Online War Rages in the Middle East, As Al Qaeda Websites Go Dark

Americans may have been waging electronic war via robot this past week, but we aren’t the only ones fighting dirty online: as the Post reported on Saturday, several of the main websites used by Al Qaeda to spread information have been down since mid-September despite all efforts to bring them back up. No one’s saying who’s behind it, but do note the double-edged sword of e-warfare — with their sites dead, the bad guys have a much harder time distributing videos, promoting ideology and recruiting followers, but Western intelligence agencies also lose a way of seeing into their enemy’s mind.

The Post article also describes in some detail a separate online war raging in the Middle East, this one between Sunnis and Shi’ites. Casualties include hundreds of websites hacked down in the prime of life, plus the dignity of a number of religious leaders — far less destructive than some other uses of the ‘net in sectarian war in Iraq in darker days past.

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Written by
Colin Delany
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