Palestinian Sites Knocked Offline By Mideast Conflict

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175980.html

By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.,
18 Apr 2002, 12:04 PM CST
 
Contrary to recent reports, Israeli Web sites have not born the brunt
of the escalating violence in the Middle East, security experts said
today.

Indeed, the pace of attacks on Israeli Web sites has slowed sharply
this year, even as numerous Palestinian government sites have been
unreachable due to the conflict in the region.
  
According to statistics maintained by defacement archive Alldas.org,
electronic vandals hit less than half as many Israeli Web sites in the
first quarter of 2002 than were altered in the last three months of
2001.

Eighteen Web sites with addresses ending in "dot-il" were attacked in
the first quarter of 2002, while 38 Israeli sites were defaced at the
close of 2001, according to Alldas records.

In a press release Monday, London-based Mi2G said Israeli sites have
been subjected to "asymmetric warfare" and that the country has been
"the biggest victim of Web defacement" in the Mideast, suffering 548
defacement since July 1999.

Yet while all of Israel's primary government sites were readily
accessible today, more than two dozen Palestinian government sites
have been unreachable for days.

Attempts to access the official site of the Palestinian National
Authority, located at http://www.pna.net and hosted by Jerusalem-based
Palnet Communications, were redirected today to a server operated by
ElectronicIntifada.net in Chicago.

ElectronicIntifada spokesman Ali Abunimah said Webmasters of many
Palestine-based sites have been disrupted by the Israeli invasion of
Palestinian towns and have configured their domain name servers (DNS)  
temporarily to redirect visitors to the U.S.-based
ElectronicIntifada.net site.

Meanwhile, the Israel Government Gateway, located at
http://www.info.gov.il , was accessible today, as was the Web home of
Israel's parliament, the Knesset, at http://www.knesset.gov.il , and
the official site of Israel's Prime Minister at http://www.pmo.gov.il


Attempts to reach 29 Web sites with Internet addresses ending in
Gov.ps, were unsuccessful today. The unreachable sites included the
Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs at http://www.mopa.gov.ps , and the
Government Computer Center at http://www.gcc.gov.ps .

A message at the ElectronicIntifada site today said operators of
Palestinian sites "are dealing with shoot-to-kill curfews, no
electricity thanks to Israeli military cut-offs of the power, and
other severe obstacles."

Alldas has recorded no defacements of sites in Palestine's "dot-ps"  
top-level domain.

Web-site defacements are a poor measure of the impact of the Middle
East conflict on Internet sites in the region, according to Brian
Martin, a security engineer with Virginia-based CACI International.

"The only value in tallying and publicizing such statistics based on
questionable research is in creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt,"  
said Martin, one of the operators of the Attrition.org security
information site.

A spokesman for Mi2G declined to comment on the slowdown in
anti-Israel defacements suggested by the Alldas data. He said Web
defacements provide "the only publicly visible, overt attacks over
time."

Abunimah said he believes defacements of Israeli sites are perpetrated
by "a very small number" of people and such attacks are not condoned
by ElectronicIntifada.

"These attacks are not something that is celebrated, advocated or even
widely discussed by people who are concerned about the Palestinian
cause. We are much more concerned with getting information out than in
trying to block Israeli sites," he said.

Alldas's list of defaced .IL sites is at
http://defaced.alldas.org/?tld=il

Mi2G is on the Web at http://www.mi2g.com

The ElectronicIntifada is at http://www.ElectronicIntifada.net



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