Hackers see little risk in breaking law - text 2

Hackers see little risk in breaking law

A A hacker group from Slovakia called binary.division got inside the e-mail Web site Post.cz and set up the system to regurgitate passwords when a username was entered instead of requiring one. For four minutes the site was under the hacker’s control, until technicians at Czech OnLine, Post’s parent company, shut the system down.

B The hackers, who were virtually untraceable, did no harm other than disrupting operations for a few moments, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be worse next time. While the October 13 attack on the Post.cz site is hardly an anomaly, most Czech companies refuse to report hacker activity against their Web sites for fear of damaging their reputation and possibly their value, said Jiří Dastych, a major in the police presidium who deals with computer crime.

C Daniel Nalevajko, customer support director for Czech OnLine, said he isn’t surprised companies fail to report intrusions into their servers or on their Web sites. He said customers could desert a company they think can’t protect their private data. Seznam.cz routinely finds hackers trying to either break into their Web portal site or attempting to overload their system, said Petr Naidr, the company’s technical director. Even if the company notices the intrusion, tracking a hacker is difficult because attacks can come from any corner of the globe.

D “Hackers don’t avoid any countries,” Naidr said. “He can be sitting in the next room, be in another city, in a different country or on another continent.” Since most hacker intrusions are resolved by network administrators or Internet service providers, many companies don’t even think to contact police or don’t believe they can help, he added. And if a company’s site experiences a lot of traffic each day – like the e-mail site Post.cz and the portal Seznam.cz – it is also extremely difficult to weed out which hit was malicious.

E While the rate of computer hacking attacks are still not at the same level as in the United States – where more people have access to the Internet and computers – Nalevajko said he expects intrusions from Czech hackers to increase. For now, hackers tend to show off their skill than doing any real damage. But the instances of hackers trying to establish back-door access or copying databases is on the rise, Dastych said. Despite companies’ vigilance against intrusion, hacking will probably remain a fear for Czech firms with a Web presence. “We thought our site was pretty secure, but someone was too clever,” Nalevajko said.

desert – opustit

disrupting – přerušující

intrusion – vstup, vetření se

malicious – konaný ve zlém úmyslu

overload – přetížit

to regurgitate – opakovat

to tend to – inklinovat k

untraceable – nevystopovatelný

vigilance – ostražitost

1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.

1 Seznam tracks for hackers

2 Hackers disrupted operations
3 There will be more hackers in the Czech Republic

4 Hackers can be anywhere

5 Binary.division got inside Post.cz

2) Read the article again and answer the questions.

1 What is the article about?

2 Who are binary.division? What have they done?

3 Who is Jiří Dastych? What does he say?

4 Where can hackers be found?

5 Why do the attacked companies rarely contact the police?

3) Explain the following words.

1 username

2 Web sites

3 hacker

4 private data

5 e-mail site

Who is a hacker? What does a hacker do? Whose computer networks do they break into? How can hackers misuse information and data?

Adjusted to:

 http://www.praguepost.com/archivescontent/32866-hackers-see-little-risk-in-breaking-law.html