Hack attacks, explained

Q&A with Jonathan Zittrain delves into recent cyber attacks on news media by the Syrian Electronic Army (Harvard Gazette). Computer network hackers calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army earlier this week disrupted The New York Times' website for nearly a day and electronic publishing on the Twitter social network for several hours. Also targeted were the Huffington Post and other media outlets. These cyber attacks, which involved hijacking the companies' domain names by altering their numeric addresses, which in turn prevented visitors from seeing the websites, are just the most recent in a series of strikes on news organizations, including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, and the Financial Times, in the past few months. To better understand the attacks, Harvard Gazette staff writer Christina Pazzanese asked Harvard's Jonathan L. Zittrain to comment by email on what happened and how institutions will have to react in order to protect themselves from future disruptions. Zittrain is a professor of law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of computer science at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is also co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.