Hacking the Beijing Olympics

The South China Morning Post reports:

The Beijing Olympic Games will spark an outbreak of aggressive hacker activity, topping a wave of intense malicious internet attacks expected next year, according to security experts.

They said Beijing Olympics-related websites were prime targets for so-called large-scale denial-of-service attacks. These actions prevent legitimate users from accessing a site’s information or services by, for example, overloading a network with unwanted data.

That everyone will be interested in the Olympics helps hackers - they can hack a website and use it to install malicious code (malware) on victim PCs:

“We also predict that attackers will increasingly exploit the weakest links within the Web infrastructure to target the greatest number of internet users,” Mr Tam said.

He noted that compromising sites - particularly those established for Olympics-related commentary and other information - provides attackers with built-in Web traffic and minimises the need for lures through e-mail.

Business is already picking up, with the Olympics only eight months away:

In October, a 20-year-old mainland computer engineer who cloned an Olympics website - www.beijing2008.cn - and made about US$50,000 from fake prize draws was arrested by police in Hainan province, according to media reports.

Mr. Tam from Websense is spot-on: as with Lust, Caution, hackers will target sites that draw a lot of interest. The article focuses on the domestic threat, with users as the victims. The article quotes a researcher from the anti-virus firm Sophos:

Still, the immediate threat from homegrown hackers is real. According to British anti-virus software firm Sophos, 30 per cent of all malicious software that the company has detected was written in the mainland.

“Chinese cyber-criminals are not just hitting personal computers in their own country, but impacting computer users worldwide,” said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“Surprisingly, 17 per cent of malware written in China is designed for the specific purpose of stealing passwords from online gamers.”

There is also the risk of groups targeting the Olympic’s web presence for political reasons. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to shut down websites or hacking and replacing an Olympic site’s content are distinct possibilities.

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