The hacking of al Jazeera's website has many Defense Tech readers wondering: "Is this (the work of) a new breed of patriotic, nationalistic hacker? Or is some tenuous propaganda arm of our own government involved?"
Neither. It's a cry for attention by a couple of no-skills "script kiddies" trying to show off to their sunken-chested pals.
"Every time there is a political target of opportunity, some kiddie will use it as justification for a (website) defacement or DOS (denial-of-service attack)," security researcher Robert Ferrell tells Wired News' Michelle Delio.
"This kind of thing goes on constantly. The only reason it's news at all is because...we happen to be at war with Iraq," he adds. "Al-Jazeera may be a major news service, but a website is a website, whether it belongs to Billy Bob or Time Warner. Knocking one off the Internet isn't a difficult proposition."
But it's a crime, nonetheless. Last year, 18 year-old Robert Lyttle defaced dozens of government websites, supposedly to show how easy it would be for terrorists to gain access to our national electronic infrastructure. The government thanked him with an FBI raid and a house arrest.
At the time, veteran hacker Oxblood Ruffin called Lyttle and his partner "pimply nitwits from the 'burbs out looking for some rep."
He added, "It's just this kind of stupidity that gives hacking a bad name."
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