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| Home Front: WoT |
| Al-Qaida Still Offline for 'Technical Reasons' |
| 2008-10-20 |
| The main Web sites that normally carry messages from the al-Qaida terror group remain inoperable more than a month after they went down just ahead of the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Only a site called Hesbah and a new one named Faloja now function intermittently, more than a month later, and carry messages from Al-Qaida and its allies in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories about recent operations. Halliburton is toying with them. Al-Fajr Media Center, the extremist group's communications wing, issued a terse statement on Sept. 29 blaming the problems on "technical reasons" and denying the sites had come under a cyber attack as has been widely speculated in the media. No, no! Cerainly not! "We deny reports published by the media of the tyrants regarding the fall of some of the headquarters of these networks into the hands of the enemy," the statement said, according to the U.S-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist sites. Contributors to the forums also have worried publicly that some kind of Western cyber attack targeted the sites. One prominent jihadi poster, quoted by SITE, suggested extremists should strike back by infiltrating other, more-moderate Islamic discussion forums and flood them with extremist rhetoric to turn them into al-Qaida discussion groups. Terror analysts have long seen al-Qaida's media arm as a powerful tool for rallying the network's followers and sympathizers, churning out videos and audiotapes even though the top leadership is mostly out of touch, hiding in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The videos have grown in technical sophistication, featuring computer animations and clips from international television media. I wonder if they could do reconstructions of bin Laden speeches... Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has issued three audiotapes himself this year, the most recent in May. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #12 IT outsourced to Geek Squad... |
| Posted by: Capsu 78 2008-10-20 23:17 |
| #11 I'll bet someone's redirected their DNS ownership records. I wonder is it now a round robin to the NSA, MI6 honeypot etc. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2008-10-20 19:55 |
| #10 33yo twins, from their Mom's basement, with a blade salvaged from a Wachovia dumpster, trying to be patriotic under the slacker radar. "Shit, piss, motherfucker! It worked brother! Pass me that last slice." |
| Posted by: Last Breath Farm Resident 2008-10-20 19:21 |
| #9 We've got the server rooms; they've got the mud huts. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2008-10-20 16:42 |
| #8 Maybe they're using a different communications medium now, like phlogiston. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2008-10-20 15:31 |
| #7 Of course, none of the guys at Fort Meade had anything to do with the servers going down, no, no, no... If there had been a plan in place to do something drastic on the 7th anniversary of 9/11, and smashing the servers used by AlQaida would either delay or abort the attack, then it's a GOOD thing they crashed. And yes, Haliburton Server Solutions Division MAY have had a hand in it, if that's the "solution" agreed upon. Off-topic, a friend of mine was recruited by ITT a couple of years ago to conduct cyber-attacks against a wide variety of different types of servers, in a laboratory environment. The idea was to discover how servers were vulnerable, and to take corrective action to end or reduce the vulnerability. He's still working for them, so he must be doing something that works. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-10-20 15:13 |
| #6 A Hellfire through the main server would qualify as a technical problem. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2008-10-20 14:22 |
| #5 A devious person would bring up a honeypot server as bait for all those jihadis desperate for infidel-hating goodness. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-10-20 11:36 |
| #4 I wonder if a "rogue" JDAM was involved? |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-10-20 11:20 |
| #3 Usually this is the work of independents, as most of the professional agencies would rather observe and troll. On the other hand, agency mentality too often allows activity to continue beyond that useful purpose and ignores the need to act. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-10-20 08:29 |
| #2 not only the Chinese can do cyber atacks. Remeber we have the guy who invented the internet on our side (most of the time ) al gore |
| Posted by: chris 2008-10-20 08:06 |
| #1 Allah does not seem willing to fix this problem quickly. Does this mean that AQ is a little out of favor with Allah and He is showing his displeasure? |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-10-20 07:45 |