‘Al Qaeda’ Feared To Launch Attacks

The country of United States apprehends that terrorist network 'Al Qaeda'; a radical Muslim group, might be plotting online attacks against U.S. financial institutions. The U.S. government alerted the nation on November 30, 2006 of an Internet attack likely to target on U.S. stock market and banking Web sites. However, officials said that the threat was not confirmed and apparently posed no immediate danger.

The 'Computer Emergency Readiness Team' of U.S., belonging to the 'Department of Homeland Security' (DHS), sent out a 'situational awareness warning' to financial institutions. It said they could become targets of 'denial of service' and 'database' attacks as early as on the first week of December 2006. The alert was issued on the basis of an unconfirmed web posting. A 'Department of Homeland Security' spokesman said that the US government had no more proofs about the threat's legitimacy.

As per the original web post, these cyber attacks could be a 'give back' for the way Muslims experienced U.S.' treatment in places like Guantanamo. Their goal could be to create 'economic losses' and 'financial chaos' in U.S.

In the view of Ted Julian, vice president, marketing and strategy, Application Security, New York, academicians have largely taken up the subject of 'terrorist cyber attacks' as part of their discussion. This is besides it being an issue of organizations' active consideration.

Scott Borg, the 'director and chief economist' of the U.S. 'Cyber Consequences Unit' (CCU), a DHS team, believes that attacks on computer networks are expected to go up to full-scale calamities that could crash companies and cause immense damage to people. He points out that 'intelligence chatter' increasingly directs to criminal or terrorist plans to cause destruction of physical infrastructure such as power grids. Borg stresses that 'Al Qaeda' is gradually becoming specialist in such attacks.

The 'Securities Industry Automation Corp.,' a 'data technology subsidiary' of the 'NYSE' and 'American Stock Exchange', immediately set on the job of edging up 'Wall Streets' vulnerability. The company introduced SFTI, popularly known as 'Safety' in the industry, which behaves as a traffic police for data flow in an overloaded system.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 12/6/2006