Gareeb
02-08-2006, 12:56 AM
Cyber Espionage
Hacking is now politically motivated.
A quick look at the hacking business – in the current implication of the term – shows another interesting point; that is the dramatic change of course of usage.
While hacking has mostly been used, in its most dangerous forms, for assaulting bank databases, obviously for illegal financial gains, it has recently turned political.
According to a Web site called "answers.com", the first cyber espionage case to make news headlines was in 1989.
"Hackers in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are arrested for breaking into US government computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. Three of them are turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is publicized."
The Web site traces down most important hacking operations and cases so far. It is clear from the list that the majority of such hackings were related to "stealing money".
By the near end of the last century, specifically 1999, the trend takes a sharp turn though. Web sites of US administration departments start suffering dangerous hackings to "steal or damage information", prompting former President Bill Clinton to announces a $1.46 billion initiative to improve government computer security.
During that same year, the US General Accounting Office reports that hackers attempted to break into Defense Department computer files some 250,000 times in 1995 alone. About 65 percent of the attempts were successful, according to the report.
Rep. Curt Weldon says Defense Department computers are under a "coordinated, organized" attack from hackers, adding: "You can basically say we are at war", according to Answers.com.
Not long time later and specifically in 2000, the biggest hacking operation ever took place.
Assaults in February, 2000, temporarily disabled stars of the Web such as Yahoo, ZDNet, CNN and Amazon.com.
IOL Hacked…Again
With the Internet growing fast into an alternative media, as all other traditional media outlets have their own Web sites, in addition to media organizations – like IOL – being initiated on the Internet, the hacking business now have other "goals".
In a raging row like the one over the Danish cartoons, Web sites themselves are a target of hackers or crackers.
IslamOnline.net had to post an apology to its readers early Monday, February 6, over not being able to go through the Web site, citing technical problems, due to "hacking" attempts. Well, it was not the first time IOL was hacked nor was IOL the first or last Web site to suffer from such hi-tech clutches.
According to IOL technical personnel, that was not the first time the Web site suffered such attacks.
In March 2004, the Web site was downed by a hacking process, blamed then on suspected Israeli entities.
The biggest Islamic Web site faces over 250 hacking attempts a day, according to IOL technical experts.
In the early days of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, hackers downed Al-Jazeera Web site after the Qatar-based channel aired pictures of a number of US soldiers captured and killed in Iraq seven days after the start of the Anglo-American offensive.
Immediately following the September 2001 attacks, Internet hackers have been calling for "revenge" attacks against Muslim and Arab Web sites.
The current cartoon issue is a stark example of the cyber war, and online polls are only another battlefield.
A poll on IOL, asking voters whether "there should be limits to freedom of expression when it comes to what is sacred in religions", could be seen as a point in case.
The poll went online Monday, January 30 and three days later, some 3,500 participants were registered, over 70% of them saying "yes". On Thursday, February 2, and in a time span of almost two hours, over 2,000 participants voted "no". The result was remarkably overturned.
"When it was clear something was wrong, we had to conduct some technical research and a certain IP address was traced, specifically in Denmark, to be the source of massive voting," according to IOL technical sources.
Politically Motivated
Now with all political parties, lobbying groups, NGOs and all other forms of groupings having their own Web sites, typically used to publish each entity's agenda, such Web sites are understandably a potential target for activists belonging to their "enemies".
When Ariel Sharon became Israel's Prime Minister in 2001, the Web site of Hamas – Palestinian resistance group – was hacked and downed the same day the hawkish Israeli leader – now in coma after a massive stroke – assumed office.
With this new turn of "hacking" and the global change of the agenda of interests – following the 9/11/2001 attacks and the launch of so-called war on terror – imposing strict penal codes criminalizing the hacking of Web sites seems off course.
The latest world summit on information technology – held in Tunisia in November 2005 – witnessed heated debates on the issue of so-called "Internet Governance", or in layman's terms "fight of ownership" between the US on the one hand, and the poor of the world and UN on the other.
The issue of criminalizing hacking, however, got little, if any, portion of the summit's attention.
And with the speedy development of information technology, coupled with the incredible skill of the "evil minds" – who create viruses and worms – the uncontrolled cyber war is highly predicted to be a decisive tool in widening the gap between world peoples, instead of doing the exact opposite.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-02/07/article06.shtml
Hacking is now politically motivated.
A quick look at the hacking business – in the current implication of the term – shows another interesting point; that is the dramatic change of course of usage.
While hacking has mostly been used, in its most dangerous forms, for assaulting bank databases, obviously for illegal financial gains, it has recently turned political.
According to a Web site called "answers.com", the first cyber espionage case to make news headlines was in 1989.
"Hackers in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are arrested for breaking into US government computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. Three of them are turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is publicized."
The Web site traces down most important hacking operations and cases so far. It is clear from the list that the majority of such hackings were related to "stealing money".
By the near end of the last century, specifically 1999, the trend takes a sharp turn though. Web sites of US administration departments start suffering dangerous hackings to "steal or damage information", prompting former President Bill Clinton to announces a $1.46 billion initiative to improve government computer security.
During that same year, the US General Accounting Office reports that hackers attempted to break into Defense Department computer files some 250,000 times in 1995 alone. About 65 percent of the attempts were successful, according to the report.
Rep. Curt Weldon says Defense Department computers are under a "coordinated, organized" attack from hackers, adding: "You can basically say we are at war", according to Answers.com.
Not long time later and specifically in 2000, the biggest hacking operation ever took place.
Assaults in February, 2000, temporarily disabled stars of the Web such as Yahoo, ZDNet, CNN and Amazon.com.
IOL Hacked…Again
With the Internet growing fast into an alternative media, as all other traditional media outlets have their own Web sites, in addition to media organizations – like IOL – being initiated on the Internet, the hacking business now have other "goals".
In a raging row like the one over the Danish cartoons, Web sites themselves are a target of hackers or crackers.
IslamOnline.net had to post an apology to its readers early Monday, February 6, over not being able to go through the Web site, citing technical problems, due to "hacking" attempts. Well, it was not the first time IOL was hacked nor was IOL the first or last Web site to suffer from such hi-tech clutches.
According to IOL technical personnel, that was not the first time the Web site suffered such attacks.
In March 2004, the Web site was downed by a hacking process, blamed then on suspected Israeli entities.
The biggest Islamic Web site faces over 250 hacking attempts a day, according to IOL technical experts.
In the early days of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, hackers downed Al-Jazeera Web site after the Qatar-based channel aired pictures of a number of US soldiers captured and killed in Iraq seven days after the start of the Anglo-American offensive.
Immediately following the September 2001 attacks, Internet hackers have been calling for "revenge" attacks against Muslim and Arab Web sites.
The current cartoon issue is a stark example of the cyber war, and online polls are only another battlefield.
A poll on IOL, asking voters whether "there should be limits to freedom of expression when it comes to what is sacred in religions", could be seen as a point in case.
The poll went online Monday, January 30 and three days later, some 3,500 participants were registered, over 70% of them saying "yes". On Thursday, February 2, and in a time span of almost two hours, over 2,000 participants voted "no". The result was remarkably overturned.
"When it was clear something was wrong, we had to conduct some technical research and a certain IP address was traced, specifically in Denmark, to be the source of massive voting," according to IOL technical sources.
Politically Motivated
Now with all political parties, lobbying groups, NGOs and all other forms of groupings having their own Web sites, typically used to publish each entity's agenda, such Web sites are understandably a potential target for activists belonging to their "enemies".
When Ariel Sharon became Israel's Prime Minister in 2001, the Web site of Hamas – Palestinian resistance group – was hacked and downed the same day the hawkish Israeli leader – now in coma after a massive stroke – assumed office.
With this new turn of "hacking" and the global change of the agenda of interests – following the 9/11/2001 attacks and the launch of so-called war on terror – imposing strict penal codes criminalizing the hacking of Web sites seems off course.
The latest world summit on information technology – held in Tunisia in November 2005 – witnessed heated debates on the issue of so-called "Internet Governance", or in layman's terms "fight of ownership" between the US on the one hand, and the poor of the world and UN on the other.
The issue of criminalizing hacking, however, got little, if any, portion of the summit's attention.
And with the speedy development of information technology, coupled with the incredible skill of the "evil minds" – who create viruses and worms – the uncontrolled cyber war is highly predicted to be a decisive tool in widening the gap between world peoples, instead of doing the exact opposite.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-02/07/article06.shtml