How do you take some of the world’s largest online brands offline in a matter of minutes? If yesterday’s events are any guide, you do it by finding a gullible employee at vulnerable, downstream partner that those companies didn’t even know they had. That’s the lesson that appears to be emerging in the aftermath of yesterday’s chaotic tug of war between hackers who claim affiliation with The Syrian Electronic Army and some of the world’s leading online brands, including The New York Times, Twitter and Huffingtonpost.com. The attacks on Tuesday saw traffic to sites owned by those firms directed to web servers controlled by the attackers which displayed messages in support of the regime of embattled President Bashar al-Assad. According to a story in The New York Times, the attackers were able to compromise systems operated by Melbourne IT, an Australian domain registrar used by many prominent firms. With access to […]