News > Geek > Anti-Terror Hackers Hurting More Than Helping?

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WEDNESDAY JULY 13 2005 3:00 PM

Anti-Terror Hackers Hurting More Than Helping?

Submitted by jake_lex

Edited by Shal

A group of hacker vigilantes has sprung up since 9/11, dedicated to finding, and shutting down, web sites connected to terrorist organizations, or that otherwise advocate or support terrorist attacks. The intentions of these hackers is good: they want to disrupt a system by which planning for actual terrorist attacks is carried out, a network that recruits new terrorists.

[Aaron] Weisburd is the creator of Internet Haganah, a self-proclaimed global open-source intelligence network dedicated to confronting Internet use by Islamist terrorist organizations, their supporters, enablers and apologists. In other words, hes an Internet vigilante. When terrorists emerge on the Web with beheading videos, propaganda or recruitment pitches, Weisburd--or any of his dozen, virtual colleagues around the country--move quickly to get them booted out of cyberspace. This makes Weisburd either a hero or a nuisance, depending on your point of view.

Since he started his voluntary mission shortly after the September 11 attacks, Weisburd claims to have knocked 718 Islamic extremist sites off the Web. His group either contacts the Internet Service Providers that may be unwittingly hosting sites connected to terrorist organizations or simply posts the offending URLs on Haganah.com--and trusts that their thousands of Net-savvy readers will use less civil tactics, like denial of service attack (a massive flood of Web traffic designed to overwhelm a Web site) to oust terror sites from the Web.

But like any other time someone takes it upon themselves to enforce the law for themselves, they're getting some complaints that their actions are interfering with more traditional efforts to stop terrorism.

Evan Kohlmann, a New York City-based terrorism analyst, says that the anti-terror vigilantes do more harm than good. We want these guys to surface, to get comfortable and to think they are completely safe, he says. Thats when they make mistakes. While he appreciates the freelancers patriotic fervor, he urges Internet vigilantes to weigh the benefits of moving quickly against the costs to the overall science of counter-terrorism. I understand the sentiment but they are doing damage. They are making these guys stronger. They are giving them antibodies. The FBI doesn't comment specifically on the Internet vigilantes, but it has said in the past that efforts to stop criminals should be left to the government.

That is, if you know where the sites are, you can pull IP addresses of those who visit the sites, and also monitor chats and discussions to try to glean information of planned attacks. Getting the sites you know about shut down causes other sites that we don't know about right away to spring up.

My feeling is that I fully understand the frustration these people feel when they see people praising terrorism -- and very likely making plans for more -- right out on the web. But I also see the point of the law enforcement community on this one. Sometimes, a well-intentioned bad idea does far more harm than good.

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Comments

freshprncebelair

Ellicott City, MD

June 2004

JUL 13, 2005 03:17 PM

These news stories always come up.....the news does a story on vigilante hackers who are doing something related to a major issue at the time.

And they always portray the hackers as robin hoods who break the law for good.

And then 2600 talks about how real hackers dont try to silence anyone else's voice.

Bah

elicit77

USA

October 2003

JUL 13, 2005 03:45 PM

I stand by anti-terrorist "hackers" 1000%. These sites are a large facet terrorist's voice. Terrorist supported websites don't pop up as fast as they go down. I don't think anti-terrorists "hack" the target websites for patriotism, they hack them and crash `em because they are doing what is right.
I can see where Evan Kohlman is coming from but you can't just sit back and watch as these people are planning to kill civilians. By the time the government figures out things like coded messages from the terrorist fronted websites and terrorist webcasts these terrorists will have already executed their plans. If terrorist communications are jammed in cyber-space then the only other communication left will be live non-cyber-space communications and be forced to surface in real time. In a non-cyber space communications situation, the government can glean information till their little heart's content.

akl

Sacramento, CA

February 2004

JUL 13, 2005 04:05 PM

This is pointless, the internet is even more interconnected than the rest of the world. Denial of service attacks in particular are pretty destructive to the target networks, and that's going to affect more than the target.

Being a vigilante is usefull in some circumstances, but this isn't one of them. As for this being an effective method of preventing terrorist communication, coded messages can (and will) be sent *much* more easily through free email accounts than websites. Assuming the enemy is stupid only harms us, not them.

bedukay

Endicott, NY

March 2003

JUL 13, 2005 04:56 PM

The "Hacking world" can be so ironic sometimes. A majority of the things I've read in 2600 would be extremely handy to terrorists. It's such a pity that Freedom of Speech has to clash so regularly with National Security.

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

JUL 13, 2005 05:10 PM

0rd3r_66 said:
I stand by anti-terrorist "hackers" 1000%. These sites are a large facet terrorist's voice. Terrorist supported websites don't pop up as fast as they go down. I don't think anti-terrorists "hack" the target websites for patriotism, they hack them and crash `em because they are doing what is right.
I can see where Evan Kohlman is coming from but you can't just sit back and watch as these people are planning to kill civilians. By the time the government figures out things like coded messages from the terrorist fronted websites and terrorist webcasts these terrorists will have already executed their plans. If terrorist communications are jammed in cyber-space then the only other communication left will be live non-cyber-space communications and be forced to surface in real time. In a non-cyber space communications situation, the government can glean information till their little heart's content.

Nonsense.

It's like shutting down spammers' sites. They're back up at a different address the same day the old site gets killed. The really serious problem with that is that since it's a new, unknown site, the government isn't monitoring it, and so you could potentially have hours to days of unmonitored terrorist communication. In addition to that, every time a system is hacked, the hackee is going to get a little bit better about stopping the attacks. It's true that the only truly secure system is one that is turned off, but the more they're hacked, the harder they're going to work to make it harder and harder to hack them. Like antibacterial soap.

zef

Fairborn, OH

July 2005

JUL 13, 2005 05:22 PM

After the first World Trade towers bombing, Clinton put pressure on Sudan to expell Bin Laden. He then left for Afghanistan. It was reported by US intelligence that this was a huge mistake because, while Bin Laden was in Sudan he was easily tracked and conversations were routinely tapped. But while in Afghanistan his where abouts were harder to track and communications hard to trace in realtime. So, while you would think that suppressing their free speech in this case is a good thing, it does make life harder for those that are attempting to keep an eye on them.

It might also be said that innovations come at the hands of mounting odds. Every effort to stall communication could prompt them to invent even more clever means of keeping their conversations hidden.

I don't remember who said it, but, "you can defeat a country, but you cannot defeat an idea." He was talking about the Nazis. We still have a pro-nazi contingent in the world. No doubt they are biding their time until they are strong enough to return to force.

we need a change of policy in world and economic matters, not tighter restrictions, greater snooping abilities, and larger budgets for defense and homeland secuirty.

I once saw a bumpersticker that said, "I long for the day when the military are holding bake sales to fund their new bombers, while education has a surplus to create new methods of teaching for the future." It was hard to read a stop sign, but it made a great point.

Domo_Kun

Rockford, IL

March 2005

JUL 13, 2005 08:46 PM

Why the fuck don't they do that to domestic terrorist groups and the people who support them? I would love to see PETA get kicked off the Internet...

Trahern

United Kingdom

March 2003

JUL 13, 2005 08:50 PM

Osama can probably afford a communications sattelite, and an American shuttle probably got it into space.

And that is my silly thought for ten-to-five-in-the-morning.

fountainofdreams

Batavia, IL

January 2005

JUL 13, 2005 08:53 PM

Rock_Lobster said:
Why the fuck don't they do that to domestic terrorist groups and the people who support them? I would love to see PETA get kicked off the Internet...

hell, why not just declare the democratic and green and libertarian parties terrorist organizations too?

peta is NOT a terrorist org. members of peta may break laws from time to time, and that's their own stupidity talking, but peta itself is not a terror org.

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

JUL 13, 2005 08:56 PM

ashmanonar said:

Rock_Lobster said:
Why the fuck don't they do that to domestic terrorist groups and the people who support them? I would love to see PETA get kicked off the Internet...

This is another reason why vigilantism is a bad idea. Where do you draw the line?

bedukay

Endicott, NY

March 2003

JUL 13, 2005 09:12 PM

ashmanonar said:
hell, why not just declare the democratic and green and libertarian parties terrorist organizations too?

peta is NOT a terrorist org. members of peta may break laws from time to time, and that's their own stupidity talking, but peta itself is not a terror org.

What about Earth First? Are they even still around?

akl

Sacramento, CA

February 2004

JUL 13, 2005 10:47 PM

ashmanonar said:
peta is NOT a terrorist org. members of peta may break laws from time to time, and that's their own stupidity talking, but peta itself is not a terror org.

Uh, except they have strong ties to the ALF, which firebombs places.

That's offtopic, though - irregardless, doing it either to terrorists or just people you don't like is a bad idea for the health of the internet at large.