Al-Qaeda 'Battle of Guantanamo' cyberattack a no-show
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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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The jihadists' tactics aren't mysterious. We just need help on the ground
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Some top intelligence officials say the U.S. missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.
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A former  prisoner at the U.S. Navy facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thought to have forged ties with al Qaeda since his release is leading a militant band whose members kidnapped two Chinese engineers in a lawless region of Pakistan near the Afghan border.
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No one can know for sure whether an al-Qaida loyalist had what it took to follow through on a suspected plot to bomb Hudson River train tunnels. He had no explosives and no detailed plan, and isn&#039;t believed to have visited New York, authorities said.
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Concerns grow over inadequate US military intelligence about Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan
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WASHINGTON -- A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in tribal areas of Pakistan was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
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WASHINGTON: A new study has found that it is not likely that Al Qaeda has explicit and dedicated infrastructure to recruit Pakistanis for its operations, rather it relies upon a web of informal
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Osama bin Laden purportedly said in an audio tape Tuesday that neither Zacarias Moussaoui &amp;#151; the only person convicted in the U.S. for the Sept. 11 attacks &amp;#151; nor anyone held at Guantanamo had anything to do with the al-Qaida operation.
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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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The Al-Jazeera network aired a new videotape of Osama bin Laden Friday, in which the al Qaeda leader says that in order to avoid further attacks, the United States should not attack al Qaeda.
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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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In an as-yet unauthenticated tape broadcast by Arabic language TV news network Al-Jazeera, the voice of a man claiming to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda&#39;s second in command after Osama bin Laden, has called for jihadists to undertake strikes against the
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Pakistan today denied a newspaper report the CIA has set up covert bases in the countryâs remote tribal regions to hunt for Osama bin Laden.
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A top government counterterrorist official says the new videotape of Osama bin Laden (news - bio) appears to contain no specific threat but is aimed instead at showing al-Qaida (website - news) remains active and effective.
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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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Amid the torrent of jabber in Internet chat rooms - flirting by QTpie and BoogieBoy, arguments about politics and horror flicks - are terrorists plotting their next move? The government certainly isn't discounting the possibility.