Israel's Seminar on Cyberwar

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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41048,00.html

by Tania Hershman
11:20 a.m. Jan. 10, 2001 PST

BEER SHEVA, Israel -- Cyberterrorism has evolved into more than just
kiddie hackers and the odd denial-of-service attack. It's a phenomenon
that can affect the course of a conflict and the minds of the public
-- and must be addressed, say the organizers of the "Battle of the
Servers, Battle of the Hearts" symposium to be held on Thursday.

"The aim of the symposium is to illuminate a relatively unexplored and
unresearched dimension of the new media and cybermedia, how they are
applied in the context of real war, how they compare with virtual war
games, what really happens in virtual wars, are they really that
important, and other implications," says symposium organizer Dov
Shinar, a professor at Ben Gurion University in the southern Israeli
town of Beer Sheva, and the head of the university's Hubert Burda
Center for Innovative Communication.

It's not only the Israelis and the Palestinians who have taken their
battles into cyberspace. Cyberterrorism is playing a part in conflicts
around the world, from the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo to enmity
between China and Taiwan, India and Pakistan. The symposium will
address the phenomenon in general, as well as the Middle Eastern
angle.

Shinar's "other implications" may be cultural or religious, he says,
such as the repercussions when Jewish hackers add links to
pornographic material to the Palestinian Hamas site. "Are the
attackers aware of the insult inflicted on religious (though certainly
not necessarily pious) Hamasniks?" he asks.

Speakers include members of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset), and
representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli ISP
Netvision, and the Israeli Defense Forces, all of which have suffered
cyberterrorist attacks that have brought down sites -- in some cases
for several days when content was not simply altered but deleted.

The Israeli-Palestinian cyberwar, while not be as old as the
non-virtual enmity between the two sides, only adds to the
difficulties of those attempting to broker a peace deal when
hostilities don't appear to be decreasing.

At a one-day conference on cyberterrorism held in Jerusalem in
December, organized jointly by the Anti-Defamation League and the
Israel-based International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism,
Israel Radio's Internet correspondent said that he never planned on
being a "war reporter," but this is what he has become.

Flying in from abroad to provide a wider perspective at Thursday's
symposium are Bruce Williams of the University of Illinois, whose
field is the use of new technologies by American extremist groups, and
Michael Dahan of the University of Cincinnati, the founder of the
Middle East Virtual Community (MEViC).

"As a founder of MEViC, and one of the few political scientists doing
Internet research in Israel and abroad, I naturally believe that the
Internet has the potential for facilitating and communication and
cooperation within the region," says Dahan.

"MEViC ... is dedicated to opening up lines of communication and
collaboration among the region's academics and intellectuals, as well
as the dissemination of research conducted by residents of the
region."

With the current situation, the Internet may be the only place where
such collaboration could take place. Dahan's Palestinian co-founder at
MEViC, Sam Bahour, was asked to the symposium, but will not be able to
attend due to the current closure of the Palestinian territories as
violence continues.

"We did invite Palestinians, through the connections Mike Dahan has
from his MEViC network," says Dov Shinar. "Unfortunately, some of them
are too scared to participate, even virtually, and we will have to
wait for better times. But we do have the agreement of a virtual
participant from an Arab country (sound only, anonymously, for obvious
reasons), who is ready to express some opinions from 'the other
side.'"

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