November 28, 2006

Terrorists Attack Vatican

Cyber jihadis have attacked the Vatican website. Okay, maybe they're not your traditional terrorists, but cyberterrorism is a form of terrorism nonetheless. And the Vatican website is part of the Vatican.

I've been checking the Vatican's website all day. It hasn't been down. Kudos to the Swiss Guards of the cybersphere for doing an excellent job.

As someone who's website has been the victim of Turkish cyber jihadis attempting to do the denial of service routine, I can tell you that that this lot isn't the brightest the ummah has to offer. They are pains in the asses, though.

Update by Vinnie: Swiss Guards? Or Fathers Merrin and Karras? Or at least their cyber-counterparts...

NewsMax:

As thousands of Turks took to the streets to protest the ongoing visit of Pope Benedict XVI to their country, the Church was already dealing with another threat from angry Muslims – a cyberattack on the Vatican Web site.

An appeal to Jihadist hackers was sent out through Web forums linked to al-Qaida and was posted on two of the Web sites that publish messages from the terrorist organization.

"The leadership of the electronic Jihad has decided to undertake a grand attack against the official Vatican site following the insults by the Pope against our Prophet," the statement read in Arabic, referring to remarks the Pope made in a September 12 speech.

"With Allah's blessing, the attack will succeed thanks to the help of our brothers if we all attack simultaneously. We ask all our brothers to be present at the hour of the attack for a joint action, because they (Catholics) have struck our religion. They must be fought and deserve to be attacked and not only on their Internet site.” ...

Vatican security officials aren’t sure what the hackers seek to accomplish, but suspect they aim to create a "denial of service” for visitors to the site by flooding the Vatican servers with messages from thousands of computers controlled by hackers.

The purpose of a denial of service attack is simply to take the website offline. Attack thwarted, I'd say.

Hat tip: Dan Riehl for the e-mail.


By Rusty Shackleford, Ph.D. at November 28, 2006 06:45 PM | | l digg this