Staying ahead of hackers

Staying ahead of the hackers: " . . . In the arcane and rapidly evolving world of cyber security, only one law appears immutable: all government, commercial and academic computer systems will, at some point, be subject to attacks by hackers, either as sport or theft, or as a concerted attempt at espionage. Only this week a Queensland medical practice became another victim of what has come to be knows as ''ransomware attacks'' in which individuals hack into systems, encrypt the data and then demand a ransom for sending a key to release it. The need for hyper-vigilance would appear to be self-evident. Yet even the databases of large and well-resourced government and commercial organisations continue to be breached. The raid on a database of the Australian Defence Force Academy, revealed online by this newspaper on Tuesday, exposed a disturbing lapse in security at one of the nation's leading universities. According to an engineer with extensive experience in network security, however, the implications of the attack may go far deeper. RMIT University senior lecturer Mark Gregory argues that some of those students whose details were stolen may become Australia's future military leaders, and that the accumulation of personal details, whether from social media or supposedly secure sites, could help foreign . . . . " Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/staying-ahead-of-the-hackers-20121212-2bagw.html#ixzz2ErauuFsa


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