Cyber terrorism traced to a phone number in Israel which accessed Palnet (Paltalk?) on the West Bank

Cyber terrorism traced to a phone number in Israel which accessed Palnet (the parent company of Paltalk ? ) on the West Bank!

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/09/144911.php

More News on Israeli Zionazi Hackers
by rc Wednesday September 04, 2002 at 12:53 PM

The Zionists will apparently stop at nothing to try to thwart the
truth about apartheid, racist, anti-democratic Israel from gettting
out to the masses. In the following article from the Washington
Report on Middle East Affaiars, the dirty deeds, indeed, crimes

of Zionazis are exposed. They are targetting all pro-Palestinian
peace and justice activists in the United States. They know as
soon as the people of America find out the truth about apartheid
Israel, Israel will be forced to transform into a true democracy,
and all Palestinians, including all 4 million Palestinian refugees
will finally achieve justice and liberty.

EXPOSED

ISRAELI HACKERS TARGET MPAC AFTER MONA BAKER
CAMPAIGN SUCCESS

Soon after MPAC succeeded in a major nationwide campaign

to protect Mona Baker the Proffessor at UMIST from Zionists

who attacked her (by sending 15000 hate mails to her University

demanding she be sacked on the first day of their campaign

against her) something strange started happening at MPAC.

MPAC staff emails began to be duplicated and pro Israeli
propaganda was sent from them. The head of MPAC was

targetted first, then the head of the summer campaign and

then some of our journalists. Hundreds of emails were

sent out apparently from MPAC staff justyfing Israel and
attacking Islam.

Today we recieved this peice of intelligence highlighting

we were not the only one's the Machine was targetting:

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

omputers, 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

esponse 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 Palnet.com
on the West Bank," said Shehadeh. When Palnet.com 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.