We’ve all seen the news coverage of recent battles in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip. The weeks-long offensive by Israel into Palestinian-controlled territory has made headlines around the world, diverting attention from a different Middle Eastern war that rages with equal ferocity. What makes this war different is that the battleground is the Internet, and the weapons are computers.
A group of Muslim Moroccan hackers calling themselves Morocco Snipers has been furiously cracking away in an effort to shut down or deface Israeli websites. At least 80 websites have been hacked so far. Websites have been shut down completely, or altered to display images and messages sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
On the other side, an Israeli cyber force called “Help Israel Win” has been recruiting cyber soldiers to kill enemy websites. Targets include websites run by or sympathetic to Hamas. The cyber recruits are issued a package of cyber weapons called “Patriot,” which basically infects their computer with malicious hacking tools, allowing their computer to be controlled remotely. The remote controllers then direct all of the computers in their cyber army to gang up on Hamas websites and knock them off of the Internet using a technique known as a Distributed Denial of Service.
The Internet is also being used as a psychological warfare tool. Islamic extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda have turned to the popular YouTube video sharing website as a way to distribute propaganda videos. In what has been called a “cyber jihad,” the social networking website Facebook is also becoming home to an increasing number of anti-Israel, pro-Islamic jihad propaganda pages.
Not to be outdone, the Israeli military has become the first national army to host its own official YouTube channel. As of this writing, the Israel Defense Forces’ channel features 45 different videos highlighting topics such as actual battleground footage, and has been viewed over two million times. Since Israel has banned foreign journalists from the Gaza Strip, many news networks have turned to this channel as a source of battle video. The channel also contains a healthy dose of anti-Hamas propaganda.
Middle Eastern cyberwar isn’t just limited to Israel vs. Islam vs. the West. After the terror attacks last November in Mumbai, anti-India and anti-Pakistan cyber warriors started going toe-to-toe on the Internet. Pakistani hackers have been defacing Indian pages on the social networking site Orkut, the second most visited website in India. The website of the Indian Eastern Railway company was also hacked, and a message placed on its home page declaring cyberwar against India. Fake websites have been created catering to young people in India. The websites appear to contain songs that can be downloaded, but the songs are actually viruses and hacking programs that infect the downloader’s computer. Over one million Indian users are said to have visited the sites and downloaded files. Indian hackers have replied by crashing Pakistani websites and targeting Pakistani computer users with virus-laden emails.
Why do you need to know about these events? Well, most American computer users seem to lead rather insulated lives on the Internet, content with a smug, “It can’t happen to me” false sense of security. Just think, “Coming soon to a computer near you.”