Wage Cyberwar Against Hamas, Surrender Your PC

FIGHT BACK

I'm not sure how this works or even if it's effective. But is is a way for Joe Sixpack to fight back at the Global Jihad using his home PC. One could also set up an older computer and dedicate it to running the Patriot software provided by Help Israel Win.

Check it out and consider helping Help Israel Win, and you'll not only strike a blow against Hamas, but you'll be be helping all of Western society.

FROM BLOG.WIRED.COM:

Wage Cyberwar Against Hamas, Surrender Your PC

A group of Israeli students and would-be cyberwarriors have developed a program that makes it easy for just about anyone to start pounding on pro-Hamas websites. But using this "Patriot" software, to join in the online fight, means handing over control of your computer to the Israeli hacker group.
"While you're running their program, they can do whatever they want with your computer," Mike La Pilla, manager of malicious code operations at Verisign iDefense, the electronic security firm.

The online collective "Help Israel Win" formed in late December, as the current conflict in Gaza erupted. "We couldn't join the real combat, so we decided to fight Hamas in the cyber arena," "Liri," one the group's organizers, told Danger Room.
So they created a simple program, supposedly designed to overload Hamas-friendly sites like qudsnews.net and palestine-info.info. In recent years, such online struggles have become key components in the information warfare that accompanies traditional bomb-and-bullets conflicts. Each side tries to recruit more and more people -- and more and more computers -- to help in the network assaults. Help Israel Win says that more than 8,000 people have already downloaded and installed its Patriot software. It's a small part of a larger, increasingly sophisticated propaganda fight between supporters of Israel and Hamas that's being waged over the airwaves and online.

Help Israel Win, which has websites in Hebrew, English, Spanish, French, Russian and Portugese, doesn't say much about how the program functions -- only that it "unites the computer capabilities of many people around the world. Our goal is to use this power in order to disrupt our enemy's efforts to destroy the state of Israel. The more support we get, the more efficient we are."
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Web Vandals Impress the CIA

FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:
Web Vandals Impress the CIA
January 21, 2008: The CIA has revealed that in several foreign countries, criminals have used Internet hacking to take control of power transmission facilities and used this power (to turn the lights out) to extort money from the power companies. It's interesting that the CIA did not name the countries or the power companies, or provide other details. An urban myth is suspected. The CIA revelations were made in order to speed up U.S. efforts to make American utility companies more resistant to this kind of extortion. Cyber criminals have actually been using similar extortion scams for several years now. The most public examples have been commercial web operations that were threatened with being shut down, or damaged by a penetration of the web site defenses. Many companies have increased their Internet defenses, but the criminals keep coming up with new forms of attack. The criminals operate from countries where the local police are unable, or unwilling, to help crack down on such crimes. The extorted money is transmitted to accounts in such countries, and then on to several more accounts, making it very difficult to track down.

Cyber War experts get nervous about this sort of thing because one could fight a war using the same weapons. Shutting down power plants, and other utilities, as well as other commercial sites, has real military value. This is what bombing campaigns have done for over seventy years, and you can, in theory, do it a lot faster via network connections. To prevent that, defenses must be built. At the moment, no one is really sure what effective defenses are. Meanwhile, the bad guys find out every day, which offensive weapons work.

Foreign Spies Go Local

China continues to be one of the biggest threats to America and the West. AS it continues to grow internationally, it is willing to use any and all methods to dominate global affairs.
FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:
Foreign Spies Go Local
January 8, 2008: Military intelligence experts are pondering just what Chinese hackers want with the Pennsylvania State government. On January 4th, a hacker was discovered to have gotten onto the state government web site system. All state sites were shut down until the damage could be assessed and taken care of. Turned out the hacker, who was traced back to China, was trying to plant a virus. This was believed to be just another attempt to plant a hidden program that wound infect people using state government web sites. But four different state department sites were attacked. So it was either a massive attack, a coincidence, or something else.

Attacks on federal networks, traced back to China, and definitely out to steal data, have been suffered with increasing frequency over the last two years. For a major Cyber War
attack on the United States, state government would have to be hit, along with federal networks. But this would be the first case of state sites being hacked for this, if it was part of a Chinese Cyber War effort.

Cyber War As The Ultimate Weapon

This is another aspect of the global war against the West. When it happens, (not if) chaos will likely break out till our Geeks can get it fixed. Keep your firewalls and anti-virus updated DAILY. For that matter, if you’ve got an extra computer, keep it off-line except for daily updates of firewall & software.
FROM STRATEGYPAGE,COM:
Cyber War As The Ultimate Weapon
January 5, 2008: There hasn't been a proper, all-out Cyber War yet. There have been lots of skirmishes, but nothing approaching what an all out battle, via the Internet, would be. What would the first Cyber War be like? Let's be blunt, no one really knows. But based on the cyber weapons that are known to exist, and the ones that are theoretically possible, one can come up with a rough idea. First, there are obviously three kinds of Cyber War possible. Right now, we have limited stealth operations (LSO), as Chinese, Russian, and others, use Cyber War techniques to support espionage efforts. China is the biggest practitioner, or at least they have been caught most often.

Next comes Cyber War only (CWO). This is open use of a full range of Cyber War weapons. No one has done this yet, but it's potentially less dangerous than firing missiles and unleashing tank divisions. It is believed that Russia indulged in this in 2007, when Estonia infuriated the Russians by moving a World War II statute memorializing the Soviet "liberation" of Estonia (which didn't want to be liberated by the Soviet Union.) Russia denied responsibility for the massive Cyber War assaults on Estonia, which nearly shut down the nations Internet infrastructure. Estonia accused Russia of being responsible, and tried to invoke the NATO mutual-defense pact. NATO Cyber War experts went to Estonia, and shortly thereafter the attacks stopped. Apparently Russia got the message that this sort of thing could escalate in something more conventional, and deadly.

Then we have Cyber War in support of a conventional war. Technically, we have had this sort of thing for decades. It has been called "electronic warfare" and has been around since World War II. But the development of the Internet into a major part of the planets commercial infrastructure, takes "electronic warfare" to a whole other level. Cyber War goes after strategic targets, not just the electronic weapons and communications of the combat forces.

A successful Cyber War depends on two things; means and vulnerability. The "means" are the people, tools and cyberweapons available to the attacker. The vulnerability is the extent to which the enemy economy and military use the Internet and networks in general. We don't know who has what Cyber War capabilities exactly, although China and the U.S. have openly organized Cyber War units, and both nations have lots of skilled Internet experts.

Vulnerability is another matter. The United States is the most exposed to Cyber War attack because, as a nation, we use the Internet more than any other country. That's the bad news.
The good news is that if an attacker ever tried to launch a Cyber War by assaulting the U.S., it could backfire. This risk has to be kept in mind when considering what a Cyber War might do. Recall military history. The Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 actually backfired on the Japanese, by enraging Americans and unleashing a bloodthirsty response that left Japan in ruins. The lesson of the original Pearl Harbor is, if you're going to hit someone this way, better make it count. If your opponent is bigger than you, and gets back up, you could be in some serious trouble.

The big problem with Cyber War is that there has not been a lot of experience with it. Without that, no one is really sure what will happen when someone attempts to use it at maximum strength. But unlike nuclear weapons, there is far less inhibition about going all-out with Cyber War weapons. That is the biggest danger. Cyber War is a weapon of growing might, and little restraint by those who wield it. Things are going to get a lot worse.

USAF Creates Cyber War Central

This is an absolutely necessary development in the GWOT, and as a countermeasure to foreign governments and criminals hacking our military computer networks.
FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:
USAF Creates Cyber War Central
January 3, 2008: The U.S. Air Force is building a Cyber Control System. This would be a hardware and software system that would enable the Air Force Cyberspace Command to monitor, in real time, the security state of all air force networks. If any of these networks were attacked, the Cyber Control System software would immediately alert Cyberspace Command controllers, and recommend a course of action. Think of this as a war room for Cyber War. Many people, deluged with TV and movie representations of high tech military command centers, believe such a Cyber War center already exists. It doesn't, and the air force is building it. If the Cyber Control System can prove itself, the air force hopes to run the show for all Department of Defense networks.

The Department of Defense has 11 million Internet users, five million PCs and 12,000 networks, and is the largest Internet user on the planet. All the services are scrambling to get their Cyber War defenses strengthened. The U.S. Air Force is trying to establish itself as the primary Cyber War organization in the Department of Defense. To that end, it is also advocating more offensive Cyber War. Apparently there has already been some offensive operations, but no one is giving out any details about when, how, and who the target(s) were.

The air force has long been in the lead when it comes to Cyber War operations and security. So far, the other services have not regarded this as a call to compete. Everyone is scrambling to defend their networks, and if the air force can come up with better tools, everyone is eager to make use of them. The Cyber Control System, however, is different, in that it would be air force generals calling the shots, and determining how a Cyber War should be fought. This might cause some inter-service friction, but if the air force is able to demonstrate some real skill in this area, they will probably be allowed to run the show.

The air force plans to spend $27 million on the Cyber Control System over the next two years, phasing it in as parts of it become useful.

War -- or Crime -- in Cyberspace

Austin Bay's take on global criminal/terrorist use of the internet.
FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:
War -- or Crime -- in Cyberspace
by Austin Bay
January 1, 2008
In the computer age -- and 2008 is definitely in the computer age -- the difference between an act of war and crime is often a matter of interpretation as well as degree.
Attack a nation's highways and railroads, and you've attacked transportation infrastructure. You've also committed an obvious, recognized act of war.
An electronic attack doesn't leave craters or bleeding human casualties, at least not in the same overt sense of an assault with artillery and bombs. However, the economic costs can be much larger than a classic barrage or bombing campaign.
Cyberspace has become a much busier and more dangerous place in the last 15 years. Today, entire nations rely on computer networks for communications, economic transfers and information storage. Computers and computer networks are lucrative targets for criminals. This increased economic and information reliance means that in the 21st century targeting a nation's electronic infrastructure is an act of war.
Bankers know this. So do intelligence agencies. Diplomats and political leaders must also come to grips with that reality.
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Electronic Program of Jihad

This is an assessment of the Jihadi ability to conduct cyber attacks. I must disagree with the conclusion: "The biggest problem Islamic terrorists have with creating a hacker force is the generally low education levels in those countries that are most enthusiastic about Islamic terrorism."

It’s true that poorly educated folks won't be able to mount an effective cyber attack but there are many islamists with advanced degrees who can. Recently, Osama bin Laden, a successful engineer, put out a request for those with degrees to join the Jihad. Many Jihadi caught in recent years are well educated, but so far they have put their efforts into overt acts of terror. There may well be a strategic component which will coordinate cyber attacks with physical acts of terror. I think that we can expect more, and more successful cyber attacks from the Jihadi as time goes on.

FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:
Electronic Program of Jihad
November 9, 2007: After a decade of effort, Islamic terrorists are making slow progress in developing Cyber War weapons. The latest one to appear is a program users volunteer to install on their PC, turning it into a zombie. Such a PC can be controlled by a remote operator for all manner of Cyber War tools and weapons. But this "Electronic Program of Jihad" turned out to be poorly constructed, and not yet ready for prime time.
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