Bin Laden Associate Warns of Cyberattack

Tue Nov 19 16:56:16 UTC 2002

at Tuesday, November 19, 2002 3:17 PM, sgorman1 at gmu.edu
<sgorman1 at gmu.edu> was seen to say:
> It is a great example of how well Al-Quedah manipulates the media.
> There are more ways to wreak havoc than script kiddies and DOS
> attacks.
Indeed so, but none of them require "millions of muslims"
in fact, any decent attack would be deliberately limited to one or two
attackers so as not to kick up a noticable fuss at the server until the
damage is done - particularly as they would want the damage not to be
found for weeks or months (or the site would simply restore from
backup - its not as if government sites are usually that dynamic)
if they really wanted to stage an attack by "millions of muslims" they
would be better off giving them clubs and telling them where the hosting
for xxx.gov is in the real world - smashing the server will be much
easier and require less technical knowhow than trying to do lasting
damage by hacking the thing.