Financial firms warned of Qaeda cyber attack
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The U.S. government warned American private financial services on Thursday of an al Qaeda call for a cyber attack against online stock trading and banking Web sites beginning on Friday, a source said.
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Three attacks in Britain come on the heels of warnings from intelligence experts about the heightened possibility of new attacks
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European intelligence experts Friday warned as the holiday approaches, threats of attacks from Islamist terror groups have increased.
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(InfoWorld) - A planned cyberattack against U.S. financial institutions by Islamic jihadists has so far failed to materialize, Internet security observers said Friday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)Â warned of the possible attack Thursday, apparently prompted by discussions earlier in the week in a jihadist discussion forum, said Adam Raisman an analyst with the SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) institute, which tracks terrorists. The attack, dubbed "the Electronic Battle of Guantanamo" by jihadists, had been scheduled to start Friday and last until the end of the month, Raisman said. It was planned in retaliation for the U.S.'s holding of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp, he said. Both Raisman and Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks Inc.'s Security Engineering and Response Team said they saw no evidence of an attack coming Friday. Arbor, which monitors the Internet backbone for distributed denial-of-service attacks, saw no new attempts to create large attacks, Nazario said. The threat, which DHS attributed to the al-Qaeda terrorist group, seems out of step with the group's past efforts to focus on physical damage instead of cyberdamage, Nazario said. "We think there's a low chance that this is ready to go," he added. Earlier Friday, DHS spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez downplayed the possible attack, saying her organization had "no information to corroborate the threat," and was sending out the alert "out of an abundance of caution." Over the past few months, jihadists had threatened similar attacks against the Vatican and Royal Air Maroc Web sites, Raisman said. By Friday afternoon, Internet research firm Netcraft Inc. had seen no downtime on the U.S. financial Web sites that it monitors, according to Rich Miller, an analyst with the company. Even if an attack were launched, it would require a certain degree of technical sophistication to succeed against major financial institutions, which are generally pretty well defended, he said. "We're talking about sites that have put a lot of security in place," he said. The U.S. Congress has required financial institutions to take strong measures to protect customer privacy since 1999, when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed, added Pam Johnston, a lawyer with the Foley & Lardner LLP law firm and former federal prosecutor focused on bank fraud. "Banks have been at the forefront of sophistication" in protecting online data, she said. While neither the Vatican nor Royal Air Maroc threats resulted in successful attacks, there have been widespread denial of service attacks in the past. In January, about 800 Danish Web sites were hacked in response to the furor over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Cybersecurity experts disagreed about whether the latest DHS warning was useful. Banks have taken several measures since the Sept. 11. 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. to secure their data, said Vivek Mehra, chief enterprise architect for global financial services at Keane Inc., an IT consulting firm. "The threat is overstated," Mehra added. "[The warning] is almost meaningless. It doesn't really change anything." But Johnston and Arbor's Nazario said DHS did the right thing by alerting financial institutions of the threat. "It gives companies a chance to ask their IT guys, 'Are we buttoned down?'" Johnston said. Â
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Members are being warned to take further precautions against al-Qaeda attacks
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  - An Internet  statement purportedly from the Saudi wing of al Qaeda has urged  guerrillas to attack oil facilities in the world's biggest  crude exporter.
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Credit card processing firm Authorize.Net said today that it was the target of a large-scale distributed denial-of-service attack that had caused disruptions for customers.
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The US financial regulator angers some of the world's largest firms by exposing links to nations associated with terror.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has warned U.S. banks and financial institutions of a threatened cyberattack by the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. The group called on allies to attack the Web sites of U.S. financial institutions in December in retaliation for the U.S. holding suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp, according to a U.S. government source. US-CERT, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out the alert Thursday, but it has "no information to collaborate the threat," said Joanna Gonzalez, a DHS spokeswoman. The alert was "really sent out of an abundance of caution," she added. Such alerts are "not uncommon," Gonzalez said, although she declined to give details about how often US-CERT issues the alerts. Asked if al-Qaeda has the ability to carry out such a threat, Gonzalez said she didn't have that information.
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Security analysts today said a warning from the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team of possible terrorist cyberattacks against U.S. financial institutions shouldn't be overblown.
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A US credit card processing firm has been hit by intermittend and large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks that have disrupted services.
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The U.S., Britain and Australia warned Thursday that terrorists may be plotting attacks in the central Philippines, the site of next week's summit of Asian leaders.
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The U.S. government warned on Thursday of a possible al Qaeda call to attack U.S. financial online services but said there was no evidence to suggest the effort could cause harm.
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Symantec report says Internet attacks for financial gain on the rise.
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InfoWorld - A small group of IT security startups are hoping to cash in on the rise of the botnet scourge as businesses -- telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers, in particular -- seek new methods for stopping the attacks.
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A new report fueled jitters of a fresh Al Qaeda attack on America. But the document also shows how little intelligence officials really know about the state of terrorist threats.
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Although this attack only affected Mexican routers contacting a Mexican bank, Symantec says the attack could spread to other countries and financial institutions.