RECENT attacks, including an international hacking competition last weekend, are only the thin end of the security wedge, according to a leading internet firm’s chief scientist. Most attacks, although relatively benign, had showed up holes in the security of IT infrastructure, said Dr Tom Leighton, MIT professor of applied mathematics and member of the US President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). Dr Leighton, also co-founder and chief scientist of internet content delivery service provider Akamai, said the “attacks that we have seen, that we have read about in the press, are more like probes – are very benign”. “All things considered, they cause damage, but nowhere near the damage they could have caused if they had been malicious,” he said. As Akamai worked with many major ISPs worldwide, and a number of large international clients, it had a good view of attacks going on across the internet, Dr Leighton said. Infrastructure weakness, rather than the strength of attacks was the reason simple probes could cause so much damage, he said. Last year’s attack on the internet’s 13 root domain name servers was an example of this. Full Story