A virtual war on terror

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Guard and other agencies.

In case a site does get hacked, the usual measures that can be taken include changing the servers as soon as possible. This may typically take a few hours to a few days. The users are then redirected to the new location of the site. Chinese hackers gained notoriety in the United States when a series of devastating intrusions, beginning in 2003, were traced to a team of researchers in Guangdong Province. The programme, which the US department of defence (DOD) called Titan Rain, was first reported in August 2005. Following that incident, DoD renamed the programme and then classified the new name.

US government sources have claimed that Chinese hackers, backed by all or part of the People’s Liberation Army, had breached a network in the office of the secretary of defence in June last year. In fact, the US-based SANS Institute has uncovered what they have termed a ‘rare gem’ as far as computer security investigations go that sheds new light on how up to 20,000 websites have been hacked since January 2007. They found a sneaky software tool that uses Google’s search engine to hunt for websites running certain kinds of vulnerable applications. When the tool finds a site that is vulnerable, it kicks into action.

New reports of Chinese-sponsored attacks have also surfaced in the UK. “China is engaged in hostile intelligence activities, and instead of using the old-fashioned methods—recruiting agents and stealing blueprints—they are focusing on electronic means to hack into systems to discover Britain’s defence and foreign policy secrets,” according to sources. “And they are technologically pretty advanced and adept at it.” In the past, Britain’s security service MI5 has warned the government that it faces the greatest danger of a cyber attack from China and Russia.

Web defacements are sometimes accompanied by damaging activity. In June 1998, a group of international hackers calling themselves Milworm hacked the website of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and put up a spoofed web page showing a mushroom cloud with a text, “If a nuclear war does start, you will be the first to scream.” The hackers were protesting against India’s nuclear weapons tests, although they admitted they did it mostly for thrills. The six hackers hailed from the United States, England, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.