The impacts of coordinated hacking attacks are widespread and can affect any online services: ranging from PayPal to Sony’s PlayStation Network. A team of hackers, especially one with global support such as Anonymous advocate a policy called “hacktivism”. The concept of hacktivism usually involves using illegal means to target single issues while gaining collective support by a team to proceed with such hacks (Kelly, 2012).
The attack conducted on PayPal took place in December of 2010; a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack …show more content…
The editor-in-chief of the website Julian Assange claims that the most “cost-effective” method to challenge widespread “governance by fear” is through a “worldwide movement of mass leaking (Curran, 2013).” These leaked documents are a necessity to those who are willing to pore over them to understand how government surveillance programs work. By understanding how these programs work, it becomes easier for citizens and corporations to protect themselves against needless invasions of privacy and spying. Having to scan through hundreds of leaked government documents is theoretically the first step in counteracting government surveillance; however, this cannot simply be done by every individual concerned with protecting his privacy. A simpler solution to this could be to use tools that can defend a user’s personal information and …show more content…
VPNs are used by people all over the world to protect their data over the internet. Similar to a proxy, A VPN works by allowing a paying user to connect to a server on the VPN provider’s end which then will connect to the websites and services that the user would like to use. This creates a layer of protection before user uses the internet, like a proxy, proving to be secure even on websites that do not use a HTTPS connection (Mason, 2002). Unlike a proxy, however, this connection to the VPN server is secured before the user even opens any other programs, thus being the reason why it is the most secure option in protecting data. This traffic can even be encrypted with up to the same level of security as an HTTPS connection. This VPN server can be located anywhere in the world, which can allow connections to websites that a user may not be able to access in his country. This also makes VPNs useful to network administrators who want to test the quality of incoming connections to their servers. VPNs can also be configured to allow for employees in a company to securely connect to the internal network of a company from anywhere in the world. This protects a company’s data, while allowing for employees to work from