Gaza: secondary war being fought on the internet
technology.timesonline.co.uk
 As fighting rages in the Gaza Strip an unprecedented 'virtual war' is being joined in cyberspace.
A furious public information battle is taking place on sites ranging from YouTube to Facebook between the Israeli state and Hamas.
It is part of an attempt by Israel's political leaders to use the internet to spread their message and has seen the country's Army, the IDF, becoming
the first ever national force to set up their own YouTube channel.
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The Hamas web operation has also sprung into action online. The group has relied on shocking images of civilian casualties taken by local media
workers to rally people to its cause. The images have also been placed on Islamist websites, along with messages calling for Israel's destruction.
Hamas-supporting hackers have launched their own guerrilla conflict, targeting Israeli-run websites of all descriptions with around 300 reportedly
defaced or taken offline in the first weekend of the conflict alone.
Nevertheless Hamas has produced nothing to rival the organisation and sophistication of Israel's PR war. Explaining the focus on information, Israeli
military spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovich said: "The blogosphere and new media are another war zone and we have to be relevant there."
Analysing the online blitz, Israel's media says the country's focus on using the internet to put across its side of the story can largely be explained
by two factors.
It is claimed that, during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel's inability to put across its 'party line' contributed to the immediate pressure it faced to
abandon its operation.
It is also felt that Israel is particularly keen to use the internet as an alternative to more traditional sit-down interviews with international
television stations and media outlets because many mainstream stations are slated as being unsympathetic.
Declaring that Israel was winning its online PR war, the English-language daily The Jerusalem Post said that its presence both online and in the
international media had left Israel with vital breathing space in the international arena.
Even here at ATS battles are being fought. However, it's good that the parties here seemed to have reached a truce 
I know that a couple of days ago the site of Israel's newspaper Haaretz was hacked for some time, and as you can see both parties (Israel and Hamas)
are heavily engaged in PR propaganda wars.
Back in 2006 I was rather amazed when I first read about Israel's cyber army:
Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers
WHILE Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab
propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with
hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts
them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of
different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
technology.timesonline.co.uk
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It is a good strategy by both the Israelis and Hamas. Since there is a news blockade in Gaza, using todays tech to get out either videos, propaganda,
or actual news to the outside world, could be beneficial to either Israel or Gazans (depending on who is supplying the information.) I just hope that
both sides are honest about what is actually going on out there.
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I wonder whether objective opinions are also classified as 'pro-Hamas'...
A group of Israeli students and would-be cyberwarriors have developed a program that makes it easy for just about anyone to start pounding on
pro-Hamas websites. But using this "Patriot" software, to join in the online fight, means handing over control of your computer to the Israeli
hacker group.
"While you're running their program, they can do whatever they want with your computer," Mike La Pilla, manager of malicious code operations at
Verisign iDefense, the electronic security firm.
The online collective "Help Israel Win" formed in late December, as the current conflict in Gaza erupted. "We couldn't join the real combat, so we
decided to fight Hamas in the cyber arena," "Liri," one the group's organizers, told Danger Room.
So they created a simple program, supposedly designed to overload Hamas-friendly sites like qudsnews.net and palestine-info.info. In recent years,
such online struggles have become key components in the information warfare that accompanies traditional bomb-and-bullets conflicts. Each side tries
to recruit more and more people -- and more and more computers -- to help in the network assaults. Help Israel Win says that more than 8,000 people
have already downloaded and installed its Patriot software. It's a small part of a larger, increasingly sophisticated propaganda fight between
supporters of Israel and Hamas that's being waged over the airwaves and online.
Help Israel Win, which has websites in Hebrew, English, Spanish, French, Russian and Portugese, doesn't say much about how the program functions --
only that it "unites the computer capabilities of many people around the world. Our goal is to use this power in order to disrupt our enemy's
efforts to destroy the state of Israel. The more support we get, the more efficient we are."
Analysis from iDefense and the SANS Institute, however, reveals that computer users put their PCs at risk when they run the Patriot software. The
program connects a computer to one of a number of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers. Once the machine is linked up, Help Israel Win can order it to do
just about anything.
The Patriot program does something "fishy," SANS Institute security specialist Bojan Zdrnja said, by retrieving "a remote file and sav[ing] it on
the local machine as TmpUpdateFile.exe." That could easily be a "trojan," Zdrnja said, referring to a program that sneaks malicious code onto a
computer.
"While at the moment it does not appear to do anything bad (it just connects to the IRC server and sites there -- there also appeared to be around
1,000 machines running this when I tested this) the owner can probably do whatever he wants with machines running this," Zdrnja wrote.
Liri, with Help Israel Win, conceded that "the Patriot code could be used as a trojan. However, "practically it is not used as such, and will never
be."
"The update option is used to fix bugs in the client, and not to upload any malicious code... never have and never will," Liri said. "The project
will close right after the war is over, and we have given a fully functional uninstaller to [remove] the application."
It's also unclear how much the Patriot program is really helping the Israeli side in the online information war.
La Pilla has been monitoring Help Israel Win's IRC servers for days. "They didn't make us download and install anything. Didn't make us [attack]
anybody. I was basically just sitting idle on their network." The group claims to have shut down sarayaalquds.org and qudsvoice.net. But, as of now,
the rest of the group's pro-Hamas targets remain online. Meanwhile, Help Israel Win has had to shift from website to website, as they come under
attack from unknown assailants.
Source
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i think its went cyber to teach the teens the fighting is righteous which ever side they favor
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Thanks from good article!
This certainly goes to my "needs more investigation" table...
You are right, many battles have been fought here, many good thread has been poisoned with personal insults and with baseless comments. Now it has
been more calm and many cybersoldier (pro-israelite) has left the scene.
War take its toll... I dont say that pro-palestine has win, but 3rd party has grown - that is progress.
Israel is playing with 3rd world war, and US government is backing them... All roads leads to Iran, and I think people has started to understand that
this picture from future, which is coming brighter every day, is not US interest, but small group of elites, and New World Order.
I will get back to this article after research!
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