U.S. Officials Analyzing Usama Bin Laden Video (militant websites mysteriously shutdown)

foxnews ^ | 9/7/2007 | ap

[tobyhill]

CAIRO, Egypt — The U.S. government obtained a new video of Usama bin Laden before Al Qaeda could release it to the world to mark the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials on Friday were analyzing the tape, which could contain the first new images of the Al Qaeda leader in three years.

Soon after Washington announced it had the video, all the Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from Al Qaeda went down and were unaccessible, in an unprecedented shutdown.

The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known. Evan H. Kohlmann, a terrorism expert at globalterroralert.com, said he suspected it was the work of Al Qaeda itself, trying to find how the video leaked to U.S. officials.

"For them this is totally disruptive that U.S. government could have a copy before their targeted audience does," he said. "They could be concerned and trying to plug the leak quickly."

Another possibility is that the U.S. government shut down the sites, but that was unlikely, he said.

"I don't think they would have the legal or technical capability to do so, to collectively shut all these sites at the same time. Also, I don't think the U.S. government is necessarily interested in shutting these sites down, unless there is something so provocative and dangerous in what bin Laden is saying."

[tobyhill]

Most of the hundreds of Jihadist websites are run by just a handful of clowns. There’s this one named ozooo3 that runs at least 20 of them himself.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"My son flies to Germany tomorrow for a week on business. Scary."

It's a safe place. I might be going a week later, in fact. I understand your concerns but it's a better place to be this month than some big U.S. cities...

[DoughtyOne]

We’re certainly on the same page there.

[jveritas]

The shut down of the terrorist websites is the best way to to cripple the terrorist propaganda and to destroy their major tool of recruiting new terrorists.

[GeneralisimoFranciscoFranco]

OBL is as dead as Hadrian's goat. Has been for years.
Convenient boogey-man for us, motivating leader for them. When I see him holding yesterday's USA Today and dancing to a song that came out last week maybe I'll beleive the POS is still alive.

[GeneralisimoFranciscoFranco]

OBL is as dead as Hadrian's goat. Has been for years.
Convenient boogey-man for us, motivating leader for them. When I see him holding yesterday's USA Today and dancing to a song that came out last week maybe I'll beleive the POS is still alive.

[NeoCaveman]

Not just Europe

http://www.moneymorning.com/2007/08/29/this-900-million-bet-has-global-traders-talking%e2%80%a6/

[COBOL2Java]

Phone conversation from this afternoon:

Ahmed: "Mahmood! Your website's down? What happened???"
Mahmood: "I don't know! All of a sudden my server crashed, and when I rebooted all I get is a blue screen with the words "P3NED" and an image of a Skull & crossbones! What does it mean?"

[the OlLine Rebel]

Can these jerks at Fox ever get to the normal spelling - O-sama? And stop their pretentious “U-sama”/”UBL” nonsense?

[tobyhill]

I’ll ask him but most of what he yaps about is stuff way over my head. I did try to look up some of the stuff but most of what I found is worms, Trojans and viruses that attach themselves to the bios.

[jveritas]

These people have been logging on the terrorist websites with or without Osama Bin Laden video. Also the terrorists are very aware that they are being monitored. It is totally idiotic on our part to think that the terrorist are not aware that their websites are being monitored. The terrorists do not use their websites or forums to give specific information about an incoming terrorist attacks they use it to recruit terrorists and teach them how to conduct terrorist acts, that is why it must be shut down.

In fact one major terrorist website that have been shut down few times already released a statement few days ago talking about the internet war waged recently against them to shut down their websites and forums, and they admitted in their statements that the campaign to shut the websites down is hurting them.

[greyfoxx39]

Mahmood: "I don't know! All of a sudden my server crashed, and when I rebooted all I get is a blue screen with the words "P3NED" and an image of a Skull & crossbones! What does it mean?"

[cinives]

You ever hear of a denial of service attack ? Simple, really.

[tobyhill]

Of course they know they’ve been monitored but do they now think they’ve infiltrated? It seems SITE got a hold of the video before it was spread around in it’s entirety. Maybe their web hosting companies have sold them out?

[Uncle Miltie]

"Mechanisms for such a shutdown would have taken quite a lot of time and effort to put into place."

And that has to leave some fingerprints. If I were at the NSA, I'd be doing a fast trace of how all these websites got the word to shut down simultaneously.

That's actionable intelligence.

[Desco]

Unless you “computer whiz friend” is a member of the NSA or CIA and has access to such technology (in which case he’s guilty of some pretty serious violations of government policy and possibly the law by telling you) there is no publicly-known capability to do what you describe. Sounds like conspiracy theorist crap to me.

[Integrityrocks]

“...and all her fellow travelers, are so easily prepared to see millions more die”

Its just a quicker form of mass killing than the millions killed from abortions before they can take their first breath.

[beezdotcom]

Unless you “computer whiz friend” is a member of the NSA or CIA and has access to such technology (in which case he’s guilty of some pretty serious violations of government policy and possibly the law by telling you) there is no publicly-known capability to do what you describe

Wellllll....all it takes is some social engineering to convince a user to click on an executable that writes a special bootstrap loader to the NVRAM...it's hard, but not impossible.

[jveritas]

Toby

Time will tell if SITE was able to get the video through a very particular source i.e. single individual or it was posted by its entity on one of two terrorist website and SITE was able to download it. The info that I just got from a particular terrorist website that I monitored that one terrorist site called "Sunan" claimed to have the video and they may have posted it. PS: yes they know that they have been infiltrated.

[tobyhill]

I found this kind of interesting on SITE

http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications313307&Category=publications&Subcategory=0