Vandals in cyber-space
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THE people who carried out a "cyber-attack" on the Central Applications Office (CAO) computer system are very clever and knowledgeable -- in their way. In a more important way, they are just as stupid and callous, just as much vandals, as their contemporaries who smash up bus shelters.
By causing an overload at a time when thousands of students were trying to access the site with queries about their third-level places, they caused the entire system to crash. They may or may not have thought of the immense anxiety suffered by those thousands at a sensitive moment in their lives. Most likely, they did so simply in order to acquire "bragging rights" in the company of their peers.
Much thought and work went into this silly prank. Hundreds of computers may have been involved, without their owners' knowledge. A pity the expertise was not put to more useful purposes. Perhaps it will in time.
Attacks like these are more common than most people imagine, but they are usually carried out for a different purpose. Criminal gangs mount them against companies, threatening to make their computer systems unworkable, with enormous loss of revenue.
The objective in these cases is, of course, extortion. It can be, and often is, guarded against by the installation of better protection. But can an agency like the CAO afford to spend millions on improving a system that is vulnerable only a couple of times a year?
