Technical Difficulties
on 04/28/2006 at 01:00 PM
Skipper, from what I can find it’s our staunch allies the Saudis. Cyberjihad goes on 24-7-365, but it never makes the news. Most of it comes from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Gee, aren’t those countries are pals?
Snotty Retadrians or some other tosspot wankers who have nothing better to do with their useless little lives…
Maybe some intrepid programmer can develop an internet “cruise missile” which can seek and destroy these master baiters
You’re right, Drew. The DoS attack against us last year came from (drum roll) Palestine. True. Who knew those retards even had computers?
RP, Hosting Matters has a contract with a traffic monitoring service that poinpoints the origin of these attacks within seconds. The problem then becomes how to shut them down. Especially if the asshats are overseas in some unfriendly country. The only option is to apply filters to the routers coming in from overseas and block them out. It would be nice if we could develop a “cruise missile IP packet” that would melt their modem. Hmmmm. I may have to think on that for a while ......
Or, howzabout an organized coordinated “spam” attack… Maybe advertising Spam (in a can), pure pork
products for the discerning moooslimmm 
BMEWS hasn’t been a DOS target for a year? You’re doing something wrong
if these angry kiddies have left you alone. I say it’s time to make like
Nigel Tufnil and crank the offensive anti-moonbat posts to 11.
Dang! Great new smiley, by the way....
Duck, you’re right! I need to piss off some ragheads again it seems. Hmmmmm ... working on it ....
Squig: it wasn’t you was it? You is one feisty dame. Did you piss off some towel-head?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. With friends like the Saudis, who needs enemies?
Oooooh...cyberterrorism! I’m shaking in my shoes. Wow, the little ragheads kept me from readin’ BMEWS for a couple of hours. My life has been forever altered. I hope I can get to sleep tonight.
Shinjin, if they can bring down your favorite blog, they can bring down your favorite shopping site too. And then perhaps your online bank. Or your company’s network via it’s web portal. Would that have any impact on you?
IMO there are only two weapons in modern warfare: money and data*. And in about a billion transactions a day, money IS data. Cyberterrorism is a much bigger threat than most folks realize.
* = sure, the bombs and jets make for great TV soundbites. And boots on the ground do their thing too, God bless them everyday. And we have a big pile of nukes that will never be used. But Hamas is in the wringer but good right now, solely because of cashflow problems. All that money is digital. The awful situation in Darfur isn’t a big deal ONLY because the MSM mostly ignores it. News coverage is data too.
I hear ya, Drew. I suppose I meant a little DoS attack on a website/s is pretty lame in terms of “terrorist” action. And I agree that if you are able to successfully cripple dataflow on a large-scale basis, then yeah, cyberterrorism is going to be a real pain-in-the-ass. Seems to me though that being an efficient cyberterrorist (just like a proficient DBase Admin, for example) would require lots of continuing education to maintain one’s proficiency...and I don’t see third-world terrorists as being real big “continuing education” types. I could be wrong though.
For the most part, however, I have quite a bit of faith in the IT people who, create, maintain, and care for the major data information systems that keep our country running. That, and I try not to rely overly-much on online/computerized services to maintain my day-to-day lifestyle.
You bring up an excellent point though.
Shin, you have no idea how wrong you are. Those “script kiddies” are constantly experimenting, testing our routers, gateways and servers. To make matters worse, they do subscribe to a lot of the technical journals. The really bad part is they work in gangs. A group will form (maybe 5-7 people, all with computers and internet access). They’ll poke here and prod there, send a script out to spread a worm, huddle up, compare notes. With all information literally at our fingertips (thanks to Google) they can look over the normal IT community’s journals, scripts and notes. Most of them do it just to get a perverse kick. Some are actual cyberterrorists with state support (I won’t mention any names but there is a certain large country just West of Taiwan that seems to be getting better and better every day at attempts to break into our military and government servers).
It is a full-time task for DBA’s, SysAdmins, Network specialists to constantly monitor for unusual activity and block malicious activity. We’re always on the defensive. To make matters worse, 70% of our security problems, crashes, worms, viruses and just plain breakdowns are caused by users IN HOUSE - usually some stupid prick over in HR who is mad at somebody.
Yeah, I don’t claim to be an expert. Last I knew most of the script kiddies were here in the U.S. and around the Netherlands. Shows you how much I know and how “out of the loop” I am! Personally, I think our country is becoming WAY too dependent on computer use...I’m the type of guy that still prefers to pay cash, like to sometimes pay my bills in person, and make transactions in a face-to-face manner.
Still have a hard time conjuring up the image of some towelhead in Iran, Iraq, or Palestine “brushing up” on his coding skills. Elsewhere, maybe…
