Information Warfare: <b>September 4, 2005</b>

September 4, 2005

Islamic terrorists are making progress in developing cyberwar weapons. More web sites dedicated to online terrorism are showing up (and often getting shut down quickly by intelligence agency, or vigilante hackers).) Some Islamic hacker organizations have even surfaced, like the "Jaish al-Hacker al-Islami," (the Islamic Hacker's Army).

One aspect of all this that the Islamic hackers will not boast about, is the role of crime in the recent increase of terrorist hackers. Hacking has increasingly become a game for organized criminal gangs. Thats because there are so many businesses are on the web, and network software is still full of enough flaws. So criminal hackers can more easily run extortion and information theft operations. The Islamic terrorists have always used crime to raise money for their more lethal operations. With more online criminal opportunities, its only natural for more Islamic terrorists to show up. At the moment, the Islamic hackers are only talking about online terrorism. Pulling it off is not as easy as it sounds. For example, the recent release of the Zotob Internet worm was quickly traced back to two Moslem men, in Morocco and Turkey, who were arrested. The two men, had created other worms earlier, were apparently not involved with Islamic terrorism, but with criminal scams. This shows that the Islamic radicals have access to the talent needed to attempt Internet terrorism.

Crafting a worm or virus is not all that difficult, but releasing it into the wild, without getting caught, takes more skill. So the Islamic hackers will have to be confident in their abilities, if they expect to carry out online attacks, and not get caught.