Sharp increase in politically-motivated attacks - hacking for Allah:

Pro-Islamic hackers are on the frontline of a potential new cyber war after the end of a cease-fire by "hacktivists" and virus designers that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States, Internet experts say.

Pro-Islamic hackers are escalating attacks against countries backing the U.S. war on terror and its campaign against Iraq, while the "Bugbear" worm and last week's strike on the Internet backbone signal that cyber villains are again on the prowl.

London-based computer security firm mi2g said on Tuesday that October had already qualified as the worst month for overt digital attacks since its records began in 1995, with an estimated 16,559 attacks carried out on systems and Web Sites.

...."We have noticed that more and more Islamic interest hacking groups are beginning to rally under a common anti-U.S., UK, Australia, anti-India and anti-Israeli agenda," it said.


According to the zone-H database, an independent site which monitors hacker activity, politically motivated Web Site defacements make up around 11 percent of the total.

....Of the hacking groups active in October, three were pro-Islamic, according to mi2g.

One of them is the "UNIX (news - web sites) Security Guards" (USG), a "macro" hacking group formed in May this year and believed to be composed of other smaller entities ranging from "EgyptianFighter," to hackers from Muslim former Soviet republics and Morocco.

USG increased the number of attacks it carried out in September tenfold to 207 from 21 in August.

By October 27, USG boasted 1,511 attacks for that month alone, mi2g said. The zone-H database notes that most of USG's attacks involve mass defacements — carried out through cracking virtual hosters supporting dozens of Web Sites.

The other active groups are "FBH," or "Federal Bureau of Hackers," thought to be based in Pakistan, and "TheBuGz," also believed to be mainly Pakistani.

On hundreds of U.S., British and other Web Sites defaced by data attacks, the groups have placed messages demanding "freedom" for the Palestinians and opposing a war in Iraq.

"USA I think that you are all about to be some war criminals. UK you are a slave to USA," USG wrote on one site.

"Hey, wanna know what America and UK do 2 Iraqi kids? Take a look...they bomb them," FBH wrote on a Virgin mobile telephone ring tone download site recently.

The rise in pro-Islamic hacking coincides with last week's unprecedented "distributed denial of service" attack on nine of the 13 root DNS servers that form the Internet's spine.

Washington has downplayed the likelihood of "cyberterrorism."

But experts said, whoever was responsible, it highlighted the vulnerability of infrastructure to "Command and Control" intrusions or reconnaissance probes that could affect power transmission, nuclear plants, water storage or communications.

"In recent months, information of this type has been ferreted via the Internet. This has been traced back to IP addresses in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and Indonesia," mi2g said.

Just because their ideology is primitive doesn't mean their methods are. I am not sure why Washington has "downplayed the likelihood of 'cyberterrorism'": an attack is an attack.