Very few non-governmental organisations (NGOs), especially charities, have the resources to defend themselves from cyber attacks.
This is according to a technical expert at Survival International, Toby Nicholas, following the attack of a human rights organisation focusing on indigenous tribal people's Web site last week.
Nicholas says: “The attack made it impossible to keep our main Web site running, and the attackers have also targeted our online shop, which had to briefly go offline.
“At least Survival is able to keep publishing online even though our full site isn't available - many organisations won't have the technical abilities to handle that,” he says.
These kinds of high-volume distributed denial-of-service attacks, he says, used to be mostly carried out against corporations as an attempt at extortion.
“Now we're seeing these attacks on human rights organisations; I think it's clear all such organisations are at risk from those with the money and technical capacity to silence them.”
However, Nicholas says, because the organisation had to plan for these eventualities, some of its IT systems are separate and have not been affected.
“We also have a series of back-up Web systems which allow us to continue publishing a back-up version of our Web site even under the heaviest attack. It's impossible to put a price on bringing the site back-up because the attack is so sustained and of a high volume.”
Survival International had good security systems in place, which could cope with a few hackers. However, he says: “The attack would have cost someone several thousand dollars a day and is still continuing. This isn't an individual. It's state or corporation-sponsored,” he points out.
Survival has experienced several cyber attacks before. Previously, the attacks coincided with the organisation's campaign work for the Bushmen in Botswana.
“We have had our e-mail servers flooded, and our Web server hacked and our Web site changed.”
Nicholas says the attack also coincides with the instigating of a boycott of Botswana tourism and Survival International call for Wilderness Safaris to move their lodge from Bushman land. “One week ago, we also released shocking footage of West Papuan tribal people being tortured by Indonesian soldiers.”
However, the Botswana and Indonesian authorities have denied they know anything about the cyber attack, he says.
Nicholas says it would be difficult to trace those responsible. "What they've done is remarkably effective and expensive. There was obviously a lot of infrastructure and cash behind the whole thing.
"The attack is so many degrees away from the source that it's impossible to prove who did it, but we have an idea,” he says.
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