FC: AP on reporter posing as Net-terrorist duping Computerworld

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=528&e=1&cid=528&u=/ap/20030207/ap_on_hi_te/internet_hoax

   Web Magazine Retracts Virus Attack Story
   By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer

   NEW YORK - In a bizarre case of one journalist deceiving another, an
   Internet news site published -- then embarrassingly retracted -- a
   story that claimed a radical Islamic group was behind a virus-like
   attack that clogged the Internet.

   The Web site of Computerworld magazine published on Wednesday an
   article penned by journalist Dan Verton that he based on an e-mail
   interview with a person he identified as "Abu Mujahid," a member of
   Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahadeen.

   Verton wrote that "Mujahid" claimed the group, believed linked to
   Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network, had unleashed
   the destructive Jan. 25 Internet worm attack.

   A four-year staff writer for Computerworld and a former Marine
   intelligence analyst, Verton thought he had a scoop and wrote a
   splashy story that said Harkat had acknowledged releasing "the Slammer
   worm as part of a 'cyber jihad' aimed at creating fear and uncertainty
   on the Internet."

   But Mujahid was really Brian McWilliams, 43, a free-lance journalist
   in Durham, N.H., whose employers include Salon.com and Wired News.

   McWilliams said he had duped Verton because he wanted to teach
   reporters "to be more skeptical of people who claim they're involved
   in cyberterrorism."

   [...]




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