[hackmeeting] Fwd: RE weird mail...

[merce en grn.es]

sera   verdad?   en  todo  caso y como siempre, mejor no fiarse ni del
gato,  si  es  que  hay alguien capaz de tamanya paranoia

M&M


########### INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FORWARDED ###########


[Widdershins] weird mail...
11/06/2002

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A systematic and well planned social engineering attack by Sharon's boys
has been going on against the online pro-Palestinian community.  I, and
many others have been subject to such attacks.  However, I have not seen
real hacking going on yet, all that is going on is mail-heard forging.  

So many mail messages appear to be sent from  activists' account.  They
have actually spammed people and put some of the activists email address
in the 'from' field, and other bunch of activists e-mail's in the return
to field.  So I have seen many innocent activists on lists accusing each
other for hacking their accounts.  I have actually had people accusing
me of hacking them!  But it was all sorted out at the end.

Believe it or not, I tend to view this as positive sign for the
pro-Palestinian community.  Whatever organization is doing this
obviously wont bother with this whole operation if they didn't consider
the online pro-Palestinian community a threat to their propaganda
machine.


Anyways, Below is an advisory from electronic intifada, talking about
this issue:


7 June 2002

ADVISORY: FAKE E-MAILS IN THE PRO-PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST COMMUNITY

In recent weeks, we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of 
e-mails sent out seemingly from the e-mail addresses of 
pro-Palestinian groups (including The Electronic Intifada) and from 
individual activists that do not originate from their purported 
sources.

Many of these e-mails have included computer viruses, racist 
sentiments, and hate.

If you receive an e-mail that contains content that does not match 
with what you are used to receiving from the group or person, chances 
are it did not originate from them. To ascertain the actual source of 
an e-mail, sign up for a free account at an online diagnosis and 
reporting service such as spamcop.net.


THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA'S POSITION ON HACKING

Attacks against websites and e-mail bombing (the practice of sending 
hundreds or thousands of messages to an account in an attempt to 
overload it) have been regular features of the online 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict for many years.

The Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000 was accompanied by a huge 
increase in website defacements and 'denial of service' attacks 
(which overload webservers so that visitors are not able to access 
them). Attacks have been carried out by people supportive of both 
sides in the conflict.

The Electronic Intifada's position on all forms of hacking has always 
been that it is anti-democratic. Hacking is an attack on the 
inalienable human right to freedom of opinion and expression.

"Pro-Palestinian" attacks against the Israeli Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs (MFA) website during the first six months of the Intifada in 
fact negatively affected the work we were doing at the time. Our 
deconstruction of the MFA's "The Current Situation in Israel - 
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" 
[http://electronicIntifada.net/forreference/israelidocs/mfafaq.html] 
was held up for a week at one point because attacks prevented us from 
accessing the site where an update of the FAQ had been posted.

A similar project relating to the Israeli Defence Forces [sic] 
website was initially postponed and ultimately abandoned because 
hackers managed to take the site off line during two critical weeks 
where we had a window of work time available. The IDF site is now 
located on an ultra secure server in the United States, hosted by 
AT&T.


THE REALITY OF ISRAELI PROPAGANDA

The irony lost on hackers, of course, is that Israel's own propaganda 
often proves ultimately to be self-defeating and deserves a wide 
audience. There are many examples of this.

As reports filtered out of massive home demolitions during Israel's 
attack on Jenin refugee camp, we wondered how it would be possible to 
get an ariel photo of the camp. Amazingly, Israel itself published 
images of the devastation 
[http://www.israel.org/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ll60] while arguing the 
bizarre angle that 'we only demolished 100 square meters of refugee 
homes', as if that was something for which Israel should be commended 
instead of investigated by a war crimes commission.

As it later transpired, the destruction was far wider than than the 
ariel photos show. Human Rights Watch's detailed map of the camp 
shows many more additional structures that were "seriously damaged" 
in areas of the camp other than what Israel declared was "the combat 
zone" in its argument citing 'military necessity' 
[http://hrw.org/press/2002/05/jeninmap0503.htm].

Israel further drew attention to itself on the 35th anniversary of 
the occupation of the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and West Bank 
including Jerusalem - 5 June 2002 - when it awarded medals of honour 
to twelve soldiers who participated in the war crimes of Jenin and 
the destruction in the old city of Nablus. The Alternative 
Information Center translated the words of one soldier from an 
engineering platoon scheduled to receive the honour, Moshe Nissim, 
who operated a bulldozer for 75 straight hours in Jenin:

"No one refused an order to take down a house. When they told me to 
destroy a house I exploited that in order to destroy a few more 
homes. On the loudspeaker [the Palestinian residents] were warned to 
get out before I came in. But I didn't give a chance to anyone. I 
didn't wait. I'm sure that people died inside of those houses. From 
my perspective we left them a football field, they should play there. 
The 100x100 was our present to the camp. Jenin will not return to be 
what it was." (Yedioth Ahronot, Friday 31 May 2002).

The IDF's shrill and self-righteous claims that Palestinians were not 
used as human shields in Jenin were similarly undermined by its own 
soldiers in the press. In the end, the truth has a strange way of 
taking care of itself.

The myths of "military necessity" and the Israeli Defence Forces 
[sic] claim of a commitment to "universal moral values based on the 
value and dignity of human life" are patently hollow to those of us 
who read human rights reports and, in particular, those of us have 
lived in the occupied territories and have seen the contempt for 
Palestinian life and property that is the hallmark of the Israeli 
occupation. No amount of spin or public relations investment or 
hacking or e-mail bombing can silence either our testimonies or the 
facts.



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