Hack Attacks are Equal Opportunity Assaults
Attacks from hackers seem to be progressing along the same lines as modern technology. Over the past few months, more companies are being hacked either to gather account information or just to create chaos. Remember when Sony’s Playstation Network was attacked, leaving and a lot of user accounts compromised? Over the 4th of July weekend, while everyone was busy with the festivities, hackers were also busy – they hacked the Fox’s Twitter account and posted tweets that President Obama had been assassinated. And the most recent victim of hackers is Ebay’s Paypal UK Twitter account.
“The PayPal U.K. Twitter handles, one of the many Twitter handles we have for the company, was hacked this evening,” said Anuj Nayar, spokesman for PayPal, in a telephone interview today. “It’s now been turned off. No account information or anything else was in any way, shape or form breached or affected,” he said.
The hackers posted tweets informing people that their accounts can be frozen by PayPal without warning and no apparent reason. The tweets roused public to post their sentiments regarding the use of PayPal, among other things. Meanwhile, the attacker(s) also promoted the site PayPalsucks.com for people who hate the service.
And earlier today, Apple had also been attacked by the same group that attacked Sony’s PSN.
Lance Ulanoff, editor in chief of PCmag.com, said that though this particular attack on Apple was not very extensive, it is “indicative of an alarming trend” in hacking.
“Everyone’s vulnerable,” Ulanoff said. “Wherever Anonymous wants to go it can.”
The authorities are still not sure if the attacks are related, but they are quite sure that this is not the last of it. Lulzsec and Anonymous recently released an open letter to all hackers, inviting them to unite in order to expose the corruption and secrets of the government. The recent hackings may just be a practice run from hackers in preparation for something big, or they’re already doing something against the government and they’re just using the attacks as a diversion.
So what is the government doing about these attacks? They formed the A-team, a group of hackers to fend off hackers. If all else fails, you can always use fire to fight fire.
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