-Caveat Lector-
War of words on the Internet
The Kashmir a Paradise homepage - hackers hardly give up
By Laurence Peter at BBC Monitoring
Hacking, previously dominated by teenage computer
whizzkids, often with no
particular axe to grind, now looks set to become a
propaganda weapon.
Recent cyber-attacks on an Indian army Website and a
pro-Albanian Kosovo site
both bear the hallmarks of nationalist ideological
campaigns, and in Belarus,
hackers posted defamatory material on President Alyaksandr
Lukashenka's own
Web pages.
Strangers in Paradise
On 16 October, 1998, the Indian news agency PTI reported
that "suspected
Pakistani intelligence operatives" had "hijacked the Indian
army's only Website,
Kashmir A Paradise, which gives the Indian view on Kashmir.
The Website's guestbook, where users can leave comments,
was "full of
anti-India superlatives and four-letter adjectives," PTI
reported, describing the
attack as "part of a cyberwar launched ahead of the
Indo-Pakistani talks," which
began in Islamabad that day.
PTI quoted unnamed defence ministry officials as saying
there was an urgent need
to have an Internet policy to counter such attacks, but in
August an Indian
supreme court lawyer, Pawan Duggal, told PTI that India was
"totally
ill-equipped to tackle the onslaught of cyber crimes".
The Kashmir A Paradise site was soon back to normal, but a
week after the attack
the homepage still warned: "Desperate hacker keeps on
trying," "3 attempts in 3
days".
Revenge of the Black Hand
On 20 October, 1998, the Kosovo Information Centre (KIC),
which supports the
party of the ethnic Albanian leader, Dr Ibrahim Rugova,
reported that "hackers
claiming to be members of the Serbian terrorist
organization Crna Ruka [Black
Hand] hacked its Web page.
The hackers posted a copy of the Serbian national symbol,
and captions in
Serbian and English:
"Welcome to the Web page of the biggest liars and
killers!", and "Brother
Albanians, this coat of arms will be in your flag as long
as you exist!"
The KIC said visitors were "outraged by this hacking", the
provider in New York
was contacted to prevent further intrusions.
The pages were restored, but the hackers soon returned with
a vengeance.
"This site is hacked by Serbian Hackers Team Crna Ruka.
Long Live Great Serbia!!!", their new posting read.
Earlier, the independent Belgrade-based news agency Beta
reported that a Serb
hacker had forced a Swiss Internet provider to withdraw an
edition of the Kosovar
Albanian newspaper Glas Kosova from the Internet, by
posting anti-Kosovo
Albanian messages on the newspaper's Website.
The provider managed to contact the hacker in Poland, who
said he was a
Yugoslav student. But when he noticed he was being
monitored, he damaged the
hard disk of one of the Swiss provider's computers, Beta
reported.
New Challenge for Russian Spooks
The Russia TV channel last year reported that there were
"regular attempts by
hackers to penetrate the state authorities' computer
networks".
The head of Russia's Federal Agency for Government
Communications (FAPSI)
warned that abuse of modern communications technology could
"affect the
psychology of nations".
In neighbouring Belarus, the Website of President
Alyaksandr Lukashenka has
been repeatedly hacked into, the Russian daily
Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
On one occasion, hackers opened a new Website with an image
of Lukashenka
"which starts turning, before your very eyes, first into
Hitler, then into Stalin,
then back into Lukashenka," the paper said in July.
Race to stay ahead
Governments are now urgently trying to stay ahead of the
game as information
technology becomes ever more sophisticated and widespread.
In March, Israeli police arrested an 18-year-old
believed to be the hacker
who broke into the Pentagon's computer system.
The police had received help from the US authorities,
and several other
suspected hackers were detained for breaking into
other systems,
including that used by the Israeli parliament.
The first prosecutions were brought in Russia and
China this year
against computer hackers.
In July, investigators in Shanghai arrested a hacker
who had attacked a
network in the city, breaking into the codes and
accounts of most of its
users.
A Hong Kong-based news agency reported that the
22-year-old hacker
was a computing and mathematics graduate.
In January, a court in Sakhalin, in Russia's Far East,
put a hacker on
probation for three years for copying commercial and
confidential
information.
He was fined about $3,000, the ITAR-TASS news agency
reported.
The Polish Government, however, adopted a rather less
alarmist
position on the problem after a hacker had broken into
the database of
the Ministry of Economics.
"It saddened me to read that the hacker is now working
for some private
company", Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz told
Polish
radio.
"I would like to employ him in the government
service," he said.
BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in
Caversham in
southern England, selects and translates information from
radio, television,
press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in
more than 70
languages.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
