Hacktivism skews security trend analysis
The re-emergence of the hacktivist movement appears to have thrown a spanner in the works for those in the InfoSec industry charged with data breach trend analysis.
There has been a series of massive data breaches over the last 16 months - each of which compromised more than a million identities. During the same time, much smaller incidents occurred in which only a handful of records were stolen.
CQR Consulting chief technology officer Phil Kernick said in July that the Anonymous hacking collective “tend[ed] to find the vulnerable sites first, and justify their actions afterwards”. The August Symantec Intelligence Report reflected the skewed results in a comparison of the first eight months of this year against the last eight months of 2011, covering what the company said was the revival of the hacktivist AntiSec (anti-security) campaign.
