Friday, February 14, 2003

a few Good ahX0rs
The Feds say "no thanks" as the AP relates in U.S. government warns 'patriot hackers' against cyber attacks on Iraqi interests:
The FBI (news - web sites)'s National Infrastructure Protection Center warned that growing tensions between the United States and Iraq could lead to an increase in global computer hacking activities on both sides.

"Regardless of the motivation, the NIPC reiterates such activity is illegal and punishable as a felony," the agency warned Wednesday on its Web site. "The U.S. government does not condone so-called 'patriot hacking' on its behalf.
These guys are just no fun at all!

Hey, how about a few nice emails featuring breast enlargers? Nope, Wired says the Feds have been there and done that:
A campaign to reach out and touch the Iraqi people through e-mail apparently hasn't been as successful as the United States had hoped, because the Iraqi government censors all e-mail coming into the country.

Over the past month, the U.S. military has periodically sent e-mail to Iraqi military and government officials urging them to protect their families by helping U.N. inspectors and turning away from Saddam Hussein.

U.S. government officials won't comment on the campaign, but according to sources in Iraq and Iraqis living in the United States, each time the e-mails are sent, Internet access all over Iraq soon suffers a "service outage." Service resumes after the U.S. military missives have been purged from inboxes.
...
"This is the first acknowledged use of e-mail as part of an offensive information operation," said William Knowles, senior analyst with C4I.org, a security and intelligence site. "I suspect it's been used in the past in countries whose infrastructure included the Internet.

"While it's a neat tool, there's only so many times it can be used before the Iraqi leadership considers it as much of a nuisance as the Nigerian 419 scam mail," Knowles added.
There's more in the article about how the average Iraqi citizen gets Internet access including:
Officially, e-mail and Net connectivity in Iraq is only available through the government-owned, heavily censored uruklink.net service.

Iraqi scholars, scientists and government officials pay $50 a year for e-mail subscriptions with uruklink, which in theory allows them private access to the Net and e-mail communications through their home or work computers.

The rest of the population gets online at one of about three dozen Internet centers across the country.

But according to sources who have lived in or who have family living in Iraq, obtaining Internet access in Iraq isn't difficult. All you need is a phone line, a government ID card and cash.

"It's the cash that gets in the way of people getting e-mail service. And the fact that Iraq is not a very computer literate land," wrote Salam, a blogger who claims to live in Baghdad.

Web-based e-mail accounts from U.S. providers are officially prohibited by U.N. sanctions, but Iraqis seem to have no problem signing up for Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.

However one connects, e-mail is neither private nor reliable in Iraq. Users expect the service to go down frequently, and assume that Iraqi officials are reading at least some of their e-mail.

According to Salam and other sources, within 15 minutes of the e-mails from the U.S. military arriving in inboxes, uruklink "went down while the contents of mailboxes were deleted."

"Everyone wants to see what was that e-mail like," Salam wrote in a recent blog entry. "Me thinks the entire Internet service will be axed soon."
Well dang! I guess I'll have to skip my plan to let 'em know about the wet burqua contests!