Dec 3, 2004 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 December 3, 2004 - Much of this week's most notable news from the Web hosting industry came from the still-growing battle between most of the legitimate Internet and the army of hackers, spammers, phishers and other malicious users that threaten the security of information online.
In an example of the kind of attacks faced by Web site operators, this week saw a defacement of the Web site of the SCO Group, a popular target for a variety of attacks, possibly as a result of its oppositional relationship with the open source community. A report posted by Netcraft said the attacker defaced the SCO Web site Monday, replacing a graphic that said "SCO Partner Webinars" with one that read "We own all your code" and "pay us all your money."
Another site that dealt with threats of defacement was MakeLoveNotSpam.com, the home of a new Lycos Europe project designed to combat spam through the distribution of a screensaver that uses idle computers to launch distributed denial of service-style attacks against Web sites operated by spammers. On Thursday, the company denied reports from earlier in the week that hackers had defaced the project's site, security being an obvious concern for a group with the power to launch DDoS attacks.
While some critics questioned the legal and ethical legitimacy of the project's tactics, others agree that it may be time to get creative in the fight against spam, a problem that is only growing, according to a Wednesday report by email security firm Postini. The company reported that 88 percent of the 6.9 billion email messages it processed in November were spam, virus, directory harvest or phishing attacks. The company said the month saw it fend off 92 million virus instances and 19 million directory harvest attacks.
In order to combat some Internet security threats, technology companies are banding together. Led by Microsoft, the Global Infrastructure Alliance for Internet Safety is working to educate and protect Internet end users, an important part of the spread of viruses, from the threat of malicious code and attacks. The GIAIS includes a variety of connectivity providers, a group that serves 60 percent of the world's Internet subscribers.
Along with industry groups, government groups are increasingly getting involved in the fight, with some of their efforts raising controversy as well. The creator of the Nmap hacking tool said this week that he is being pressured by the FBI for copies of the logs from the Web server that hosts his Web site Insecure.org. He says Nmap is an open source tool designed to help security experts scan networks, services and applications, but it has been used for malicious purposes by hackers.
Of course, it doesn't always take an attack to bring down a site. The Michigan Daily, student paper of the University of Michigan, reported this week that half of the school's email system was brought down over the weekend due to a power outage at the Arbor Lakes Data Center. According to the report, the data center has experienced several power outages in recent months, affecting email, the University Web site and other Web-based applications.
This week's Web host industry news offered a glimpse of the impact that hackers, viruses, spam and other online threats have on the business, as an increasing amount of attention is being focused on dealing with an obviously growing problem.