The myth of the sophisticated hacker

Driving the news: Labour ultimately faced what's known as a denial of service attack, a way of overwhelming servers with a ton of traffic. It's a digital blunt force attack -- harmful, yes, but hardly sophisticated. In the last year or so, victims blamed "sophisticated" hackers for breaches at the Australian Parliament; a hamburger chain; a bank; another bank; yet more banks and universities in Australia, the U.S. and UK; a 1,200-student high school; newspapers; Amnesty International; WhatsApp users; a medical center; an electronics supplier; an embassy; and a community college, among others. Be smart: Some of those hackers were, in fact, sophisticated. The sophisticate who cried wolf: For network defenders trying to follow what's going on across the industry, it's important to know when actual sophisticated hackers emerge.