Free Republic

Unconfirmed report raises questions, sets bloggers blogging The IT security blogosphere is burning up today, following an unconfirmed report that Osama Bin Laden and his followers are planning a massive cyber attack on Western targets in less than two weeks. DEBKAfile, an Israeli news organization, yesterday published a report stating that counter-terrorism sources have intercepted and translated an Arabic "Internet announcement" that proposes an attack on Western electronic targets to begin on November 11. The attack will begin with 15 targets and will expand to "untold numbers," according to the report. Dark Reading canvassed U.S. law enforcement agencies in an...

Al Qaeda's online community is threatening all out cyber war against counter jihadis. Bring. It. On. B- - - - - -. DEBKA: In a special Internet announcement in Arabic, picked up DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, Osama bin Laden’s followers announced Monday, Oct. 29, the launching of Electronic Jihad. On Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda’s electronic experts will start attacking Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On Day One, they will test their skills against 15 targeted sites expand the operation from day to day thereafter until hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold...

Thomas X. Hammes is a retired Marine colonel. He is the author of a seminal book on conducting counter-insurgency warfare. The work is called "The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century." Recently, he made an intriguing proposal on how to battle jihadists on the Internet (a virtual agora where Islamist militants appear to consort with alarming frequency). This is what he said: "For the last few years, individuals and private organizations that are pro-Israeli have been in a daily fight to shut down or deface anti-Israeli Web sites. Unofficial and informal, this Internet Hagana has had...

[Tanslation ScaniaBoy] A hacker war between Turkey and Sweden has erupted. Last week Turkish hackers attacked thousands of Swedish sites on the Internet, and this weekend Swedish hackers revenged by publishing pornographic pictures of the prophet Muhammed. The Turkish attacks started several weeks ago. Swedish Web-hotels were attacked and thousands of home-pages were erased, and sometimes the attackers left political messages. On Saturday the Swedish hackers hit back. They had localised a Turkish discussion forum where some of the hackers were registred. The database with names and passwords for all the members to the site was stolen, Per Hellqvist, head...

Ind. grad student convicted of threatening to kill Bush By The Associated Press 06.29.07 HAMMOND, Ind. — A Purdue University graduate student was convicted of threatening to kill President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others in postings on the Internet. Vikram Buddhi, 35, an Indian national who was attending advanced engineering classes at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, was found guilty by a federal jury yesterday on 11 counts of making threats that were posted in a chat room in 2005 and 2006. Buddhi faces up to 35 years in prison when he is sentenced later this year. Buddhi hijacked...

A woman is appearing in court charged with hoarding terrorist handbooks, including weapons manuals and poison information, on her computer. Unemployed Samina Malik, 22, of Southall, west London, faces four offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. Among the documents she is accused of possessing are the al Qaida Manual, The Terrorists' Handbook and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook. She is also accused of holding a sniper rifle manual, a firearms and rocket-propelled grenade handbook and a document entitled How To Win Hand To Hand Fighting. The offences are alleged to have taken place on October 27. The Metropolitan Police said Malik...

Recent chatter on jihadi websites has focused on monitoring the counter-terrorism strategies of the United States and its allies in the global war on terrorism. Jihadi websites and forums are studying and translating the texts of Western analysts who assess current counter-terrorism efforts. The jihadis use these self-critiques by Western analysts to find areas of weakness and tension in U.S.-led counter-terrorism strategy; through this information, they are better able to devise physical and psychological operations to exploit these weaknesses. Additionally, their monitoring of U.S.-led counter-terrorism efforts is an attempt to lift the morale of jihadis by: showing that vulnerable points...

Below the radar screen of Western intelligence and security services, there is a global re-education process on the Internet to proselytize on the true meaning of an Islamic state. This "cyberwar" is transforming the political landscape of the Middle East. It is a slow, stealthy but massive campaign. Salafist ideologues are reinventing Islam, firing the imagination of Internet-savvy Muslim youth from Morocco to Mindanao and from Sweden to Spain. Mohamed Atta trained his 9/11 teams face-to-face. The successor generation now meets in an Open University of Jihad on the worldwide Web. We can no longer measure success as we did...

Almost four hours passed this morning without a single person posting anything to the influential Free Republic website. Probability experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would not speak for attribution, although one well-known expert in quantum mechanics did make the comment that "it could happen."

Muslim computer-hacker gangs have launched a massive attack on Danish and Western Web sites as part of the mass protests across the Arab world over the publication of cartoons making fun of the Prophet Mohammed. The cyber-crime monitoring group Zone-H.org said in a statement that more than 1,000 Danish, Israeli and European sites were defaced or shut down by Islamic hackers in the last week. And experts fear that's just the beginning of what could be a massive cyber-jihad stretching from the Middle East and Europe to the United States and dominating cyberspace for weeks, costing millions of dollars. "We...

Terrorism on the Internet – a plausible idea in today’s world – is both intriguing and frightening. Author Robert Lanzone’s first novel, Cyberjihad, chronicles just such a clandestine scheme. What kind of harm can terrorists achieve on the Internet? Author Robert Lanzone's novel, Cyberjihad (ISBN 1-4208-2145-8) reveals a terrorist plot so convincing, it places the book on the hairy edge of non-fiction. Synopsis: A Wall Street computer whiz travels through cyberspace, where he stumbles upon terrorists plotting to destabilize the world’s economy and nuclear defenses. Reluctantly sucked in by government bureaucrats, this computer genius becomes torn between the safety of...

Today, on July 21, 2005, the Facts About Islam (FAI) website returned after being down for over six months. The FAI was originally founded under the name of "TE" (known as "AMS" by some) in November 2002 by Former ATC President Stalfos. During the rest of 2002 and the first few months of 2003, the TE received hundreds of visitors a day (and sometimes up to 2000 visitors a day). Since its very existence, the TE was faced with attacks and bannings. Yahoo Geocities, on which the TE was hosted on, had and still has a double standard when it...

As part of the effort to keep America secure from future acts of violence, the U.S. is looking at monitoring Internet chat rooms to identify potential terrorists. According to CNET News.com, the CIA is quietly funding research into surveillance of online discussion halls. In April 2003, the intelligence agency reportedly agreed to finance a series of research projects that newly disclosed government documents indicate were intended to create "new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology." One of the projects at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., centers on profiling the behavior of those who talk in chat rooms....