff? So I placed a call to Kevin Poulsen, a reformed “black hat” hacker who now edits Wired.com’s Threat Level blog. Poulsen, who once rigged a radio contest so that he would be guaranteed to win a Porsche, was kind enough to assuage some of my fears (no,...
- 10/28/2010
- Vanity Fair
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