Hackers score the first World Cup goal, says KPMG
On the back of the news that Anonymous Brazil have defaced and brought down a number of World Cup related websites, including Brazilian government agencies and attacked top FIFA partner sites, Edward Parsons, senior manager in the cyber security at KPMG said:
“There were warnings about the potential for such attacks from the cyber security community about six months. It's now normal for the risk of cyber attacks to rise before and during major events, though many organisations will have already prepared for this.
“Issue-motivated groups have long used major sporting events as a platform to promote their cause. This kind of attack is the modern equivalent of a crowd protests outside an office. Cyber attacks have become a popular way of gaining notoriety and publicity, though it’s not clear what motivations were behind this attack but could well be the issues that have seen Brazilians protesting almost daily.
“The hackers used DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service attacks – sending high volumes of traffic to sites unable to cope with the numbers – causing them to crash. DDoS mitigation is possible but attacks are getting bigger in scale as capability once on the hands of only sophisticated actors become available as a service. Businesses therefore need to determine whether the outlay in cost is worth incurring to allay this risk. Otherwise it will not be a question of if, but when they will be attacked and brought down.”
