Al-Faloja, Inspire, and Internet Security



On July 2, 2010, the administrators of the Al-Faloja web forum warned that “enemies of Allah have stolen the account information of one of the Al-Faloja Islamic Forums administrators, and…caused havoc in the forums.” They urged forum members “out of courtesy and out of caution and concern to change” their “personal passwords”, although they “insured the forums and especially the copy that will be brought back…” In a June 9, 2010 posting on the Al-Faloja web forum, administrator Abu al-Aina’a al-Khorasani had warned of an “infiltration operation” targeting “the website of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan and the website of al-Sumood Magazine, which belongs to the Emirate.”

Oh my.. Well, it seems that all those links back to my blog were because of this huh? Or was it the other way round? I suppose the logs on the web server will tell me just how many of them had looked in there and seen all the data I had culled over time. or could it have been the mention of CAUI there in the above screenshot translation of my blog entry?

Inquiring minds want to know.. Say, uhh Abu al‐Hawraa, care to enlighten me?

Heh.

Anyway, this is an interesting turn of events because the word on the street is that other sites have been attacked. Perhaps they have? Perhaps they haven’t.. All I do know is that if you put something out there it is libel to be attacked by hackers, bots, and malware in short order. I mean what was it like 20 minutes or less for an unpatched windows system to survive without protections online last I heard? I hate to tell ya Admin, you are going to be popped any way you do it. Especially if you are dropping sites on servers without really taking care to secure them properly.

Just sayin…

Meanwhile, it seems that the Inspire magazine debacle seems to have been percolating in the background and was augmenting this feeling that they had been pwn3d.

In a July 11, 2010 online posting, an administrator of the Al‐Faloja forum asserted that Al‐Qaida’s  “dangerous” English‐language  “Inspire”  magazine  “provoked”  recent cyberattacks  on  the  forum:  “that  and  nothing  else.” He  also  asserted  that  “Inspire” magazine “is considered a unique transformation and a proactive hit in the history of the standing struggle between Kufr and faith; it even is a media martyrdom operation and I do not exaggerate in this description.” He promised impending “good news of an audio attack that will highly pain you, through one of the media establishments, so await the slap and turn the other cheek for another.”

Full text HERE

Now, their claim is that they were attacked further because of the magazine.. Even to the point that the mag was compromised by a trojan by someone out there looking to do them harm. Maybe…Maybe not. Maybe instead they infected the document themselves huh? After all, the majority of the stuff I have found out there has been created on mostly Windows Xp machines so, perhaps they got infected and just passed it on? Or maybe someone did get in the middle of the uploading process and propagated a new unclean version for all the little jihadi kiddies to download and pwn themselves huh?

😉

Maybe we will never know…

However, on that contention that your product was so revolutionary, uhh yeah, it was slick looking for a cut and paste from a 20 something and a pc in Yemmen, but revolutionary? Nah. It was pretty pedantic really and you should face facts Abu. I certainly did not see it as any kind of threat and I am sure that the government didn’t either really. The media, well, they need things to slather on about to get the ratings really so if you got play from that ok.. you got play, but anyone with a frontal lobe thought it was crap.

So Abu, you are on the defensive now huh? All this has your hackles up? Worrying that your sites, all mirrored, are compromised and your details are being harvested? Shucks, them’s the breaks. You want to have outlets like the php boards you better be prepared to get compromised now and then. I mean, its the Internet man! Everyone gets pwn3d…

Sometimes more than once…. See ya out there Abu…

CoB