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just facts
9/4/2002 (19:50) |
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Israeli Computer Hackers Foiled, Exposed
By Michael Gillespie
For Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
9/03/02 - 1,542 words
Israeli cyber warfare professionals targeted human rights
and anti-war activists across the USA in late July and
August temporarily disrupting communications, harassing
hundreds of computer users, and annoying thousands more.
The Israeli hackers targeted Stephen 'Sami' Mashney, an
Anaheim, California, attorney active in the effort to raise
awareness of the plight of Palestinians.
'People have found an alternate way to communicate through
the Internet,' Mashney, a Palestinian-American, told the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 'and this attack
is backfiring on the hackers. Many people are being
educated.'
Mashney, who co-manages a popular pro-Palestinian e-mail
list hosted by Yahoo! logged onto his Internet accounts on
July 31 to find hundreds of e-mail messages from angry
Americans. He quickly realized that hackers had appropriated
or 'spoofed' his e-mail addresses and identity and sent out
a message titled 'Down With America' in his name. The
message named and included contact information for 16
well-known human rights activists and falsely claimed the
activists wished to be contacted by anyone desiring advice
or assistance in fomenting and carrying out anti-American,
anti-Christian, or anti-Jewish activities. In an obvious
attempt to damage Mashney's reputation, the hackers appended
his name, law office telephone number, and website address
to the spurious e-mail.
As Mashney was looking up the telephone number of the local
FBI office to report the hackers' crime, his phone rang. It
was the FBI calling, from Washington, with questions about
the forged e-mail message. Mashney later met with FBI agents
in California.
'I answered all their relevant questions,' said Mashney, who
notes that the hackers' attacks continued unabated for weeks
and expanded to include other new and innovative methods of
harassment that were used against many other activists
associated with Free Palestine and other public and private
e-mail lists.
Dr. Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the
University of Illinois College of Law, is a human rights
activist who served on the board of Amnesty International
USA. A member of Free Palestine and other activist lists,
Dr. Boyle was also targeted by Israeli hackers who sent
counterfeit e-mails in his name. Again, the hackers'
intention was to sow confusion, provoke animosity, damage a
reputation, and restrict ability to communicate. When Boyle
returned from a vacation in mid August, he found 55,000
e-mails waiting for him. Like Mashney, Boyle spent days
sorting through the messages, writing personal apologies to
those offended by the bogus e-mails, and deleting thousands
of bounced messages. Unflappable, Boyle takes it all in
stride.
'You can't keep the Irish down,' wrote Boyle in an e-mail
message to this reporter.
Israeli hackers also targeted Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate
professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. The
hackers forwarded to some 1,500 members of the Yale
community e-mails that Qumsiyeh had sent to a private list
of activists. Many of his university colleagues were
annoyed, but Qumsiyeh, too, feels that the hackers are doing
the Zionist cause more harm than good. Qumsiyeh said the
hackers' efforts have generated new networking opportunities
among activists and groups who did not know of each other's
existence before the hackers targeted them.
Monica Terazi is director of the New York office of the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Terazi's
e-mail privileges were yanked by Yahoo! for a time after
hackers 'spoofed' her e-mail address and identity to send a
message to some 80 Yahoo! groups. Terazi, like Mashney,
spoke with the FBI about the new Israeli cyber warfare
tactics, which have piqued the interest of Internet
communications professionals. For a story published August
23, Terazi wrote to Wired News reporter Noah Shachtman,
'While these e-mails are a nuisance, offensive and
intimidating, the FBI didn't find anything illegal: There
haven't been threats that rise to the level of a hate crime,
no money has been stolen, public safety has not been
endangered and, as far as we can tell, our computers have
not been hacked or 'technically intruded into' as one agent
put it.' The offensive messages are all protected by the
First Amendment, said Terazi.
By mid August, the Israeli hackers had begun to target
activists in Iowa, where it seems the Israeli hackers have
'technically intruded' into computers. It is also likely
their helpers here have forwarded addresses from private
lists to Israel. Iowa activists report that people and
organizations on their private e-mail lists: family members,
friends, acquaintances, media contacts, government
officials, interfaith relations organizations, activists,
and activist organizations suddenly found themselves
receiving tens, hundreds, or thousands of anti-Arab,
anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian 'spam' e-mails per day.
Many on private e-mail lists reported receiving anti-Arafat
cartoons and racist diatribes, along with e-mail that
aggressively connected to a web site that took control of
their computers, turned the screen white, and made it
necessary to shut down and re-start the computer. Some also
reported that their e-mail addresses had been 'spoofed' and
their on-line identities appropriated for the distribution
of racist messages.
Darrell Yeaney, a Presbyterian campus minister who retired
after serving at the University of Iowa, is active in
Friends of Sabeel, an ecumenical Christian organization that
supports the ministry of Sabeel, the center for Palestinian
Ecumenical Liberation Theology. He and his wife, Sue, now
serve as co-moderators for the Middle East Peacemaking Group
in Iowa. The Yeaneys report that the hackers appropriated
their address and sent out spurious e-mail in their names.
Ames-based activist, author, and editor Betsy Mayfield,
whose work has appeared in the Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, was busy with plans for a mid-September Des
Moines film festival, 'Boundaries: The Holy Land,' when the
hackers turned their attentions to her computer.
Several Ames women whose only association with the crisis in
the Holy Land is their commitment to the Ames Interfaith
Council (AIC) reported being shocked by the sudden
appearance of pornographic e-mail and racist diatribes on
their computer screens.
Many Iowans were targeted for harassment by the hackers, and
hundreds of others suffered varying degrees of inconvenience
because they were somehow connected to the cause of peace
and justice in the Middle East. Similar scenarios played out
in other states across the USA.
The scale of the Israeli cyber warfare campaign, the number
of targets, and the variety of techniques used, coupled with
specifically targeted intrusions calculated to provide
additional target addresses for the application of the
hackers' various forms of harassment, suggest a
sophisticated, coordinated, government-sponsored program
designed to impact directly upon the communications
abilities of the human rights and pro-Palestinian anti-war
activism communities in the USA.
When the Israeli hackers 'spoofed' the AIC's e-mail address,
they invited a response they did not expect. Because the AIC
list was hosted by Iowa State University (ISU), because the
world's first electronic digital computer was invented at
ISU in a Physics Department laboratory in the early 1940s,
and because he has represented the ISU Muslim Student's
Association on the AIC cabinet, ISU Physics Department
computer administrator Dr. Bassam Shehadeh decided to track
the hackers down.
'The hackers access the internet via an ISP called
on the West Bank,' said Shehadeh.
When did not respond to his repeated e-mail
enquiries, Shehadeh called the company, informed their
representative that Palnet facilities were being used to
interfere with communications at a state institution in the
USA, and demanded an explanation. He provided information
that enabled Palnet technicians to identify the phone number
of the customer harassing Iowans.
'Everyone here is a victim but the hackers,' said Shehadeh.
'The hackers use stolen identification to get access to
Palnet.'
Shehadeh said the contact line the hackers used for at least
one message to the AIC list address was an Israeli number in
West Jerusalem or one of the surrounding settlements. A
Palnet representative also told Shehadeh the hackers have
used several lines and methods to access Palnet's
facilities.
'Afterwards, the hackers compromise another service system
here in the USA by passing the e-mail message with Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), using HELO verb. The hackers
don't have a valid principal host but overcome that by using
a bracketed Internet Protocol number (IP address) at a
location anywhere on the web. Web hosting servers tricked
into transferring these e-mails include Digital Cube, Inc.,
Verizon DSL Network, and Iowa Online Web Access located in
Washington, Iowa,' said Shehadeh
Shehadeh and other computer professionals working in the USA
report that ISPs and companies with IP addresses are
typically very cooperative when notified that their
equipment is being misused. Most act promptly to end the
hackers' access.
Given widespread and systematic destruction of electronic
communications facilities by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
in the West Bank in recent months, the continued existence
of Palnet facilities suggests that the Israeli government
had reason to permit Palnet's continued operation and raises
questions about the ability of Palnet's owners to refuse
service to Israeli hackers or otherwise interfere with their
activities.
This particular campaign in Israel's cyber war seemed to
have been curtailed, at least temporarily, on August 29,
soon after Shehadeh tracked the hackers to the West Bank ISP
and, finally, to an Israeli phone number, while other
computer professionals in the USA, along with some of the
targeted activists themselves, quietly contacted management
representatives at various IP addresses around the globe and
notified them that their facilities were being abused.
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