Major Technology Companies Victim to Cyber Attacks (GOOG, MSFT)

The official website of Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest offshore IT services provider, has been hacked. When one opens the company website, it displays the sign “For Sale” with a notice that the tcs.com domain name is for sale and interested buyers can contact the company at the following email address - abed_uk@hotmail.com. This message is displayed both in English and French.

Tata Consultancy Services is the top software services provider and consulting company in India. It is a subsidiary of one of India’s largest and oldest conglomerates, the Tata Group. It is very ironic that a company providing IT solutions to other companies, which include security systems software and other digital security instruments like digital certificates, had its own website hacked.

Another recent incident happened with Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) in China. Email accounts of human rights activists critical of China were hacked. Google has announced that it will leave China if the Chinese government did not relax its rules on censorship. However, the Chinese government denied involvement of any sort in any of these attacks and hence is averse to relaxing the rules of the internet.

Google however is optimistic, that it can persuade China’s ruling party to loosen restrictions on free expression on the internet, so that it can keep doing business in the country. Microsoft Inc, (NASDAQ: MSFT) has found that the code used for hacking Gmail accounts is freely available on the internet and security experts are urging computer users throughout the world to be highly vigilant until a patch can be developed. Microsoft is working on developing this patch to prevent the hacking. These incidents really question security on the World Wide Web. If such technology giants can become a victim of these cyber attacks, normal users’ privacy can be easily compromised and this can affect companies doing business on the internet in a very big way.