Major banks hit with biggest cyberattacks in history | Hacker News Reader

Major banks hit with biggest cyberattacks in history

money.cnn.com

29 pointsmaayank12 comments

This is not remotely as dangerous as e.g. the cyberattacks on Google [1], the cyberattacks on RSA Labs (and Lockheed) [2], or the cyberattack on Iran's centrifuges (allegedly; [3]) - it's just Yet Another DDoS. The chief national-security danger is that some bank will pay up and that this money will be used for evil.

Given those facts, "biggest cyberattack in history" is rather overblown. (It may be the biggest DDoS in history, but DDoS just aren't that dangerous.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

[2] http://www.scmagazine.com/rsa-confirms-lockheed-hack-linked-...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Attacking data access is just as serious as attacking data confidentially or attacking data integrity. They all deserve equal consideration regarding data security.

EDIT: In this case the websites targeted aren't high-value or critical, however the value of data access shouldn't be downplayed.

No, it is not. It is not the same to prevent you from accessing your information (however high-value or critical it might be) than having the very same information being actively used against you in unforeseeable ways.

Besides, this statement runs against the core principles of Risk Management, which recognizes the need to prioritize the use of scarce resources to protect the most salient risk according to a utility function that combines but the likeliness and the adverse consequences of each potential incident.

Not necessarily - There are many times integrity and access are far more important than confidentiality - control systems for example. For sensor streams, availability may even be more important than integrity. There are already algorithms in place in control systems to deal with bad or weird data from those sensors because sensors go funky all the time. having the tampered data is still a form of information that the sensor is still there, a surprisingly useful bit of data itself.

There is a lot of research in control system security about balancing extremely high availability requirements against bad data and commands coming in -- trying to answer the question "how do we run compromised" because sometimes you have to, at least for a limited time, to prevent bigger systemic damage.

"Thousands of people blocking access to a bunker containing gold is just as serious as someone breaking into the bunker and stealing the gold".

Really?

Sigh. Never waist a good crisis eh? "Sen. Joe Lieberman said that he believed the attacks were launched by Iran".

Which I find to be bizarre. There is very little reason in doing these sorts of attacks _unless_ you plan on taking credit for it. You can't say "maybe it's a test run" because this potentially gives enough warning to your targets to bolster their defenses.

>No data was stolen from the banks, and their transactional systems -- like their ATM networks -- remained unaffected. The aim of the attacks was simply to temporarily knock down the banks' public-facing websites.

It doesn't take a 'state actor' to launch a DDoS attack. Money buys a botnet. CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince was on Bloomberg TV the other day discussing these recent attacks: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/wells-fargo-is-latest-bank-hi...

Cyberattacks? What? No! The digital equivalent of a sit-in!

For the sake of our heart rates, you might point out that it was a DOS attack, next time. ;)

Why does the article have in large letters "How hackers can access your credit card" with a video, when that has nothing to do with this attack?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com