Whatever your personal perspective on the rights and wrongs of the current Palestinian-Israeli war in Gaza, there's a second front being fought on the Internet. This form of warfare is a battle of words and often vivid imagery engaged by hackers from either side of the divide. The image shown below is a highly graphic example from a defaced Israeli commercial Website, hacked by "DNS Team" today.
Many are familiar with the explosive form of botnet-based direct denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks carried out and widely reported, against governmental Websites in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in August 2008. In fact this particular cyberwar in the Middle East has been going on since at least 2001. Mirroring the real world, this cyberwar waxes and wanes as the ground warfare fans the flames on the Internet at times such as this.
The tactics include many sophisticated hacking techniques more frequently used against commercial sites, but this development is important to any commercial or governmental network operation.
It may seem as if this is only of consequence to Israeli or Arab Websites. That's not the case. For example, many U.S., French, Spanish, U.K., and Danish Websites are being defaced by hackers at the rate of hundreds per hour. Such e-vandalism is merely an inconvenience for the company Webmaster, but many of the defacements in the last two days also contain malware links. Many are also provided with redirects or flash links to Jihadist forums or blogs, caused by SQL attacks.
A few days ago the Islamic group "Team Evil" used a DNS attack on DomainTheNet's registration system server, which redirected many well known Israeli Websites such as ynetnews.com and public utilities, and rerouted users to a page featuring anti-Israel messages. DomainTheNet is a multinational registration service provider (RSP), which offers registration and site-hosting services. Of the names used in the hacking, Team Evil, DNS Team, Tw!$3r, KaSPeRs HaCKeR CreW, PaLiSeNiaN HaCK, MoRoCcAn HaCkErZ, et al., are reportedly coming from Morocco.
But tracking back to the associated routings and linked forums, these activities are actually originating from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As three embarrassing examples of the enemy within:
Jihadist forum and communication site Anashed.Net is registered in Saudi Arabia but hosted by Layered Tech, based in Plano, Texas.
Raslny.com is also registered in Saudi Arabia but hosted by SoftLayer, also based in Plano.
According to Internet-Haganah, an Israeli Website that tracks Jihadist sites, Thabaat.net, which distributes Al Qaeda propaganda, is registered in Belgium and hosted in Denmark, a key target for Jihadists due to the Islamic cartoon incident.
The Associated Press reported in 2006 that Team Evil had begun hacking and vandalizing U.S. government Websites as early as 2004. In 2002, an Israeli hacker named Ehud Tannenbaum, known as "The Analyzer," was sentenced to 18 months in jail for breaking into computer systems at NASA, the Pentagon, and the Defense Department, among others.
By way of even-handedness it would be naïve to think this cyberwar is one sided: No Hamas-related Website is available, as they were effectively taken down and have been kept offline since mid-2008 by the pro-Israeli hackers, "Fanat al-Radical." A fascinating approach over the last few days is being made by an Israeli Website, "Help Israel Win," which provides a download so your PC can become part of a worldwide pro-Israeli botnet. So far 7,786 have joined, already a fairly powerful global computing force to, as they describe, "Disrupt our Enemy’s Efforts."
— Jart Armin, Editor of RBNexploit.com, a watch blog on the infamous RBN (Russian Business
Network), and HostExploit.com
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Been away for three weeks. No, I haven't got caught in the Israeli-Hamas war. Just some physical reaction to the unbalanced food intake perhaps which caused some chemical reaction within my system and forced me to be in bed and resting for three weeks.
Anyway, it is true that the best thing that we could right now hope for, and pray, is that more people get so guided by the common sense that points to the direction of being harmless in word, thought and deed, regardless of the various and even divergent cultural orientations which is exactly the reason why we should respect each other and not harm anyone. It is not good to impose "our own" beliefs, principles and ideas on others (and hopefully I am not 'imposing' this very same idea) because of our differences. There is really much room for tolerance and understanding for actually this makes the world a great place to live in. If we have no differences at all, this would be a very boring world. All we need to learn perhaps is to co-exist with others and find out the best in others so that we could truly complement and make the world a better place to live in.
It is not such an easy proposition but at least it is by far better than doing violence to others.
Isn't the idea of the internet is to create a space to share and express one's idea freely? The internet is far too big and too free for anyone to put a fence around it. The bigger issue is who to decide what right and what wrong? something that is so wrong to me might look so right for someone else. For now, we can just hope that there would be far more people knowing the right then the wrong.
But the problem has been that there's no real jurisdiction from one agency over the internet. People who want to do harm "go" to places that are ignorant to the entire situation or that simply don't mind.
For one agency to look over the internet, I think they will have to start assigning (selling?) parts of it to different companies, not that anyone can be a router to the "series of tubes".
In my opinion, it is job of special agencies, supported by the government.However, it concerns everyone. People should be aware of web content and should contact corresponding bureau if the feel that web data is improper.
I have to agree with what the lady says,Gaza is an unspeakable tragedy today.More than 1000 Gazans have been killed in the carnage. I feel genuinely sorry for them.First they are made to live in a cage,boxed in from all sides by the Militiary Might of Israel and then denied any chance to lead a dignified life thanks to the Israelis Blockades.
When will Israel realize by subjugating the palestinians like this they will not get very far towards their aims of achieving their ultimate goal- A viable,sucessful ,peaceful and Prosperous Israel ???
Israel has made it impossible for a Two State Solution to happen-atleast on current terms.Naturally Muslims all over the world are upset at this turn of events and the Iranians are continually arming Hezobollahs and Hamas to cause more damage and Insecurity to the Israelis.
BUt one has to admit that the Technological war ,fought online has been pretty cool so far. The Graphics were awesome!And the concept of getting/hijacking Botnets to fight this war online was amazing,especially since most of them are based here in the US.
And then the Spammers are once again having a field day(most for Financial not political reasons),read the Bmighty blog it has a nice primer of dos and donts.
I am not blaming government and IT crew. As it is not real to eliminate all terroristic organizations and fanatic groups, it is impossible to control the whole Internet traffic (actually it is more or less possible, but I bet that it is a democratic mean of civilized society).
However, people should be aware of they read on the web. As I have mentioned, concrete psychological reaction of a person who received propaganda material is inevitable and is presupposed by specialists who prepare materials and sends them. And if at this stage of technological development we can’t implement artificial methods of data filtering, what we can actually do today is informing people about the potential risk of reading hijacks messages and supporting them.
Yes and it is really a big challenge for us how to implement the filtering of those extreme fundamentalist ideas that could influence the minds of users without being accused or suspected of supporting an opposite group or idea.
Yeah, everyone ought to accept some part of the blame.
Though it might seem mere romanticism or pure religiosity or even extreme moralism to say that everyone who uses the Internet should use it for good purposes only. But somehow it is only when everyone is concerned and conscious enough about the power of the Internet that using it for negative purposes is not cool or not really acceptable.
So who's fault is it? the hackers, the IT crew that developed the software that wasn't robust enough to handle the attack (or secure enough and people used it to their own advantage)? the gpvernments that don't have any laws to protect the innocent?
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