Hacking May Be Impacting War

If this report is accurate, it is very serious and has all kinds of implications, including civilian casualties:

Sources have revealed to the mi2g Intelligence Unit that some of the most sophisticated hackers originating from Eastern Europe and Russia are being offered financial incentives to hijack satellite communications through covert attacks.

The objective of the plan is to broadcast propaganda material over popular TV channels promoting alternative views on the War in Iraq. Most successful covert attacks targeting financial services and government departments in the West continue to originate either from Eastern Europe or the Far East.

Some elements in Iraq are already interfering with Global Positioning System (GPS) signals through jamming and spoofing GPS transmissions to confuse the coalition forces and lead some guided bombs astray. Saddam Hussein’s troops appear to be either using GPS or Russia’s less capable Glonass satellite navigation system for their own purposes. The domestic “pizza” dish antennas used for satellite-TV reception may be hacked easily to jam GPS signals. [mi2g]

The full report will be released tomorrow. Did Iraqi hackers lead US missiles – if they were US missiles – astray, killing Iraqi civilians?

UPDATE
Ah, oops, Department of Homeland Security accidentally posts warning of Chinese hack attack on its website:

Chinese hacker groups are planning attacks on U.S.- and U.K.-based Web sites to protest the war in Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security warned in an alert that it unintentionally posted on a government Web site today.

The hackers are planning “distributed denial-of-service” attacks, which render Web sites and networks unusable by flooding them with massive amounts of traffic. They also are planning to deface selected Web sites, according to the alert, though the government said it did not know when the attacks would occur.

The Homeland Security Department said it got the information by monitoring an online meeting that the hackers held last weekend to coordinate the attacks.

The department sent the alert to government and industry officials over the weekend, but accidentally posted the link this morning on the homepage of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC). The alert was pulled early this afternoon.

Homeland Security Department spokesman David Wray said the information was not supposed to be released to the public. “This was an inadvertent release and the information — while not classified — is sensitive,” he said. [Washington Post]

I’d trust them with my life – oh wait, I have to whether I want to or not.