Islamic radicals armed with Windows boxes and special point-and-click Al Qaeda software are planning to launch a cyber-jihad against Western e-commerce sites on November 11, according to internet security company Secure Computing. The Secret Service and DHS issued a threat notice about the looming attack Tuesday night, according to Secure Computing spokesman Rich Mullikin.
Secure Computing is warning that Al Qaeda has widely distributed easy-to-use ‘Electronic Jihad’ software over the past year, bolstering Osama Bin Laden followers’ ability to wreak havoc online.
But, that alarming news comes as a surprise to Secret Service spokeswoman Kim Bruce who told THREAT LEVEL that this was “the first we are hearing of this.” Mullikin said he would forward on the warning shortly. According to an email forwarded to THREAT LEVEL by Mullikin, a Secret Service employee named John Large sent an email to an unspecified email list with the subject line: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West. The body of the email was the full text of a short story from Debkafile, an Israel-based anti-terror news site known for sensational reports based on anonymous sources.
The Secret Service’s Bruce says the article was on the American Society for Industrial Security‘s web site and “sent to members of the Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force members just as information of what is out in the public domain. The Secret Service has no comment on the article or the validity of the article.”
Mullikin said the attacks are presumed to be Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, which shut down websites by flooding them with useless packets. The radical ‘hackers’ are presumed to be targeting large e-commerce sites, with the intent of preventing Americans from being able to shop online, according to Mullikin.
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