back to article Hacktivist tool targets Hamas

Israeli cyberactivists are inviting pro-Israeli surfers to install a tool that attacks websites associated with Hamas. This "Patriot" tool effectively turns the computers of sympathisers of the Israeli cause into zombies - albeit willing, complicit ones - in the control of Israeli hackers. The hackers are working under the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    goodness me

    Even the tech reporting on the middle east is horrendously biased. It appears that being a "cyberactivists" or a "hacker sympathetic to the Palestinian cause" is based on the same credentials as whether you have put in place a "news blackout" or are "trying to hide your (genocide/war crimes/humanitarian crises) from the international community".

    Perhaps you should have started the article by saying "I'm not a racists but..."

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    morons

    yeah right, just extend your bloody war right into cyper-space. im sure that will make the web a safer place. retards dammit.

  3. Sajjad Syed
    Thumb Down

    Hmmmm

    Apparently the computers are not the only ones being turned into mindless zombies.

  4. Peter Thompson

    Well it ain't working

    Both sites mentioned are accessible.

  5. Arnold Lieberman

    DDos vs. rockets

    I'm sure we're all looking forward to the day when all wars will be fought exclusively online. Anyway, sounds like a great concept for a book...

  6. Mark Sadler
    Paris Hilton

    Lie back and think of Israel

    Click here to be shafted in the name of your country!

    My god, this is a brilliant way of building a bot net... who needs iframes or xp antivirus pro!!!

    I think i may start some random 'organizations' of my own;

    1) Anti-terrorism UK :

    Help us fight terrorists by installing our terrorist attack application. When you install this program you will be joining the United Kingdom in the fight against terrorists.

    2) Lower fuel prices for UK residents:

    Install our application to send a request to the government to lower fuel prices

    Hmmm. Its gonna be a lonnnng friday night.

    Paris coz she's as dumb as the people who have installed to app

  7. David Webb
    Paris Hilton

    Irony...

    Wouldn't it be real irony if "Help Isreal Win" was really a Hamas project under disguise, and is using all the idiots who downloaded it to help Hamas win? Now that would be irony!

    Paris, because she's too intelligent to get caught up in such trivial matters.

  8. alain williams Silver badge

    Illegal in the UK

    The use/installation of such a program on a machine in the UK would be illegal, even if the machine was your own. This is because it would be attempting to disrupt other computers.

    I trust that the police will prosecute anyone who they find has installed this.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Silly and self defeating

    You knock down a website, everyone immediately wonders what information you're trying to hide! What secret is so shocking that you had to prevent it's disclosure?

    Plus the most damaging things come from the Israel IDF propaganda unit. For example this YouTube clip they released as justification for bombing the UN school.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmXXUOs27lI

    It shows someone in the grounds, he launches a mortar, he then ESCAPES TO THE STREET. Israel then calls up an attack on the school.... but it show they knew he was NOT AT the school, yet the bombed it anyway. Such punishment bombings might go down well with hardliners in Israel, but it's shocking to normal people. It's also clear evidence of a war crime.

    Targeting civilians is a war crime, and they released the evidence of their own guilt! How stupid is that?

  10. Thomas Baker
    Stop

    StopTheWar website is having trouble too.

    May be because of popularity, may be not.

    May well be unrelated but it's very very slow and it was down completely for five minutes a few minutes ago. I'm not saying it's anything to do with this article but it is a little odd on a Friday afternoon.

    Come on people, rally at 12:30 - tomorrow - Saturday 10/1/09 - Speaker's Corner - Hyde Park - London to protest against the massacre of Palestinians. There were approx 50,000 people last week, lets double that this week and join in solidarity around the world against this murder. What else are you going to do? Watch telly? Don't you feel outraged at this government about something? About this? Show your anger at all the crap that's been happening over the last few years, tell your friends, tell your family, the UK government could do a lot more about this situation to at least bring to a ceasefire if not find a solution.

    Don't just sit online, posting on forums, get off your arse and get down to London tomorrow and bring your shouting voices.

    And to all those who're gonna stick up for Israel, do a CIA search for Israel and then Gaza and/or Palestine. Look at weapons, army, navy, airforce, etc. It's not what you could say is a fair fight/war.

    Currently about 760 dead palestinians and 3,000+ injured vs 4 Israelis dead, maybe a handful more now. If Israel wants to retaliate, why not throw some crappy rockets into fields and poorly populated outskirts just shy of Gaza and occasionally hit someone, not this outright massacre.

    I want a peaceful solution ultimately and I don't want anyone to die on EITHER side but this has gone beyond wrong, beyond tit-for-tat, beyond retribution, this is a massacre.

    Odd that pro-Israelis want to silence pro-Palestinian press, I'm glad that doesn't happen to the media in the West...cough.

  11. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: goodness me

    To be fair, AC, it has been proven that no one can ever say anything about conflict in the Middle East without being bitchslapped by someone for some perceived indelicate statement or careless turn of phrase. It's quite literally impossible.

    Besides, being sort of Jewish I find your remarks anti-semitic in the extreme I'M JOKING I'M JOKING THAT WAS A JOKE.

  12. Patrick O'Reilly
    Black Helicopters

    Palestinian Servers

    And I'm sure the UPS of the Palestinian based servers haven't already died after more than 2 weeks of agression.

    Caution: American hardware in the hands of terrorists.

  13. blackworx
    Thumb Up

    @ Arnold Lieberman

    Hear, hear!

    "I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals."

    Milo Minderbinder

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    anti-smiteism

    Careful there, S - or a litany of humourless support technicians will be on your ass; or even my ass, for daring to suggest that my joking about your joking isn't really the sort of thing that should be joked about.

    PS. 'Sort of'? Is there some sort of grade scale for Jewishness?

  15. Dane Pack

    @Gerhardt

    "'Sort of'? Is there some sort of grade scale for Jewishness?"

    It's all to do with how much gold you have, I think.

    It would be interesting to alter the code to DDoS another IP. Say, the IP of the controllers of the botnet.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poundage math

    Well lets see, today's score is Israel: 2* n * 800lbs + 2 * n *400 bombs per mission (i.e. their bombers each carry 2x 800lb bombs and 2 x400 lb bombs). So 2400lbs per bomber.

    And Palestinians, 15 rockets, say 1 lb of explosive in each, 15 lbs.

    And my November the 5th fireworks show? 2lbs of fireworks.

    There's no excuse for this, you need to get Olmert or Perez up on war crime charges, they can explain their choices to the war crimes judge instead of 'Joe the Plumber' in Israel. If they're right they can explain it to the judge:

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032257.html

    Europe is the biggest trading block in the world, bigger than pre-bubble US, bigger than China. It's time it we stopped pissing around and started flexing muscles.

  17. Elmer Phud

    Famous last words

    "A Help Israel Win representative conceded to Wired that "the Patriot code could be used as a Trojan. However, it is not used as such, and will never be." "

    Oh, how we laughed, even better if it ends up being used against them.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Poundage math

    Quite right, sir. Comparing casualties is easy enough, 800 Palestinian, 30% of which were children, approx, versus 14, 13 of which were IDF soldiers, 3 of which were shelled by their own side (obviously this was a mistakle as the intention seems to be to shell palestinian schoolchildren).

    As if shelling the most population dense area in the world, 50% of which are children, is justifiable in the first place.

    Time for SA apartheid type sanctions, as per:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/naomi-klein-boycott-israel

    Unfortunately, as in the article the EU have just *increased* trade with Israel. Sheesh.

  19. rixt
    Coat

    @Sajjad Syed

    Are you referring, perhaps, to the "mindless zombies" that wear 10 or 20 kilograms of high explosive and then go forth into public places to detonate themselves?

    I thought not...

    Mine is not the one with the explosive lining.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    ultimately it is a matter of numbers

    assuming the same % of militants on both sides, and even factoring for an higher income and better access to high tech from the pro-israeli side - the pro-palestinian hacker will outnumber pro-israeli one, which should have remembered to the authors of this utility that one should never raise an army to fight a losing battle.

  21. Player_16
    Dead Vulture

    Off with their COMPUTERS...!

    ...I mean HEADS !!

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