Threat or scare mongering?

[Paul K]

Just seen a link to this report on Neowin
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759...04dtx1k0000599

Concerns Mount over Major Web Strike
By David Morgenstern
August 24, 2004
A coordinated online strike against Internet servers by terrorists, dubbed "electronic jihad," may or may not strike this week, security experts said. One security researcher in Moscow warned that Thursday would be the day in question.

But a recent string of attacks on primary Internet services and the unraveling of major encryption routines are raising concerns in the Internet operator community.
According to a Tuesday RIA Novosti report, Russian security researcher Yevgeny Kaspersky, founder of Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs International, said a strike against political and financial sites was expected on Thursday.

"The hackers who have proclaimed 'electronic jihad' have enough experience and resources to paralyze the Internet for several hours at least," Kaspersky said in the report.

"The e-jihad has been discussed for years, but an undisputed attack has yet to surface," said Ken Durham, director of malicious code at iDefense Inc. of Reston, Va.

For the most part, coordinated "hacktivist" attacks have been "more talk than walk," he added.
But Durham said security pros are increasingly worrying about when political activists might join with like-minded security and Internet programmers. "This will be a dangerous situation," he said.

While Kaspersky's warning appears to suggest wide-scale DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, experts suggested that important Internet services, as well as its root servers, are also at risk.

For example, a DDoS attack in June against Akamai Technologies Inc. slowed traffic across the Internet for several hours. And in July, DoubleClick Inc.'s DNS (domain name system) was attacked and unable to serve ads for a similar time frame.

Anyone else seen reports of another attack on the web?

[Russ]

A coordinated online strike against Internet servers by terrorists, dubbed "electronic jihad," may or may not strike this week

Grammatically speaking, is there any other option???

Oh the threat?

Pile of pants if you ask me

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Russ D

Grammatically speaking, is there any other option???

Oh the threat?

Pile of pants if you ask me

But what if it DOES happen? What will we do without our spam riddled emails, pop ups, pointless ads and..... err.... ok, as you were, nothing more to see, move along people

[Richard M]

Get some sun?

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Get some sun?

Eh? Sun? Is that the thing up in the bluey type stuff???
Maybe the e-jihad or what ever they are will bring the internet down by all downloading SP2 at the same time LOL

Dont forget guys to accomplish something with devastating effect they must have the tools to do it.
Now let me see............ windows.

Nah **** it were safe lol

I love stories like this, they're a perfect example of how gullible some people in the media are.

If Western hackers with the sort of resources and experience they have available haven't yet been able to do anything like this, how on earth is anyone else going to achieve it?

[punky]

Makes me laugh at the lack of prinicpals terrorists have. These Taliban styling terrorists use the greatest most recent western invention, which was part designed by the U.S. military and part by U.S. civilians. They are quick to use the Internet though when it suits them. It's almost as funny when I saw the insurgents in Iraq driving a Chevrolet.

With regards to the fact westerners haven't done it yet, well there are two sides to it. Firstly the expertise and resources are out there to perform denial-of-service attacks, ask Microsoft or Amazon. The only thing is there hasn't been the motivation to consildate sporadic efforts to cause significant damage, which is where radical Islam comes in. The other side is, the Internet is hard to disable because of it;s very design. The U.S. military came up with the idea of a network that can sustain damage, either physical or technical, and carry on going. Even if the terrorists had significant backing, they would never disable the Internet entirely.

It might inconvience people and slow down others (Australians should be worried; their isloation makes them fairly susceptible. America, Europe and Asia are very well connected though), but wouldn't knock it out entirely.