I read an article and decided to post about it since it is related to Internet security, cyberlaws, and cybercrimes — topics I have recently considered to blog about. The article talks about Internet defamation and libel which are common occurrences in the Internet nowadays. This is probably because those who are not familiar with how the Internet works think that the anonymity afforded by the Web is sufficient to shield them from any liability arising from cyber bullying, libel or defamation. Unfortunately, hiding under a screen name does not afford you the protection you thought you had—specially if you use that anonymity to defame someone who decides not to let it pass.

Even for hackers, the most difficult part of compromising the security of a system is NOT the breaking in part but the covering-your-tracks part. Why? Because anonymity is nothing but a false sense of security. If the hacker decides not to cover his tracks thinking that it is unnecessary as he is already anonymous anyway, then it won’t be long before he hears the Feds knocking on his door with a warrant to serve for his arrest.

In a post I just came across, Andrew Kameka said that if you are to defame someone on the Internet, be sure to have a team of expensive cyber-lawyers and a couple million dollars or so. You might also need a lot of paperbacks just in case you are given some years after the gavel falls instead of simply being asked for some loose change. (A few million of them)

Rosemary Port learned that the hard way. She thought that lambasting Liskula Cohen and calling her names on her blog without revealing her real identity is safe. She thought wrong. A US court forced her blog host, Google, to reveal her identity. The next thing she knew, she’s already a star. If big G could be asked to cooperate, any other blog host would also be as cooperative as not one of them has a choice on the matter.

If you are reading this and you happen to be a blogger, always be mindful of the dangers of Internet or online defamation and libel. It could land you in places you don’t want to be.

There are laws that address cyber crimes in cyberspace. But there are still some problems in enforcement and prosecution. Imagine a hacker from China who broke into a workstation owned by a European company in the Philippines  which is then used to hack an Australian’s blog which is hosted in a server in the USA. Which court has jurisdiction? Which country’s law shall be applied? Who can represent who? A Philippine lawyer cannot appear in American or Australian courts unless admitted in those country’s bar.

I’ve been to Reyna Elena’s blog a few days ago and read that his site’s traffic had been rerouted. Based on his description, it sounds so much like a redirect hijack. It is not yet confirmed though. (Who’s going to confirm it anyway? Certainly not the hosting company.) On the other side of the blogosphere, I came across two Filipino bloggers who got their sites hacked and consequently, their ads replaced with that of the intruder’s. These acts are clearly illegal in most jurisdictions.

So who did these things and why? Crackers. Not the crunchy thing you eat when you’re hungry and there’s no food around, but those people who eat blogs for breakfast. Actually, you might have heard of them as hackers though I refuse to use that term here as it is simply erroneous and misleading. Hackers originally meant brilliant people in computers and computing such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, to name a few. I’m certainly not about to honor network intruders by calling them hackers.

As to why, let’s look at Reyna’s blog first. His blog boasts a tremendous amount of traffic. As you might already know, this traffic can be converted; so the intruders weapon of choice? Web traffic redirection. They probably did it by breaking into Reyna’s installation and installed server-side scripts to the end that Reyna’s traffic is counted as that of the intruder’s. In short, they benefited from Reyna’s traffic.

The other two blogs are a different story. The owners of those blogs earn substantial AdSense revenues. So the crackers took a different approach. Instead of redirecting traffic, they replaced the original ads of the blog owners with their own ads so that clicks and impressions will be credited to their account. Smart.

Crackers or network intruders today have evolved from their immature beginnings. In the past, they would break into systems and tell the world that they’ve done it by defacing websites. It was sort of like their trophy. Not unlike a kid spray painting a wall with words like: “Hacker Doodz was here”. Today, their approach is more business like. They’re in it for the money. Most bloggers who get hacked probably would not even know it. Why would they be so loud when doing so means the end of their passive income? The only reason the blogger above learned of the ad swap is because he noticed that the ad’s color became slightly different. Good for him to notice that.

In cases like this, complex conflict of laws needs to be applied which is why a lot don’t even bother. This will hopefully be remedied in the future but at the moment, we just have to be vigilant.