Hackers Shift From Vandalism to Massive Data Theft
Cyber-attacks have dominated headlines this summer as government agencies, large organizations and small businesses have been hit by malware, distributed-denial-of-service attacks and network intrusions. On the personal front, individuals' email and social networking accounts have been hijacked.
Most cyber-attackers are motivated by money, whether it's by looting bank accounts or selling stolen information to other criminals, said Josh Shaul, CTO of Application Security. However, there's been a surge in politically motivated attacks in the past few months as a number of groups—including the notorious hacker collective Anonymous—turned to cyber-attacks as a form of protest.
PandaLabs researchers predicted this past December that the cyber-protests that have added the word “hacktivism" to the English language will continue to grow in frequency because it's been so effective in getting attention.
