Don't confess to hacker crimes on TV

An 18 year old Dutch hacker is being sued by the Dutch government after admitting on TV that he disabled several government websites for four days with a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The suspect is believed to be a member of the "0x1fe Crew", a gang of politically motivated hackers.

Criminal charges are also under consideration by authorities.

The use of the civil remedy is interesting - an often overlooked remedy against attackers - and may well leave the wilful youth with a debt that makes the average student loan look like pocket change. The potential for parents to be joined in these actions exists in various jurisidictions around the world - a bleak and unwelcome prospect for umpteen parents who have no idea what their teenage kids get up to, and fear finding out. read about the attack

Losing source code (again)

Even the titans in the IT world can't seem to keep a lid on their own crown jewels, let alone protect the rest of us. Microsoft had source code stolen in the non too distant past, with Russian hackers allegedly nonchalantly strolling through the MS network for possibly as long as a month before anyone caught on.

Cisco source code has also been targeted in recent months. And hackers have re-emerged apparently offering the code for a recent version of their PIX firewall. This type of publicity is truly horrible for vendors who seek to position themselves as security-centric market leaders, and really gives the rest of us cause to pause and think. read more

KPMG warn about VoIP KPMG have asked businesses to think long and hard before rushing to convert to VoIP (making telephone calls over the Internet). Clearly, anticipation that the incumbent telecos are about to 'get theirs', has a certain visceral appeal, but remember, voice over IP means just that. read more

AT&T making their network secure aware

AT&T have announced a strategy to enter the burgeoning IT security managed services market by exercising more control over their data pipes. They are grasping the bull by the horns and placing firewalls on their IP backbone and using them to filter the traffic of subscribing customers - before it reaches their infrastructure.

There has been criticism in the past that the big ISPs and telecos could do more to solve a variety of IT security issues, from denial of service attacks, to spam and anti virus - with everything else in between. They resisted attempts to make them become traffic wardens and policemen, on purely economic grounds. It would simply cost too much to do it for purely altruistic reasons.

Clearly the penny has dropped that there is money to be made, and that they (as controller of the pipes) are uniquely positioned to take their share, and deliver value to end customers.

AT & T also do traffic analysis to spot trends and suspicious traffic and gather data to spot new and emerging threats. They also offer useful denial of service attack solutions.

This is a positive development and bears watching. Keep an eye on the big ISPs as well. read more