In 2012, hackers claiming to be Anonymous launched DDoS attacks on CIA.gov and the Boston Police Department website. McAfee security expert Robert Siciliano discusses the attacks, their connection to Occupy Boston, and what the FBI found.
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First it was Boston Police, their website, now the CIA, the target of a massive hacking organization. First they hit that Boston Police website, now a notorious hacking group has crashed the CIA's website. The group Anonymous, rendering the site pretty much useless for most of the day. And the question is, if they can do that to a government website, what else can they do? Fox 25's Nicole Jacobs is here with a look. What do you have, Nicole?
Well, Maria, just to be clear, the group Anonymous did not actually hack into the CIA's website. They overloaded it with thousands of hits at a time. And that's what caused the site to shut down. So your question, what is the limit here? Experts say the sky, unfortunately, because nothing is 100% secure.
Who is this group Anonymous?
Never heard of them. Never heard of it. Anonymous is somebody unknown.
But as of late, they're making their name and actions well known.
This is not cyberterrorism. This is angry hacktivists that are making a statement.
Point well taken after the group has proven not even government websites are safe. Typing in CIA.gov Friday gets you to an offline site, the act known as a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS.
What the hackers do is they send all kinds of traffic at the CIA's website, basically shutting it down, making it inoperative.
You would think that because it's government that they would have some sort of high security, that even that techie techie couldn't be able to infiltrate.
This anonymous cyberattack comes one week after the BPD news website was hacked by the same group who promised then there would be more to come. Boston's site down for a week.
Well, they actually went into it, did their damage, and then left. It took us a week to put in the safeguards that we think are necessary to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Anonymous has thrown in its support behind Occupy Boston, citing alleged police brutality for last Friday's cyberfiasco. So Fox 25 asked Robert Siciliano, McAfee expert Robert, are our systems that weak or are these hackers just that good?
They are professionals. Many of them are security professionals and, uh, maybe working for major corporations and even government agencies. Some of them are on the inside.
Moving past the idea of kids with a cause, it's believed the cycle may continue.
There's no such thing as 100% security, so there's always going to be some form of vulnerability one way or the other.
Unless the computer culprits are caught.—
And this is not the first time Anonymous has hit the CIA's website, although this attack, they're saying, is in retaliation for the feds raiding a file-sharing service site which resulted in several arrests. Now, as for the BPD News hacking investigation, the FBI is handling that and it continues. Nicole Jacobs, Fox 25 News.
