National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) March 25, 2003
'Mouthpiece of al-Qaeda' hacks Alaskan tourism Web site
By Adrian Humphreys
An organization described as the "the mouthpiece of al-Qaeda" has hijacked a Web site promoting an Alaskan fishing town, replacing book recommendations with a call for attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets because of the war in Iraq.
The vitriolic content from the Center for Islamic Studies and Research (CISR) emerged on the weekend after the group's previous site was shut down prior to the war in Iraq, reportedly by U.S. authorities, to disrupt communications between terrorist sympathizers.
The site that was originally designed as an information centre for Homer, Alaska, now urges Muslims to retaliate against the United States for the war in Iraq, provides links to gruesome photos of what appear to be civilian war casualties and provides specific tactics for fighting a campaign against superior U.S firepower.
"[America] relies in its fighting on the psychological war in view of the massive propaganda machine at its disposal as well as on intensive air bombardment," one of the few English portions of the site says.
"It does this to hide its main point of weakness, which is fear, cowardice and the absence of the spirit of fighting in the American army [w]hose soldiers fully know that their government is unjust and lying."
The site describes in detail the defences used by al-Qaeda and Taliban forces at Tora Bora during the war in Afghanistan as a way for thwarting U.S. smart bombs during the defence of Baghdad.
"Our Muslim brothers in Iraq, do not be awed by the lies America circulates about their power and their smart laser-guided bombs," it says. It also implores Iraqis to draw U.S. soldiers into street fighting, where heavy casualties might cause the American people to lose the stomach for war.
Bill Murray, spokesman for the FBI's Washington, D.C.-based Cyber Division, said the bureau was unaware of the site's location until it was contacted by the National Post.
"We first have to determine whether it is actually a hack or someone exercising their rights to free speech. If it is a hack, we will investigate it and do what we can to find out who is behind it," he said.
Neither the FBI nor the Pentagon would confirm a report that terror-friendly sites were disrupted by the government as a prelude to the assault on Iraq.
The host of the Web site, Liquid Web, in Lansing, Mich., said it was unaware of the anti-U.S. content on its server, although the company has been asked by the FBI in the past to remove material from other sites hacked by the CISR.
Matthew Terry, systems administrator, said the problem lies with people running Web sites with old versions of software with known security lapses that allow unauthorized access.
"It is like someone leaving the keys in the ignition and their car unlocked and then somebody walking by just jumping in driving away in the car," Mr. Terry said. "That kind of content is very hard to detect. I'm upset this keeps happening but I can't really read the material -- I'm not fluent in Arabic."
Josh Devon, an analyst with the SITE Institute, a terrorism research centre in Washington, D.C., called CISR the "mouthpiece of al-Qaeda" and said the site has been travelling from one unsuspecting server to another to spread its message.
"This is one of al-Qaeda's most important Web sites. It regularly issues the al-Qaeda leadership's latest communiques, exhorts individuals to violence, and disseminates other vitriolic propaganda," he said.
"The government has tried several times to shut down the Web site, but with limited success," he said.
Derotha Ferraro, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce for Homer, a coastal town of 5,000, said the association of her town with terrorists is disturbing.
"I'm not thrilled. It is impossible to believe that somebody from our town would be making it easy for this to happen. Everything here revolves around fishing -- we're the Halibut Capital of the World," she said.
Hacking into Web sites is not difficult. "There is never a short supply of people who can get into a Web site and upload whatever information they want. It is not a great technological coup," said George Smith, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a national security policy group.
Some fear terrorists might use steganography, a process of embedding hidden messages in what appears to be innocuous Internet files, to share information.
Mr. Smith said the fear of what is capable through steganography does not match technological reality.
He said the real value in such a site would be for spreading propaganda rather as an active organizational tool.
Copyright © 2003, National Post
