Unix Security Guards (USG), a pro-Islamic macro hacker group, has increased its activity ten-fold in September this year to highlight the Palestinian Intifada started in September 2000 and to show solidarity with the Arab world as tensions rise in regard to the US-Iraq and Israel-Palestine issues, revealed a digital crime research by the London-based mi2g Intelligence Unit.
USG consists of five member sub-groups: rD, Inkubus, Egyptian|Fighter, hein and ShellCode, who are from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Group made 20 attacks in June followed by 27 in July and 21 in August. With rising tension in the Middle East, USG have made 207 attacks throughout September, bringing their total to 355 attacks since their inception in May 2002.
Although their main public activity was in modifying data of online systems, they said they were also involved in denial of service attacks thereby inflicting economic damage. USG also claimed to spend much of their time in protective hacking, penetrating Arab and Islamic sites without doing any damage but sending the administrator an email with details of how they were able to breach the system's security and instructions for making the system less vulnerable.
Quarter on quarter, the total of overt digital attacks doubled in 2002. There were 21,814 attacks in the third quarter, 13,434 attacks in the second quarter and 6,937 attacks in the first quarter of this year according to the SIPS database. Overt attacks are either public knowledge or known to an entity other than the attacker and the victim.
Confirming earlier predictions, September 2002 was the worst month for overt digital attacks ever since records began in 1995. The total number of attacks for September was 11,080 bringing the cumulative for the first nine months of 2002 to 42,185, already a third greater than the whole of 2001. The most attacked operating system in September was Microsoft Windows followed by Linux, BSD and Solaris. The three most active hacker groups were ISOTK, Red Eye and Fatal Error.
Out of the 110 victim countries in September, the most attacked were USA, Brazil, Denmark, UK and Germany in that order. Half of all attacks were directed at North America, a quarter on Europe and nine percent on South America. A conservative projection of overt digital attacks across the globe for 2002 now stands at 55,000. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
