Barbados Underground published a post on August 16, 2014, about Website Defacement Cyber Threat to the Caribbean
As the number of cyber crimes continues to rise, the types of crimes themselves become more diverse. Defacement to government or business website is a matter which must be given great concern, as the reputations of many entities would hang in the balance.
Key points:
- Recently, unauthorized changes made to a key regional tourism website represents yet another troubling component of the growing cyber threat we face called “website defacements”.
- Unauthorized changes to the content or appearance of websites of Caribbean businesses, governments and organizations are considered a type of corporate sabotage that can cause severe reputational damage, lower customer confident, or adversely impact revenues.
- To carry out website defacements hackers often use one of the oldest and most common cyber-attack methods called the SQL injection technique. This proven cyber-attack method used by hackers enables them to gain unauthorized administrative access to a website or in some cases, the host network. Website defacers will often post negative messages or content to the website administrator, business, government, or organization.
- Website defacements can also be a gateway for greater unauthorized access and compromise of a system/network or lead to data losses depending on the business function of the website.
- The Caribbean Cyber Security Center (CCSC) recommends that Caribbean businesses, organizations and governments have their websites tested for website application and hosting platform vulnerabilities and threats a hacker can exploit by utilizing local and trusted ICT resources and fix all identified issues by severity as soon as possible.
- The CCSC strongly believes that cultivating local and regional ITCyber security talent and expertise to conduct routine website security testing and a range of other IT security support services, will be critical to sustaining the regional fight against the evolving cyber threat in a cost-effective manner.
Reference: barbadosunderground.net
Contributed by: Kyle Sterling from Jamaica. Kyle is a member of the CCST Discord group from the G5 Cyber Security Foundation Ltd. Learn more about CCST (Caribbean Cyber Support Team) by visiting caribbeancst.org. CCST is a collaborative group on the Discord platform for Caribbean people in IT, from beginners to experts.