Information Security News: Hackers attack Iraq's vulnerable computers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/hacking/2008-08-28-iraqhackers_N.htm

By Charles Levinson
USA TODAY
August 28, 2008

BAGHDAD - Maj. Ahmed Khathem, the head of Iraq's newly formed 
cybercrimes division, sits in a borrowed office, at a borrowed desk, 
working at a borrowed laptop one of his subordinates brought from home.

It is his unit's lone computer, highlighting the country's vulnerability 
to a community of Iraqi hackers defacing websites and attempting to hack 
into sensitive internal networks.

Iraq's government is engaged in a bloody struggle against al-Qaeda, and 
its computers make a prime target for global terror networks that have 
added hacking to their arsenal.

"We could have the most powerful anti-hacking force in the world, but 
we'd still have no computers, so we couldn't do anything," says Ali 
Hussein, one of 12 computer science graduates added to the cybercrime 
team last month. "The government thinks about guns, tanks and raiding 
houses. Hackers just aren't a priority." 

[...]


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