Cyber Jihad? Fake Alert, Pal!

November 11th... What a nice day! Even for those terrorists who wanted to start the Cyber Jihad. Today it's November 12th and still no report on a web attack, as the Jihad militants threatened us. In case you missed the news, I'm talking about that threat issued by the terrorists who said they plan an attack on November 11th especially targeting financial pages. It was reported that they intended to use "Electronic Program Of Jihad 2.0," a special software technology which was supposed to be installed on computers from all around the world and attack the same websites at the same time.

The folks at McAfee got a sample of Electronic Program of Jihad 3.0, a newer version of the application which apparently tried to connect to a website to get the information needed for the attack. The Internet pages were down at the time of McAfee's test but the software required a username and password in order to establish a connection. The militants who were interested in joining the attack could easily install the program on their computer and then wait as the entire process was done automatically.

So nothing happened, which proves us that cyber terrorists are not as dangerous as the real ones are. However, the extremists are often turning to the Internet to obtain information which could help them organize attacks in the real world.

Back in January, it was reported that several terrorists installed Google Earth to get information about the Basra area which was hosting the UK troops. At that time, the Mountain View super search giant replaced the photos with older ones captured before the departure of the army in that location.

Moreover, some terrorists used Google Earth to analyze the JFK International Airport a few months ago. However, the authorities discovered their plans and stopped them before starting a tragedy but it was another threat that Google's technologies could also represent a dangerous tool with way too many details.