http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170025.html By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 12 Sep 2001, 3:40 PM CST Although the U.S. government has yet to publicly identify suspects in Tuesday's terrorist attacks on America, some hackers are already plotting counterstrikes against Islamic Web sites, according to postings in Internet newsgroups. So far, the impact of the planned retaliatory hacking has been limited. The official Web site of the Presidential Palace of the Islamic State of Afghanistan was unreachable today, after its address was published in several Internet newsgroups. "Let the Afghan government know what you think about them harboring Bin Laden," wrote one participant in talk.guns.politics. Similarly, the homepage of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been frequently inaccessible today, despite a statement at the site from president general Pervez Musharraf condemning the attacks. The site's address was posted Tuesday to an Internet newsgroup named alt.hackers.malicious in a message entitled "Pakistani government LOVES trojans." Attempts to reach operators of the two sites, which may be under a denial of service attack, were unsuccessful. The Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, however, appeared to be fully operational today. Federal agents reportedly have taken into custody several people in three states today who may be connected to the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. But no arrests have yet been announced. A message posted to several hacking newsgroups Tuesday instructed readers to "trash this site ASAP" and provided what the poster claimed was the address of "Osama Bin Laden's Web site." The address currently redirects surfers to a page that has "exceeded its allocated data transfer" according to a message from Yahoo's Geocities free Web page service. According to a statement from the U.S. State Department, Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Awad Bin Ladin "is one of the most significant sponsors of Sunni Islamic terrorist groups." An article published today at an online news site suggested that Taleban.com, a Web site registered to an organization in Flushing, New York, was defaced by a Russian hacker in response to Tuesday's attacks. It was not immediately clear, however, when the defacement took place. The same hacker also defaced Taleban.com in March and July of this year, according to records maintained by the Alldas.de and Safemode.org defacement archives. The July defacement of Taleban.com was identical to the one on display at the site Tuesday, according to James Atkinson of the Granite Island Group, a firm specializing in technical surveillance counter measures. The operators of Taleban.com could not be reached for comment. In a statement issued today, the Computer Emergency Response Team said it is "not seeing any significant increases in incident activity on the Internet." The federally funded security information clearinghouse advised, however, that "recent events might cause people to examine the need to protect the information infrastructure." One contributor to a security mailing list offered this advice today to what he termed "patriotic script kiddies," "If you really want to do your nation a favor, lock your desktop, then go out and donate blood." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic State of Afghanistan is online at http://www.afghan.gov.af . The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is at http://www.pak.gov.pk . The Presidential Palace of the Islamic State of Afghanistan is at http://www.afghangovernment.org . - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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