[116728] in Cypherpunks
Script kiddies go to war...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Thu Aug 19 11:54:35 1999
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Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 11:15:39 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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From: "Dan S" <ds1999@crosswinds.net>
To: "IP" <ignition-point@precision-d.com>
Subject: IP: East Timor independence leader threatens cyberwar on Indonesia
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 01:07:31 -0400
Sender: owner-ignition-point@precision-d.com
Reply-To: "Dan S" <ds1999@crosswinds.net>
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9908/18/BC-EastTimor-Cyberwar.ap/index.html
-
East Timor independence leader threatens cyberwar on Indonesia
August 18, 1999
Web posted at: 8:33 AM EDT (1233 GMT)
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A leader of the East Timor resistance movement has
threatened to unleash computer warfare on Indonesia if it prevents a free
vote in an upcoming independence referendum for the troubled territory.
"More than 100 computer wizards, mostly teenagers in Portugal, Spain,
Ireland, Belgium, Brazil, the U.S. and Canada ... are targeting the entire
computer network of the Indonesian government, army, banking and finance
institutions to create chaos," Jose Ramos Horta said in a newspaper
commentary published Wednesday.
"A dozen special viruses are being designed to infect the Indonesian
electronic-communications system, including aviation," claimed Horta,
co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace prize. His commentary was published in the
Thai newspaper The Nation and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald.
Horta said that if the referendum is unfair, the pro-independence movement
would also try to hurt Indonesia's tourist industry, with tactics including
a worldwide boycott of tourism to the resort island of Bali.
"East Timorese groups have set aside what is called a 'war budget' running
to several million dollars to wage a sustained public-relations war aiming
at hurting Indonesia's tourism," he said.
Horta also wrote that he believed a free vote in the U.N.-supervised
referendum on Aug. 30 would show "an overwhelming majority of East Timorese"
favoring independence.
"But the conditions on the ground remain far from appropriate for a free and
democratic ballot to take place," he said, adding that the vote "could turn
into the biggest election fraud of modern times."
The referendum will give East Timor's people a choice between full
independence or staying part of Indonesia as an autonomous region.
Indonesia occupied the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and East Timor has
been wracked by guerrilla warfare and human rights abuses since then.
Predicting that full-scale violence before or after the ballot is now almost
certain, he accused the Indonesian army of "clinging to the illusion that
through terror and fraud it will secure a pro-integration vote."
In such a case, Horta predicted that Indonesia could face political and
economic sanctions worldwide, in addition to attacks in cyberspace.
In January this year, a computer hosting a pro-independence website had to
be temporarily shut down after attacks by hackers who could not be traced.
The Irish Internet service provider Connect-Ireland was the target of a
coordinated attack from as many as 18 different points. The company
indicated in a statement at the time that it suspected the Indonesian
government was behind the action.
The company had set up the so-called top-level domain name on the Internet
for East Timor. The name is the two-letter suffix indicating country at the
end of international Internet addresses, in this case 'tp'.
Connect-Ireland also hosts a pro-independence East Timor website.
In less serious incidents in early 1997, Portuguese hackers broke into the
websites of the Indonesian military and foreign ministry, and defaced their
homepages with pro-independence propaganda.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
--
Dan S
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--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
