Ebusinesses survive New Year hack threat
Warnings that hackers would cripple the ebusiness sector with malicious programs during the New Year holiday turned out to be a damp squib, according to the US government.
In the run up to the New Year a number of security watchers, including Internet Security Systems, the FBI and the US National Infrastructure Protection Centre (NIPC), warned that hackers were planning attacks on businesses over the New Year weekend using so-called zombie programs.
These malicious tools can be used to perform denial of service type attacks designed to bring servers to their knees.
But the US government, working in conjunction with the NIPC, has said that the levels of hacking activity were no greater than usual over the New Year, with no noticeably large amount of reported incidents.
So ebusinesses can now breathe a sigh of relief with the busiest time of the year over and no repeats of the attacks that brought down companies such as Amazon and eBay at the beginning of last year. So far, anyway.
This article first appeared on vnunet.com.