Another day, another hack. This morning, Facebook and Instagram went dark. Facebook has blamed a technical glitch; ‘Lizard Squad’ celebrated another successful attack:
Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 27, 2015
Yesterday, the group claimed responsibility for defacing the website of Malaysia Airlines. One of the more active of many mysterious groups, they have claimed responsibility for a range of online mischief in the last year, from hacking into online games networks to the temporary internet blackout in North Korea in December 2014 (although the latter isn’t easy to prove). This kind of seemingly random hacking has been happening more often, and has been termed ‘cybervandalism’. A good example was the hacking of US military Central Command’s Twitter account earlier this year.
What exactly hacking is, generally speaking, is poorly understood. It is perceived as an immensely difficult thing to do, and conjures images of hunched backs, dark rooms and lots of computer screens like the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix.
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