Hackers Focus on Human-Rights Sites

Human-rights groups are frequent targets of cyberattacks, according to a new study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. Between August 2009 and September 2010, the center recorded 140 attacks against more than 280 different sites. They were generally targeted with Distributed Denial of Service attacks, which knock a site offline by barraging it with data. DDoS attacks are increasingly being used for politics and protest: Examples include attacks on the liberal Russian paper Novaya Gazeta and “Help Israel Win,” which invited its followers to attack Palestinian targets.