14 DAY TRIAL // The Middle East conflict has migrated to digital, as the Internet provides a fertile territory of propaganda open to exploitation in the disseminated cyberwar spawned by the Lebanon-Israeli face-off escalation. Two of its latest online victims, sacrificed in search of an audience were NASA Websites. The Chilean group of crackers known as Byond Hackers Crew defaced the two sites in an action of protest against the ongoing conflict. Via a SQL Injection attack, the hackers gained access to NASA's servers and stole names, passwords and e-mails in order to extract sufficient information to permit administrator level access. The attack resulted in the Websites' defacement as the Byond Hackers Crew posted their anti-war message.
The NASA defacements are but aspects of a global scale cyberwar. The nucleus of attacks is concentrated on Israeli and Arabic servers, but the online volume and extent of casualties is concealed. Websites from outside the conflict area are mere peripheral, collateral victims under a context of propaganda. In this regard, Lebanese media has claimed that the Hezbollah TV and radio were compromised and controlled by third parties that ensued a propaganda attack against Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Analyst have expressed their opinion that the ongoing cyberwar is the second one to hit the Internet at global amplitude following the Sino-American Cyberwar of 2001 that orbited around a US spy plane collision with a Chinese fighter jet in April of the same year.