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Computers are now the field of another war?
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Khaled
Mamdouh, IOL Staff Writer**
CAIRO,
February 7, 2006 - In our cyber age of the 21st
century, terms like "hackers" and "crackers",
appear side by side with big-time political events around the world:
9/11/2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Iraq occupation in
March 2003, Israel's assassination of Palestinian symbol Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin and currently the raging war of the Danish cartoons depicting
Islam's Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that caused an uproar around the
Muslim world and has also fueled a full-scale cyber war.
But
has the hacking business, so to speak, always been associated with
political and cultural clashes? Is there an international law
criminalizing hacking operations? And what could be the future of the
cyber space in light of such an increasingly dangerous business called
"hacking"?
Before
attempting to seek answers for these questions, we need to get back to
the starting point, or any point that could so be called anyway.
According
to Thinkquest Web site, "..not many are really sure of who
hackers are and how they evolved. Being one of the oldest phenomena in
the arena of computers, hacking has a rich history dating as far back
as the 70s and it is still evolving today".
Connotation
Altered
As
a matter of fact, the same Web site gives us an interesting piece of
information on the historical evolution of the word "hack"
itself.
"The
first and original computer hackers emerged in the 1960s at MIT
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology). However, the word “hack”
signified a totally different meaning then. At that time, it referred
to an elegant and clever technique of doing almost anything on the
computer.
"These
“hacks” were basically computer shortcuts that made computing
tasks quicker. The good old hacking was basically exploring and
figuring out how the wired world works. Geeks who did this were called
hackers.
"The
earliest known use of the term “hacking” is from the 20 November
1963 issue of The Tech, the student paper of the MIT."
Apparently,
the current connotation of the word has nothing of the sort still
relating to it. It is significant though to trace down the various
stages the term has gone through up till this inflammatory moment.
During
the 1970s, according to the same source, the "hackers"
started using their "skills" in making free long-distance
calls and at that stage, they were called "phreakers"!
But
the jump came in the following decade.
"1980s
saw the phreakers beginning to move into the world of computer
hacking," according to Thinkquest, adding that in 1980, hacking
groups were formed.
"They
used the electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs), which were the
predecessor to Usenet newsgroups and e-mail, to share tips and keep in
contact."
In
1984, the first hacker magazine called 2600 was published. "This
magazine was published regularly and offered tips for would-be hackers
and phone phreaks. Even today, larger retail bookstores sell copies of
2600."
Two
years later, the issue of hacking was legally addressed for the first
time in the United States. "Alarmed by the larger numbers of
computer break-ins, the US government passes the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act. This made it a crime to illegally break into computer
networks. The law did not apply to juveniles."
In
1988, "Robert Morris becomes the first person to be convicted
under the new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act".
He
was punished for his Internet worm, which crashed 6,000 Net-linked
government and university computers. He was sentenced to three
years’ probation and was fined $10,000, according to the same
source.
Cyber
Espionage
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Hacking is now politically motivated.
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A
quick look at the hacking business – in the current implication of
the term – shows another interesting point; that is the dramatic
change of course of usage.
While
hacking has mostly been used, in its most dangerous forms, for
assaulting bank databases, obviously for illegal financial gains, it
has recently turned political.
According
to a Web site called "answers.com", the first cyber
espionage case to make news headlines was in 1989.
"Hackers
in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are
arrested for breaking into US government computers and selling
operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. Three of them are
turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker
commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is
publicized."
The
Web site traces down most important hacking operations and cases so
far. It is clear from the list that the majority of such hackings were
related to "stealing money".
By
the near end of the last century, specifically 1999, the trend takes a
sharp turn though. Web sites of US administration departments start
suffering dangerous hackings to "steal or damage
information", prompting former President Bill Clinton to
announces a $1.46 billion initiative to improve government computer
security.
During
that same year, the US General Accounting Office reports that hackers
attempted to break into Defense Department computer files some 250,000
times in 1995 alone. About 65 percent of the attempts were successful,
according to the report.
Rep.
Curt Weldon says Defense Department computers are under a
"coordinated, organized" attack from hackers, adding:
"You can basically say we are at war", according to
Answers.com.
Not
long time later and specifically in 2000, the biggest hacking
operation ever took place.
Assaults
in February, 2000, temporarily disabled stars of the Web such as
Yahoo, ZDNet, CNN and Amazon.com.
IOL
Hacked…Again
With
the Internet growing fast into an alternative media, as all other
traditional media outlets have their own Web sites, in addition to
media organizations – like IOL – being initiated on the Internet,
the hacking business now have other "goals".
In
a raging row like the one over the Danish cartoons, Web sites
themselves are a target of hackers or crackers.
IslamOnline.net
had to post an apology to its readers early Monday, February 6, over
not being able to go through the Web site, citing technical problems,
due to "hacking" attempts. Well, it was not the first time
IOL was hacked nor was IOL the first or last Web site to suffer from
such hi-tech clutches.
According
to IOL technical personnel, that was not the first time the Web site
suffered such attacks.
In
March 2004, the Web site was downed by a hacking process, blamed then
on suspected Israeli entities.
The
biggest Islamic Web site faces over 250 hacking attempts a day,
according to IOL technical experts.
In
the early days of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, hackers downed
Al-Jazeera Web site after the Qatar-based channel aired pictures of a
number of US soldiers captured and killed in Iraq seven days after the
start of the Anglo-American offensive.
Immediately
following the September 2001 attacks, Internet hackers have been
calling for "revenge" attacks against Muslim and Arab Web
sites.
The
current cartoon issue is a stark example of the cyber war, and online
polls are only another battlefield.
A
poll on IOL, asking voters whether "there should be limits to
freedom of expression when it comes to what is sacred in
religions", could be seen as a point in case.
The
poll went online Monday, January 30 and three days later, some 3,500
participants were registered, over 70% of them saying "yes".
On Thursday, February 2, and in a time span of almost two hours, over
2,000 participants voted "no". The result was remarkably
overturned.
"When
it was clear something was wrong, we had to conduct some technical
research and a certain IP address was traced, specifically in Denmark,
to be the source of massive voting," according to IOL technical
sources.
Politically
Motivated
Now
with all political parties, lobbying groups, NGOs and all other forms
of groupings having their own Web sites, typically used to publish
each entity's agenda, such Web sites are understandably a potential
target for activists belonging to their "enemies".
When
Ariel Sharon became Israel's Prime Minister in 2001, the Web site of
Hamas – Palestinian resistance group – was hacked and downed the
same day the hawkish Israeli leader – now in coma after a massive
stroke – assumed office.
With
this new turn of "hacking" and the global change of the
agenda of interests – following the 9/11/2001 attacks and the launch
of so-called war on terror – imposing strict penal codes
criminalizing the hacking of Web sites seems off course.
The
latest world summit on information technology – held in Tunisia in
November 2005 – witnessed heated debates on the issue of so-called
"Internet Governance", or in layman's terms "fight of
ownership" between the US on the one hand, and the poor of the
world and UN on the other.
The
issue of criminalizing hacking, however, got little, if any, portion
of the summit's attention.
And
with the speedy development of information technology, coupled with
the incredible skill of the "evil minds" – who create
viruses and worms – the uncontrolled cyber war is highly predicted
to be a decisive tool in widening the gap between world peoples,
instead of doing the exact opposite.
**
Khaled Mamdouh is an editor on IslamOnline.net’s News Desk.
He is also a radio announcer, and journalist and translator for
several Arabic magazines. You can reach him at khaledm69@hotmail.com.
