FC: Was Taliban website "hack" a hoax?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

*********

From: Jonathan Byron <geodigest () telocity com>
Organization: geodigest
To: declan () well com
Subject: Taliban Website Hack - A Hoax ??
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:51:50 -0400

Recent claims that the official Taliban website was hacked should be met with
suspicion.   The page at www.taleban.com has changed frequently over the past
few days, but I have cached it a few times at: <a
href="http://64.128.176.121:80/nuke/html/article.php?sid=10&mode=&order=0";>The
Pacific Rim Weblog</a>.

Google also cached the page at an earlier date, which indicated that the site
was run by a company in India;  India has had very poor relations with the
Taliban, and it seems unlikely that they would have their official homepage
hosted there.  The DNS entry for the name of the Taliban official to contact
has that person's name consistently misspelled in a way that is not
consistent with the normal variations found when translating from Arabic to
English.   A more likely explanation is that the domain name was purchased by
anti-Taliban individuals in India, and the "hack" was faked.

Jonathan Byron


--

Jonathan Byron
Assistant Professor, Geography
Jacksonville University
Jacksonville, FL

geodigest () telocity com
jbyron () ju edu




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