27 Jun Case Studies I Responses

Provide (2) 150 words substantive response with a minimum of 1 APA references for RESPONSES 1 AND 2 below. Response provided should further discuss the subject or provide more insight. To further understand the response, below is the discussion post that’s discusses the responses. 100% original work and not plagiarized. Must meet deadline.

RESPONSE 1:

When speaking of hackers, a couple obvious groups stick out – as I thought Anonymous would be a natural choice for any American as they are our most successful hacktivist group, I have gone with the second best – the Russians.
Russia has a very interesting relationship with their cyber military – while they do employ one, especially in cybersecurity, they are known as incredibly potent attackers as well. Most of their attacks, however, seem to come from organizations outside of the Russian government itself, with the government neither prosecuting the group nor outright sponsoring them. I was travelling back from Virginia to Atlanta when the Colonial Pipeline was attacked, and the rush for gas made the situation much worse – it is suspected that Russian hackers were behind this shutdown, and the effects are still seen in the gas prices to this point in time, with the prices still being extremely high compared to the low standard here.
This hacking was heavily suspected to affect our two most Presidential elections, although after elongated investigations, there are no solid estimates as to how much this hacking effected the voting. A similar tactic was used against Ukraine in their 2014 elections, where Russian organizations made several attacks over several days to affect the election results in favor of the far-right candidate, who would have looked worse for Ukraine, and would have swayed the international response of the Donbass War in favor of Russia greatly. The effects, through potentially more than three elections between Ukraine and the United States alone, and the infrastructural damage done to both countries from power outages and hackings that delay distribution of resources, it is no wonder that Russia cyberattacks are feared by both Ukraine and the United States. 

-DANIEL

RESPONSE 2:

This week we are looking at different case studies I have chosen to look at the hacktivist group Anonymous. Anonymous is the most famous group of hacktivist groups that is out there. This group is sometimes hard to understand because of it lack of formal hierarchy within the group itself (Infosec, 2011). They are a hacktivist group so they target cooperation, governments, and people that they disagree with. Therefore they normally only attack if they have a reason that they justify the attack to be done. Meaning that unless there is a reason for them to attack they don’t just randomly attack. Anonymous is considered to be highly sophisticated group of hacktivists. So much so that many security experts and ethical hackers have even shown regard for there abilities and some well placed attacks on groups like ISIS. Over the years this group has attack many of different people, governments, cults, and organizations they disagree with. They have a huge following because many of the attacks they carry out people tend to agree or even like the vigilante justice they serve. Not only so they do cyber attacks but have been known to use there public following to create protest like in front of different scientology buildings. There most commonly used attack is a DDoS attack that they target towards web servers of the victims. Some of there victims include PlayStation, Wall street, HBGary, Presidents, and the Australian government. These are just a couple of examples there are hundreds more out there to read about. Latest they seam to be targeting Elon Musk for his involvement in Bitcoin crashing.

Jackson Propst

Infosec. (2011). A History of Anonymous. Retrieved from

-JACKSON