Attack on Google's Palestine Site Shows Risks of Foreign Domains

As this week's hacking attacks against Google, Twitter and the New York Times demonstrate, the dispersed nature of the Internet — a core trait that makes the Web so powerful — also leaves it vulnerable to being hijacked.

All three incidents showed the fragility of the Domain Name System that computers rely on to find each other on the Internet, an issue security experts have grappled with for decades. Yet the attack that hit Google offers a particularly instructive lesson about how even large companies with big security budgets can lose control over their foreign sites.

Google, which was infiltrated in 2009 by hackers from China, now has 300 information-security professionals focused on protecting data, a figure approaching bank-like proportions. Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank by assets, said in April that his bank has more than 600 employees dedicated to security. Read more...