Anonymous cyberattacks are difficult to trace
Earlier this year, a New Jersey Ebay user named Adam Goldstein suddenly found himself to be the target of a collaborative internet group known as Anonymous. After an initial dispute with another Ebay user brought Goldstein to the attention of Anonymous, the group began, as one blogger put it, "a campaign of harassment, intimidation and cruelty that few can even begin to imagine."
His office fax machine began to whirl as endless loops of black paper flooded the lines. His website torn down, his Myspace and Facebook account hacked, raided for information, and then defaced. Craigslist ads began to appear offering up his entire office — computers, tables, everything must go! — free to whoever was willing to come and cart it away.
Because members of Anonymous are spread out geographically and congregate mainly on internet message boards, it was virtually impossible for Goldstein to identify his attackers.
In early July, several government websites became the target of a massive distributed denial of service attack, causing many of them to either load slowly or crash completely. Though it was initially thought that the cyber attack emanated from North Korea, the New York Times reported that officials were having difficulty determining the source of the attack. Because the attack depended on the use of thousands of botnets spread out over a global network, investigators experienced trouble linking them to a single suspect. Some believed that the attack originated in Britain while still others traced it back to Miami.
“The truth is, we may never know the true origin of the attack unless the attacker made some colossal blunder,” said Joe Stewart, a director in the Counter Threat Unit at SecureWorks, a computer security consulting organization ...
The difficulty of tracing these anonymous attacks can be frustrating for individuals who suddenly find themselves to be victims. Sportscaster Erin Andrews, for instance, was unable to identify those who spread a nude video of her across the internet, an incident that will likely haunt her for the rest of her career. These incidents highlight the vulnerability and lack of accountability online users face when dealing with cyber attacks.