[Nettime-bold] cyberwar v1.0

[brian carroll <human@architexturez.com>]

EXPERTS FEAR CYBERWAR'S SPREAD
Tuesday,October 31,2000

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. 



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