Security News > 2010 > December > F.B.I. Memos Reveal Cost of a Hacking Attack

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/f-b-i-memos-reveal-cost-of-a-hacking-attack/ By VERNE G. KOPYTOFF The New York Times Bits December 14, 2010 Repelling a hacker attack can be costly as PayPal, Visa and MasterCard undoubtedly found out last week as they tried – with mixed success – to keep their Web sites from being knocked offline by supporters of Wikileaks. How much money exactly? An unrelated attack several years earlier on Google may provide some insight. In 2005 Google was battling the Santy worm, a bit of malicious software that caused infected computers across the globe to automatically enter search queries – so many, in fact, that Google was overwhelmed. Details of the episode are chronicled in internal F.B.I. memos obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. On Dec. 22, 2005, Google complained to the F.B.I. that the attack had slowed its search engine’s performance. For 12 to 18 months previous, Google said it had been plagued by variants of the worm, which used search queries to find vulnerable Web sites and deface them by exploiting a security hole in community forum software PHP Bulletin Board. [...]

News URL

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/f-b-i-memos-reveal-cost-of-a-hacking-attack/