Al Qaeda's Script Kiddies Coordinate

Back in July, I wrote about Electronic Jihad. It's a user-friendly cyber-attack application written for and by Muslims (I know, boggles the mind) for the purpose of launching Internet attacks on specified targets. DEBKAfile, a sometimes unreliable intelligence news source, reported on October 30 that Al Queda is attempting to coordinate a November 11 cyber attack (see DEBKAfile Exclusive: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West.

Today there is official skepticism reported (see Scepticism over cyber-jihad rumours).

The skeptics are probably closer to being correct in this case. However, because of my previous story about Cyber Jihad, I'm getting increased traffic from Google searches originating from Europe and India. Here are some example referrers from the last hour:

• http:/ / www.google.de/ search?hl=de &q=%22Electronic+Jihad+2.0%22 &meta=
• http:/ / www.google.com/ search?client=opera &rls=en &q=Electronic+Jihad+2.0 &sourceid=opera &ie=utf-8 &oe=utf-8
• http:/ / www.google.com/ search?hl=en &safe=off &client=firefox-a &rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial &hs=uTc &q=%22Electronic+Jihad+2.0%22 &btnG=Search
• http:/ / www.google.de/ search?q=Electronic+Jihad+2.0 &ie=utf-8 &oe=utf-8 &aq=t &rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official &client=firefox-a
• http:/ / search.yahoo.com/ search?p=electronic+jihad+software+2.0 &ei=UTF-8 &fr=yfp-t-501-s &pstart=1 &b=21
• http:/ / www.google.de/ search?hl=de &q=+Electronic+Jihad+2.0 &btnG=Google-Suche &meta=
• http:/ / www.google.ie/ search?q=Electronic+Jihad+2.0 &meta=
• http:/ / www.google.com/ search?sourceid=navclient &ie=UTF-8 &rls=SUNA,SUNA:2006-23,SUNA:en &q=Electronic+Jihad+2%2e0

The associated IP addresses for these queries originate in Germany, Denmark, Israel, India, and France (naturally). I rarely have visits from these countries. I average around 1500 unique visits per day and most are U.S. and Canada based.

I think I'm getting this increase in traffic because there are news reports as well as some truth to the Cyber Jihad coordination. However, script kiddies make up a large portion of Internet trouble-makers and there is no shortage of Internet savvy terrorist wannabes. Like all other forms of terrorism, this is grass roots and it's growing. November 11 will probably come and go with no significant cyber attacks. The tech media will probably even cover what happened. However, technology security news rarely makes prime time MSM unless it involves massive identity theft and stolen credit card numbers like T.J. Maxx (and even then it's a sideline story).

Like the rocket attacks in Israel, a lot of small attacks is not news. I estimate that this will not be the first attack, but because it will not amount to much more than some DOS attacks against certain Web sites, the media will move on and ignore the next attack. Hell, the media hardly reports on the massive coordinated attacks originating in China.

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