Storm Track Infiltration: The Next Phase of Cyber Jihad

The Jamestown Foundation illustrates a new and more organized version of electronic jihad. Hat tip to MetaSecurity.

The name of the article from the Jamestown Foundation is ‘Forum Users Improve Electronic Jihad Technology’.

A previous issue of Terrorism Focus exposed a jihadi website dedicated solely to cyber attacks against websites deemed anti-Islamic (Terrorism Focus, October 3, 2006). The members of http://al-jinan.org have targeted websites critical of Islam and Islamic rituals... The website distributes a program called Electronic Jihad that assists in overwhelming the servers of certain websites, thereby taking the websites offline, at least temporarily.

Unlike the first campaign of electronic jihad where participants did not have prior knowledge of the websites that they were attacking until they activated the Electronic Jihad software, the updated main page of al-jinan.org carries domain names of websites to be targeted in coming cyber attacks. Also, the Electronic Jihad software program 1.5 (silver version) has been updated to version 2.0. The new version of the software is easier to use than the old version because, after a few seconds of activation, it updates the targets automatically and is compatible with different internet connection speeds and capable of using different proxies to override government website blocking technology. The new version of Electronic Jihad sets up an account name and password with al-jinan.org for every user. The account registers the number of hours the user spends attacking targets and every two weeks to a month the names of those who scored the highest are posted. Currently, the highest score is claimed by a user nicknamed “George Bush” who spent 4,211.50 hours, or 70 full days, hacking anti-Islamic websites. Other users spent hundreds of hours running the program.

In the past, different jihadi groups practiced cyber attacks on anti-Islamic websites, but they were never able to sustain a long, organized campaign. The new electronic jihad website, al-jinan.org, is not only operating continuously, but it is developing new techniques to enhance the technology and methods of promoting electronic jihad. With the spreading use of the internet in the Arab and Islamic world, the number of users engaged in some form of electronic jihad is likely to increase substantially.

Bloggers – forewarned is forearmed.

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