Vandals
are out to damage stuff. In the physical world they smash mailboxes, break car
windows, and spray paint walls. In the electronic world they deface web sites
and DoS networks. They aren’t necessarily after specific targets, except for
those that will impress themselves and their peer group. Vandals typically go
after sites that are easy to compromise – systems that will fall to the single
fire point and click exploits. Or, they’ll sometimes guess the password for the
domain name registration records and redirect all traffic to another site.
Zone-h.org tracks web
site defacements. During the period of January 2008 – April 2010, Zone-H
reported that over 1.4 million web sites were defaced.[1] Sixty-seven percent of the defacements were for either reputation, for fun, or
for the challenge. The vast majority of
the sites compromised are easy targets belonging to small organizations that
have very poor security practices.
