| brian carroll on 2 Nov 2000 17:20:58 -0000 |
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| <nettime> cyberwar v1.0 |
� EXPERTS FEAR CYBERWAR'S SPREAD Tuesday,October 31,2000 Sender: [email protected] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: brian carroll <[email protected]> By NILES LATHEM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The growing electronic war between Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers threatens to shut down large portions of the Internet, government and industry, experts warned last night. The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, the agency that combats cybercrimes, recently sent out an advisory warning that the tit-for-tat attacks that have shut down and defaced Israeli government and Hezbollah and Hamas Web sites in the last month could "spill over," into the United States. "Due to the credible threat of terrorist acts in the Middle East region and the conduct of these Web attacks, [users] should exercise increased vigilance to the possibility that U.S. government and private-sector Web sites may become potential targets," the FBI advisory said. "In recent days, the overall threat condition for U.S. military forces in the Middle East has increased due to new credible threats of terrorist acts in the region. Similarly NIPC views the current conditions as creating the possibility for related cyberattack activity against U.S. sites," it said. The cyberwar, or "e-Jihad" as the Palestinian side calls it, began earlier this month, when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exploded. Sophisticated Israeli hackers defaced a Hezbollah Web site that was trying to incite anti-Israel violence among Palestinians. The attacks escalated when Islamic militants based in Lebanon, London and the United States set up special "attack Web sites," in which users could send special jamming software via e-mail. The attacks shut down top Israeli government Web sites for days. AT&T, which helped Israeli sites get back online, has become a recent target, according to recent message traffic from the Palestinian side. Ben Venzke, an intelligence analyst for the Virginia-based iDefense, a computer security firm that is tracking the cyberwar, said hackers going by the names Dodi, ReAList and Nir-MN are turning to increasingly sophisticated programs and are now threatening to unleash devastating viruses and software. New York Post, nypostonline.com, nypost.com, and newyorkpost.com are registered trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2000 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]