http://www.darkreading.com/securityservices/security/cybercrime/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400721 

By Tim Wilson
DarkReading
April 19, 2010 

An emerging wave of politically motivated cyberattacks is reaching 
critical mass and threatens to redefine the way enterprises build their 
defenses, according to a report that will be published tomorrow.

The report, compiled by well-known botnet researcher Gunter Ollmann of 
Damballa, offers a comprehensive look at the recent trend toward 
politically motivated cyberprotests, sometimes called hacktivism. While 
such organized mass attacks on specific targets are best known for being 
carried out against rival governments (think Estonia or Georgia) and 
large companies (think Project Aurora), the new report shows 
"cyberprotests" can be carried out against any organization, and for 
myriad reasons.

"These types of attacks focus on all types of topics, and they can be 
executed by thousands of users or even just a few," Ollmann observes. 
"They open a much wider door of potential attacks on corporations, and 
they are increasingly difficult to defend because they don't necessarily 
involve true criminal behavior, and they could be carried out by your 
own customers."

The report offers numerous examples of hacktivism in recent years, 
including the defacement of hundreds of Dutch websites in August 2008 by 
Islamic protesters over the release of the film Fitna, and last summer's 
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Iranian government sites 
by supporters of defeated presidential candidates who claimed 
irregularities in the voting.

[...]


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