Anonymous may help, not hinder, data retention laws
According to Dr Mark Gregory, RMIT University senior lecturer at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Anonymous' attack on AAPT was very opportunistic. Earlier, the group told ZDNet that the attack took several members to achieve. It was made possible through a vulnerable implementation of Adobe ColdFusion on Melbourne IT's servers, but Gregory said that it didn't require that much skill.
"They found a system that wasn't patched correctly, and they went for it. It wasn't an overly skilled exercise in attacking that system. It was just something they found," Gregory said.
AAPT has said that the servers that had been breached had "not been used or connected to AAPT for at least 12 months". This means that the systems Anonymous attacked aren't actually comparable to those that would be used in a data retention scheme. In fact, Telstra is one ISP that has previously stated that a large amount of work will be necessary to its existing systems to prepare them for handling data.
