Information Warfare: June 28, 2004

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Although al Qaeda, and other Moslem terrorist groups have been heavy users of the Internet, they have been under constant attack by anti-terrorist volunteer hackers. The anti-terrorist hackers constantly shut down the pro-terrorist web sites, either by replacing the material on the web pages, or launching denial of service (DDOS) attacks against them. All this hacker activity often causes to the service provider to decide that hosting pro-terrorism web sites is bad business, and the terrorists are told to take their web page elsewhere. The official counter-terrorism forces would like to see the volunteers back off, because the terrorist sites are apparently used for passing operational information to other terrorists. The police and intelligence would rather monitor the terrorist sites and try to obtain useful information. Each time a terrorist site is shut down, it opens up somewhere else, and the police, as well as the terrorists, have to scramble to find it. While many of the terrorist users of these sites can be notified about where the new site is by phone or letter, the police have to go looking. The police ask the anti-terrorist militia to back off, but won't try any stronger methods. The volunteer hackers keep the terrorists on the defensive, and the volunteers are quick to alert police if they see anything unusual on the terrorist web sites.

 

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