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Attacks no bite so we bomb?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...docId=CNG.43f69b8e9aa2bdf4b87b46d21e9df578.91
WikiLeaks backlash all bark, no bite: experts
(AFP) – 13 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Despite their martial overtones, the attacks on credit card and other websites by supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are more political protest than real cyber war, experts say.
Over the past week, the Internet has rung with a call to virtual arms by "Anonymous," a band of computer hackers that has targeted websites of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others for cutting off WikiLeaks access to funds.
"The war is on," the group has proclaimed, vowing to attack any entity with an "anti-WikiLeas agenda."
But the campaign has fallen short of a real cyber war, said James Lewis, a specialist in cybersecurity at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a Washington think tank.
"I would say that a war involves damage and destruction. This is more like a noisy political demonstration, like a mob surrounding a bank and refusing to let anyone in or out. It's not war," he said.
"For me, this is political theater, kabuki -- entertaining and perhaps influential, but much less than war."
Calling it cyberwar is "a piece of rhetoric," said Allan Friedman, research director at the Brookings Institution's technology innovation center -- especially, he added, since there are no clearly identified camps and "Anonymous" is merely a "very loose online community."
"What people call cyberwar is much more a cybermob," he said.
"The Anonymous have succeed in shaking things up but they have thus far not actually managed to do anything that has any lasting effect."
With their denial of service attacks, which paralyze targeted websites under a deluge of bogus requests to a server, hackers have only hit at companies' windows on the web, which is "a fairly easy thing to do," Friedman said.
"They'll have a first move advantage but I don't think this is sustainable. And all of the websites that have been attacked are now back online," he said.
Similar denial of service attacks originating in Russia, but even more massive in scale, struck Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008, causing temporary disruptions.
"These attacks have a political effect but I don't think they have a lot of effect on people's confidence in using their credit cards," Adam Segal, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the most recent attacks.
Visa and Mastercard have continued to conduct transactions, and people have continued making payments with credit cards.
Far more difficult to pull off would be the kind of viral attack that penetrates banking networks and brings down systems for handling financial transactions, these experts say.
"I'm not sure about the capacity of these groups. Probably some of them are quite good, they can probably cause some damage, but it's not clear to me what political purpose it would serve, given the context," Segal said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/europe/13sweden.html?src=twrhp
Sweden Launches Terror Inquiry After Stockholm Bombing
TV4, via Associated Press
Emergency services attended the scene after a car exploded in the center of Stockholm on Saturday.
By CHRISTINA ANDERSON, JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: December 12, 2010
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STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s domestic intelligence service will investigate two explosions that hit the heart of Stockholm’s central shopping district on Saturday, killing one man and injuring two other people, as “an act of terrorism,” authorities said Sunday.
Enlarge This Image
Fredrik Persson/European Pressphoto Agency
A police forensics team examined the remains of a suspected suicide bomber in central Stockholm on Saturday.
But the country’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, stopped short of connecting the bombs to an e-mail that a Swedish news organization received minutes before the blasts, which seemed to link the attacks to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan.
A car parked near the busy shopping street of Drottninggatan exploded first, shortly before 5 p.m. local time Saturday, and the wreckage of the vehicle included gas canisters, authorities said. A second blast followed minutes later, and about 200 yards away. A man’s body, with blast injuries to his abdomen, was discovered after the second explosion.
Swedish newspapers portrayed the dead man as a suicide bomber, and the newspaper Aftonbladet said on its Web site that he had been carrying pipe bombs and a backpack full of nails. But the police declined to confirm this Sunday.
Mr. Reinfeldt, speaking at a Sunday press conference, said that investigators were still working to establish links among the two explosions, the dead man and a threatening e-mail sent to the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra just prior to the explosions.
At a separate press conference Sunday, Sweden’s domestic intelligence service, Sapo, announced that it, not the regular police force, would lead the investigation as the events marked an “extraordinary situation.” A police spokesman said that police presence in Stockholm would also increase.
An editor at Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, Dan Skeppe, said the agency had received an e-mail minutes before the blasts. The e-mail was also addressed to Sweden’s security police and included a sound recording addressed to “Sweden and the Swedish people.” Mr. Skeppe said the recording cited Swedish “silence” over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad drawn by the artist Lars Vilks, criticized Sweden’s 500-soldier military contingent in northern Afghanistan and threatened attacks on Swedes.
“Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” it continued. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.”
The Stockholm blasts seemed certain to cause widespread shock in Sweden. The country has long prided itself on having created a stable and peaceful society at home, and on having avoided involvement in the upheavals that have ravaged much of the rest of Europe in modern times, including World War II.
It has previously escaped the types of bombings mounted elsewhere in Europe since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The Swedish military’s current deployment in Afghanistan, adding signals intelligence specialists to a NATO-led combat mission under American command, is a rare departure from the country’s usual pattern of avoiding involvement in military alliances.
Another major change has been the impact of heavy immigration, especially Muslims. Their growing numbers, and the furor surrounding Mr. Vilks, have contributed to a rise in tensions that have led to increased support for a right-wing anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats, which won 20 seats this summer in a general election. The party, blaming immigration for increased crime rates, has focused its ire on the Muslim population, which accounts for about 5 percent of Sweden’s 9.3 million people.
Mr. Reinfeldt, responding to a question about potential racial tensions Sunday, encouraged Swedes to “have patience.” He said that Sweden’s “openness is worth giving ourselves the time to get to the bottom of this,” and warned of jumping to the “wrong conclusions.”
There have been no official reports of a connection to al-Qaeda or any other extremist Islamic terror organization. But in an interview Saturday a former British counter-terror official, who did not want to be named discussing a current operation, said that a number of known Islamic militants have traveled to Sweden in the past two years. The account was confirmed by an American intelligence operative, who spoke of an established al-Qaeda “cell” in Sweden. Both declined to provide further details.
The recorded message demanded that Muslims in Sweden “stop sucking up and degrading yourselves” and broadened the appeal to “all mujahedeen,” or holy warriors, in Europe. “Now it’s time to attack,” it said. “Do not wait any longer. Come forth with whatever you have, even if it is a knife, and I know that you can bring more than knives. Fear no one. Do not be afraid of jail. Do not fear death.”
Mr. Skeppe said there was no indication in the e-mail what sort of an attack was planned, or when. “They didn’t mention that anything specific would happen at all,” he said.
Several Swedish news organizations described the e-mail as having been sent anonymously, but Mr. Skeppe declined to confirm that nor to say whether the e-mail named the individual or organization who sent it. The e-mail’s reference to Mr. Vilks, a 64-year-old artist and free-speech activist, pointed to the deep anger in the Muslim world over his drawings of the prophet Muhammad in 2007.
Publication of the drawings in Swedish newspapers drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim world and death threats against Mr. Vilks, who has since lived under police protection. In March this year, Colleen R. LaRose, an American who has converted to Islam and used the pseudonym JihadJane, was charged with trying to recruit Islamic terrorists to kill Mr. Vilks.
Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric associated with al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula, an offshoot of the organization based in Yemen, had named Mr. Vilks in a list of figures he approved for assassination in a publication this summer.
So....... does bomb bite?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...docId=CNG.43f69b8e9aa2bdf4b87b46d21e9df578.91
WikiLeaks backlash all bark, no bite: experts
(AFP) – 13 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Despite their martial overtones, the attacks on credit card and other websites by supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are more political protest than real cyber war, experts say.
Over the past week, the Internet has rung with a call to virtual arms by "Anonymous," a band of computer hackers that has targeted websites of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others for cutting off WikiLeaks access to funds.
"The war is on," the group has proclaimed, vowing to attack any entity with an "anti-WikiLeas agenda."
But the campaign has fallen short of a real cyber war, said James Lewis, a specialist in cybersecurity at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a Washington think tank.
"I would say that a war involves damage and destruction. This is more like a noisy political demonstration, like a mob surrounding a bank and refusing to let anyone in or out. It's not war," he said.
"For me, this is political theater, kabuki -- entertaining and perhaps influential, but much less than war."
Calling it cyberwar is "a piece of rhetoric," said Allan Friedman, research director at the Brookings Institution's technology innovation center -- especially, he added, since there are no clearly identified camps and "Anonymous" is merely a "very loose online community."
"What people call cyberwar is much more a cybermob," he said.
"The Anonymous have succeed in shaking things up but they have thus far not actually managed to do anything that has any lasting effect."
With their denial of service attacks, which paralyze targeted websites under a deluge of bogus requests to a server, hackers have only hit at companies' windows on the web, which is "a fairly easy thing to do," Friedman said.
"They'll have a first move advantage but I don't think this is sustainable. And all of the websites that have been attacked are now back online," he said.
Similar denial of service attacks originating in Russia, but even more massive in scale, struck Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008, causing temporary disruptions.
"These attacks have a political effect but I don't think they have a lot of effect on people's confidence in using their credit cards," Adam Segal, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the most recent attacks.
Visa and Mastercard have continued to conduct transactions, and people have continued making payments with credit cards.
Far more difficult to pull off would be the kind of viral attack that penetrates banking networks and brings down systems for handling financial transactions, these experts say.
"I'm not sure about the capacity of these groups. Probably some of them are quite good, they can probably cause some damage, but it's not clear to me what political purpose it would serve, given the context," Segal said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/europe/13sweden.html?src=twrhp
Sweden Launches Terror Inquiry After Stockholm Bombing
TV4, via Associated Press
Emergency services attended the scene after a car exploded in the center of Stockholm on Saturday.
By CHRISTINA ANDERSON, JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: December 12, 2010
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* Sign In to E-Mail
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Reprints
* ShareClose
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o
STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s domestic intelligence service will investigate two explosions that hit the heart of Stockholm’s central shopping district on Saturday, killing one man and injuring two other people, as “an act of terrorism,” authorities said Sunday.
Enlarge This Image
Fredrik Persson/European Pressphoto Agency
A police forensics team examined the remains of a suspected suicide bomber in central Stockholm on Saturday.
But the country’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, stopped short of connecting the bombs to an e-mail that a Swedish news organization received minutes before the blasts, which seemed to link the attacks to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan.
A car parked near the busy shopping street of Drottninggatan exploded first, shortly before 5 p.m. local time Saturday, and the wreckage of the vehicle included gas canisters, authorities said. A second blast followed minutes later, and about 200 yards away. A man’s body, with blast injuries to his abdomen, was discovered after the second explosion.
Swedish newspapers portrayed the dead man as a suicide bomber, and the newspaper Aftonbladet said on its Web site that he had been carrying pipe bombs and a backpack full of nails. But the police declined to confirm this Sunday.
Mr. Reinfeldt, speaking at a Sunday press conference, said that investigators were still working to establish links among the two explosions, the dead man and a threatening e-mail sent to the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra just prior to the explosions.
At a separate press conference Sunday, Sweden’s domestic intelligence service, Sapo, announced that it, not the regular police force, would lead the investigation as the events marked an “extraordinary situation.” A police spokesman said that police presence in Stockholm would also increase.
An editor at Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, Dan Skeppe, said the agency had received an e-mail minutes before the blasts. The e-mail was also addressed to Sweden’s security police and included a sound recording addressed to “Sweden and the Swedish people.” Mr. Skeppe said the recording cited Swedish “silence” over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad drawn by the artist Lars Vilks, criticized Sweden’s 500-soldier military contingent in northern Afghanistan and threatened attacks on Swedes.
“Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” it continued. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.”
The Stockholm blasts seemed certain to cause widespread shock in Sweden. The country has long prided itself on having created a stable and peaceful society at home, and on having avoided involvement in the upheavals that have ravaged much of the rest of Europe in modern times, including World War II.
It has previously escaped the types of bombings mounted elsewhere in Europe since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The Swedish military’s current deployment in Afghanistan, adding signals intelligence specialists to a NATO-led combat mission under American command, is a rare departure from the country’s usual pattern of avoiding involvement in military alliances.
Another major change has been the impact of heavy immigration, especially Muslims. Their growing numbers, and the furor surrounding Mr. Vilks, have contributed to a rise in tensions that have led to increased support for a right-wing anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats, which won 20 seats this summer in a general election. The party, blaming immigration for increased crime rates, has focused its ire on the Muslim population, which accounts for about 5 percent of Sweden’s 9.3 million people.
Mr. Reinfeldt, responding to a question about potential racial tensions Sunday, encouraged Swedes to “have patience.” He said that Sweden’s “openness is worth giving ourselves the time to get to the bottom of this,” and warned of jumping to the “wrong conclusions.”
There have been no official reports of a connection to al-Qaeda or any other extremist Islamic terror organization. But in an interview Saturday a former British counter-terror official, who did not want to be named discussing a current operation, said that a number of known Islamic militants have traveled to Sweden in the past two years. The account was confirmed by an American intelligence operative, who spoke of an established al-Qaeda “cell” in Sweden. Both declined to provide further details.
The recorded message demanded that Muslims in Sweden “stop sucking up and degrading yourselves” and broadened the appeal to “all mujahedeen,” or holy warriors, in Europe. “Now it’s time to attack,” it said. “Do not wait any longer. Come forth with whatever you have, even if it is a knife, and I know that you can bring more than knives. Fear no one. Do not be afraid of jail. Do not fear death.”
Mr. Skeppe said there was no indication in the e-mail what sort of an attack was planned, or when. “They didn’t mention that anything specific would happen at all,” he said.
Several Swedish news organizations described the e-mail as having been sent anonymously, but Mr. Skeppe declined to confirm that nor to say whether the e-mail named the individual or organization who sent it. The e-mail’s reference to Mr. Vilks, a 64-year-old artist and free-speech activist, pointed to the deep anger in the Muslim world over his drawings of the prophet Muhammad in 2007.
Publication of the drawings in Swedish newspapers drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim world and death threats against Mr. Vilks, who has since lived under police protection. In March this year, Colleen R. LaRose, an American who has converted to Islam and used the pseudonym JihadJane, was charged with trying to recruit Islamic terrorists to kill Mr. Vilks.
Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric associated with al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula, an offshoot of the organization based in Yemen, had named Mr. Vilks in a list of figures he approved for assassination in a publication this summer.
So....... does bomb bite?
