Hacking has now become a mainstream story. Every day, there's a new report. The latest is that the hacker group LulzSec is claiming credit for taking down the CIA's Web site www.cia.gov for a couple of hours. LulzSec has taken down a number of other sites including PBS, Sony and the US Senate.
LulzSec has now opened a phone line to take hacking requests. It's also taking requests on Twitter with the announcement "Call into 614-LULZSEC and pick a target and we'll obliterate it. Nobody wants to mess with The Lulz Cannon – take aim for us, twitter".
We seem to have entered a golden age of hacking. Stewart Mitchell at PCPro says we're seeing a perfect storm of better-informed hackers, more accessible networks and corporate cost cutting in the wake of the recession. Then, there's the rise of the social hacker. Ease of access to tools has also led to more people actively looking for companies with weakened defences.
Also, we have to remember that systems are increasingly complex and integrated. They use information from disparate data sources. The more complex the systems, the more opportunities there are for a hacker to find a loophole. So in a sense, the geeks managing the infrastructure are making it even easier for hackers and data thieves.
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