This sort of thing makes me sick – that “cyberattacks” are reported like “terrorism”, and that they are so glibly trotted out as an excuse.

Being hacked occasionally – be it simple vandalism or be it pursuant to fraud or extortion – is part of the price of being attached to the internet. It’s not nice, but it comes with the turf, and you can minimise the risk by taking care.

The internet is a hostile environment where people are trying to get you; it’s not like being a cyclist out on the road where everyone is supposed to be trying to cheerily get to their destination without killing each other; instead it really is like the pirate-ridden high seas of days of yore, and the solution is not that the Queen simultaneously license privateers – a legal cyberarmy – whilst declaring war upon the likes of Blackbeard.

No; the solution is that matters are allowed to evolve and that everyone become ironclad and immune to the disease of hacking – because this is the internet and near-perfect immunity from attack is possible. The internet community is a collective, and the occasional individual may get whacked but they can also resurrect/respawn perfectly, but better.

Naysayers will say: Ah, but what about DDOS? You can’t defend against that! – and you can, actually; in fact there are entire businesses dedicated mitigating DDOS, but it’s not important enough yet to be broadly architected into the risk analyses which drive enterprise security architecture.

When the world changes we will evolve to meet the challenges. In the meantime: STFU about cyber.

Anyway – my emphasis; note the prevalence of the word fear:

University IT blunder sparks hacking fears

By Isaac Delestre

Physics department research data was accidentally released to the public last Saturday, leading to fears that Oxford might be the latest victim in the series of University centered cyber attacks which has swept the nation this week.

The research data accidentally released by the University was posted on a prominent hacking website leading some to fear the data had been retrieved through a cyber attack. A University spokesperson said that they were now confident that “The University of Oxford was not the subject of a deliberate hacking attack” they went on to say that “Information about how to connect to an internal database of academic publications relating to the work of a single research group was accidentally made public, but the main departmental website is an entirely separate system and was unaffected. The system was returned to full service within 24 hours.”

However, while an external security breech has now been ruled out by University officials, other universities across the country, including Cambridge , have confirmed themselves to be the victims of major cyber attacks this week.

On 24th and 29th August respectively both Cambridge University and Africa College Leeds (a research partnership affiliated to the University of Leeds working to improve food sources in sub-Saharan Africa) websites were infiltrated by hackers.

In both cases the hackers succeeded in accessing administrator login details as well as hundreds of university email addresses.

Responsibility for the two incidents has been claimed by a group of hackers calling themselves NullCrew. The group claim to be affiliated with Anonymous and to have conducted the attacks as a show of support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In both incidents NullCrew left messages with the hash-tag #OpFreeAssange.

In a message following NullCrew’s attack on Cambridge the hackers said: “There is much more where this came from, and don’t think this is the end. NullCrew, along with the whole Anonymous movement isn’t near finished with you. And we never will be, until the right thing is done with Julian Assange. Next time it will be worse, we guarantee it.”

However, talking to The Oxford Student on an #OpFreeAssange internet forum, one member of the movement emphasised the loose nature of the organisation saying that they “would always be against hacking credible universities”

Manchester University has also reported being hit by a cyber attack in the last few days. However while the attackers used the name OpFreeAssange, it is not known whether they are affiliated with NullCrew.

The hackers succeeded in accessing administrator login details as well as hundreds of university email addresses – my god, we were doing that in the 1980s. How retro.

Love the implication that Cambridge is not a credible university.

via University IT blunder sparks hacking fears | The Oxford Student.