Cyberjihad

Michelle Malkin noted last Wednesday that her blog had been the target of a denial of service attack by foreign hackers angry with her stance on the Mohammed cartoons.  Today, it seems the e-hadis even managed to down her site for a while.

Michelle reports she has contacted the FBI about the incident and meanwhile, she can be read at Pajamas Media.

Relatedly, the Tampa Tribune reported earlier this week that tech-savvy terrorists are burrowing their way ever deeper into the bowels of cyberspace, increasingly resorting to internet fraud and online identity theft as means to finance global jihad.

Cybercrime is safer and easier than selling drugs, dealing in black market diamonds or robbing banks, [Cybirth's Tom Kellerman] said.

"In the underground and in chat rooms, these people are sharing information," Kellerman said. "The Internet is the wild, wild West. There is a community that shares tricks of the trade very freely."

The Internet is "almost like a giant arms bazaar," said Kellerman, where users can download weapons to hack into financial institutions.  "In this unregulated and wide-open space, they are facilitating the financing of terrorist acts," he said.
...
"A lot of people don't realize that until we build better castles and control cyberspace in a better fashion, we are not going to defeat terrorists' financing," he said. "The lack of security contributes to cybercrime, which contributes to terrorism. There is a direct link."

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Update:  Michelle updates: "Confirmed DoS attack, with most of the IP addresses belonging to TurkTelecom. Tech people say the attack is shifting to different source addresses."

This is obviously no fun and quite unfair for Michelle and I hope her vigilance leads to the authorities closing in on some of the cyberscum.  But in an abstract way, it's also quite exciting.  Very cloak and dagger.  And the baddies are the type to actually wear cloaks and use daggers.  Thankfully, in this case it's only botnets and ping floods.

Update II:  Back in business.  With a vengeance.  And a highly definitive update on the status of "Portgate".