War Prompts Hacking

There have been more than 1,000 web page defacements today related to the Iraqi war, according to the Internet security software maker F-Secure, which is tracking war-related security issues on its web site. While web page defacements gain attention, a number of new e-mail "combat worms" may pose a larger challenge for network administrators.

There are a number of news stories today documenting hacker activity, including a story by SecurityFocus about a hack of one of the National Security Agency's affiliate web sites. Other coverage is nicely summarized by The Washington Post (although the Post's headline writers went overboard with the "digital mayhem" reference).

Thus far most Internet monitoring companies say the major news sites have fared well with the deluge of traffic from war-related surfing. I keep seeing reports saying CNN is doing fine, but it seems mighty slow everytime I try to get past the home page. To track network performance, bookmark the Internet Health Report from Keynote.