Hacktivism
On the coat tails of out cry of support for transparency vigilante WikiLeaks, and the subsequent Operation Payback attacks that struck the web because of it, McAfee warns users to look out for even more politically motivated attacks in 2011. But, the WikiLeaks hacktivists can’t take credit for the movement, which has been around for years, Marcus says. “We expect to see more hacktivism with denial of service attacks through Twitter and Facebook, so if you’re following a group or person on Twitter or Facebook and you don’t exactly like their point of view you can engage in a denial of service, kind of like we’re seeing with WikiLeaks now.”
Though these large scale attacks will ultimately be targeted at large sites or news organizations, Marcus still recommends safeguarding your own digital information, beginning with your passwords. Ensure your password security through a password management program, software that will encrypt and store your password information to each online account, eliminating the need for weak, easy-to-remember passwords or multiple uses. “It’s tough to remember 27 different user names and passwords,” Marcus says. “You install a password manager and it will store each of your passwords individually, so they’re protected, but they’re also not written down all over sticky notes.”
