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One of the biggest international controversies right now surrounds political cartoons
run in a Danish newspaper back in September. The issue's come to a head in recent
weeks and while the world watches the testy mobs in the middle east, web sites
based in Denmark are getting attacked.
Many members of the Islamic faith took the political cartoons in the Danish publication,
Jyllands-Posten, very poorly. The inflammatory political
cartoons presented images suggesting the prophet Mohammed was a terrorist.
The fallout has been overwhelming on this issue as embassies are assaulted, riots
are in the streets and people are killed. One other method of protest/attack comes
from the assault on Danish and some other western site over this big issue.
Editor's Note: CyberTerrorism
or CyberProtest? The events out of Denmark and the rest of the world surrounding
this cartoons has turned into an unmitigated disaster that has spread onto the
Internet. Give us your input on the Security Forum at WebProWorld.
 In
a recent report by
cybercrime monitoring organization Zone-H, it was noted that nearly 600 attacks
occurred on Danish sites alone. When combined with attacks against Israeli and
other western sites, the total comes to almost a thousand. Zone-H said they noticed
a lot of activity in the Islamic hacker communities. Here's what Zone-H said:
What came out from the survey is what Zone-H very much expected:
the use of the Internet as an instrument to spread out cyber protests related
to what happens in the worldwide context. Several hacker groups from different
Muslim nations united their forces in order to produce the larger amount of damages
in Danish and more generally western web-servers. During the attacks they promoted
both moderate and extremists manifestos through the defacement of the homepages
promoting also a boycott campaign throughout the digital Ummah against Danish
products.
In fact in one of the highlighted attacks the hacker going by the handle
DarkBlood clearly incites the Ummah community to avoid Danish products by quoting
the website www.no4denmark.com. But Zone-H noted many other, and more threatening
examples: warning for suicide bombing attacks were posted on http://amris.dk forums
by the "IIB - Internet Islamic Brigades", and threats for a coming Jihad have
been used to crack many other web-servers from all over the western and non-western
world.
One major way to attack websites is to deface them. A defacer known as Darkblood
had retired from his cybercriminal activities, came back specifically for this.
This is what they posted:
"HIS EXCELLENCY, Dr. Per Stig Møller the minister of the foreign affairs
of the Denmark Peace be upon those who follow the true guidance: I have reviewed
what some of the news agencies dealt with concerning the Danish news agency Jyllands-Posten
had published, which I believe it to be a heinous mistake and dreadful deviation
from the path of justice, reverence and equality. The said agency published 12
cartoon caricatures on the 30th of September, 2005, ridiculing Mohammed , the
messenger of Islam. One of these cartoons pictures Allah's Messenger PBUH, wearing
a turban that resembles a bomb wrapped around his head. What a pathetic projection!
I was extremely saddened to read such news. I personally visited the site of the
agency on the net. I examined the size of the blundering scandal it was. On Sept
29th, 2005 issue of , Jyllands-Posten, I saw and read dreadful news and cartoons.
The news and the cartoons were horrifying and extremely disturbing to me. I believe
al Muslims who read, viewed or learned about this news were equally saddened,
disappointed and disturbed. All criticized such work and felt awful and dismayed
about it. Similarly, I do believe that all sane and wise people, I believe, would
feel the same about it"
 This
report shows a couple of important points. First, political/religious assaults
are becoming more commonplace on the Internet. Zone-H identified this as a growing
trend they've seen a number of times. This leads into the next point and that's
cyber security.
It's quite probable these sites didn't have premium security and they got hacked
as part of a political agenda. This emphasizes the point that governments need
to worry about such issues as well. Who's to say these groups won't start going
after networks that run Denmark's government or some other western nation. British
Parliament got hacked. The U.S. government's been hacked. In both cases, it was
suggested the hacking was done by another nation. But consider a number of groups
are out there and they are officially unattached to any country. If these groups
could enlist a few quality hackers, which many probably have, they could easily
do damage to various points of our infrastructure.
It's kind of a frightening prospect really.
Discuss this at WebProWorld.
About
the Author:
John Stith is a technology writer with SecurityProNews. |
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