DUBAI, 15 June – Investigations into the defacing of the Gulf News Online’s website yesterday have revealed that the site was hacked from computers located in Israel.
Gulf News IT experts have traced the source of the hacking back through several sites in the United States to computers linked to Israel’s leading Internet service provider, Netvision. The hacker or hackers vandalized the Gulf News website with the message “You have been hacked...Long live Israel...You were owned by Senodyne”.
An Israeli flag was also placed on the website. Investigations are now focusing on an Israeli individual with links to the Weizmann Institute of Science with access to IBM’s Haifa Research Laboratory. The individual has an interest in the theory of cryptography, the art of writing or breaking codes.
The Gulf News website is hosted in the United States. It uses Microsoft webserver software which is regularly updated to fix known bugs utilized by hackers. It is believed that the hacker used a previously unknown bug for which Microsoft has yet to issue a fix. The attack on the website was very sophisticated and could have utilized four or more computers working in tandem. The investigations have shown that the defacing of the website was the result of a concerted attack throughout Wednesday. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to break through the website’s security earlier in the day. As soon as it became known that the website had been hacked it was closed down.
The degree of sophistication used in the attack on the website suggests that Gulf News is the latest victim of a cyber war being conducted on the Internet between Israelis and Palestinians and their supporters. On the Israeli side there are a number of organizations involved in the war. These include the wizel.com creators, a.israforce.com, SmallMistake and Hizballa. Wizel.com is a host for FloodNet attack, which reloads a targeted web page several times per minute, rendering the site inoperable. The Israeli Internet Underground or IIU, a grouping of several Israeli-based computer organizations, has also committed itself to fighting the Palestinians and their supporters in cyber space.
According to iDefense, an international private intelligence outfit monitoring hacker activities for private and public-sector clients, Israeli hackers employ a variety of tactics such as site defacements, system penetrations, misinformation campaigns and the use of viruses or Trojan horses to wage their cyber war. iDefense Chairman and CEO James Adams believes the current rash of attacks is “just a taste of things to come.”
He said he expects to see more wars like this one being waged in the future, not only by nations with armies, but by individuals with common gripes banding together against a common enemy. “Their weapon of choice, the laptop, is easily available and the ammunition, viruses and hacking programs, is free on the Internet,” Adams said. Among the sites defaced by pro-Israeli hackers is the site belonging to the Palestinian National Authority. In their turn Unity, a group of Palestinian hackers, successfully hacked into the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange last year. (GN)
