Israel Response Making a Mountain out of Molehill-sized Hacks
Blowing it out of proportion is a text-book example out of how not to respond.
Last week a hacker who claimed to be pro-Palestinian leaked data on thousands of credit cards taken from Israeli shoppers. Saturday Israel’s government responded pretty much exactly as you would expect them to. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny
Ayalon called it "a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such.”
Someone claiming to be the hacker, identified himself as OxOmar and claimed to be a Saudi teenager, based in Riyadh. But within hours Israeli hackers (counter hackers?) announced he was actually based in Mexico, where he had moved from the United Arab Emirates. The Israelis also claimed they gotten credit card data from Saudis and were prepared to publish it if the attacks continued. It is impossible to verify any of these claims.
Based on the ineptitude of OxOmar (or whomever it really is), it’s easy to believe he’s a teen, although where he is from is anyone’s guess. This was nothing more than an irritation for the people whose information was disclosed. As soon as the numbers got out the banks were able to take care of the problem. Real harm comes when the information is used, not published.
So right now this is a situation that’s had less impact than a house burglary, but Israel is threatening to make it a whole lot more. Because the nation has been in a state of war since its founding, the government is always willing to raise the rhetoric level to 11 no matter what the circumstances. In this instance all it did was add fuel on the fire.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon’s website was hacked following his comments. Then, on Tuesday, Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, told a parliamentary committee Israel is ready to do whatever is needed vs. cyber terrorism: “From our standpoint we are talking about a meaningful and even critical arena.”
All of this bluster will just ensure that what had been a piece of stupidity will escalate.
Previous Post: Americans More Likely to Fall For Online Scams and The Week's Other IT...Next Post: United They Stand: Cyber Threats Forcing Banks to Cooperate for Better...
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
