Hackers Use Local Web Business
TAMPA — The global controversy over an editorial cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed is hitting home.
Danish police have been asked to investigate a group of hackers operating via a Web site hosted by a Tampa company. The hackers claim responsibility for taking down the Web site of Jyllands-Posten, one of the newspapers that ran a cartoon showing Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
The request for an investigation came from the newspaper.
Several deaths have been reported worldwide as a result of Muslim anger over the cartoon, which sparked protests in Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere. Threats against Jyllands-Posten and its staff have been so virulent that Danish police have set up a special unit, said Lisbet Therkildsen, a journalist at the paper.
Therkildsen said her paper was unaware that a Web site hosted by a Tampa company is claiming responsibility for hacking Jyllands-Posten. She passed the information to Danish police after receiving an e-mail from The Tampa Tribune.
“We forward all the hate-mails and threats, we are receiving right now, to the police,” Therkildsen wrote in an e-mail Monday.
“The police have formed a new department to look into all the threats against Jyllands-Posten and its editors.”
The Web site, 3asfh.com, is being hosted by United Colocation / SAGO Networks, a Tampa company, according to the Whois Internet registry. SAGO, according to its Web site, provides hosting and data center services. SAGO official Lee Kermode did not respond to an e-mail or three telephone calls seeking comment.
The Web site and its hosting location were uncovered by Internet Haganah, a Web site dedicated to tracking and shutting down jihadist Web sites.
A. Aaron Weisburd, Internet Haganah’s director, said the 3asfh.com site posted a video claiming credit for hacking the Danish newspaper’s site.
Weisburd agreed with Therkildsen that the site should be investigated.
“What they need to remember is that online jihadis are offline jihadis,” Weisburd said in an e-mail. “There is a direct connection between cyber terrorism and other forms of terrorism.”
The episode serves as a microcosm of the challenge faced by those working against global terrorism, Weisburd said.
“The victim is in Denmark. The perpetrators are in Europe and the Middle East. The Web sites are in the U.S.A. and France. To fight this, multiple agencies from multiple countries all need to cooperate and work together and share information.”
Calls to the FBI and the National Intelligence Directorate were not returned. Danish police officials had no comment.
Weisburd said his organization has had run-ins with 3asfh.com.
“It’s worth noting that [3asfh.com] was put in our database because the users of the site were involved in trying to organize the same sort of attack against the Internet Haganah Web site,” he said. “Ultimately, they removed the offending ‘attack Haganah’ thread, but clearly they have not changed their ways.”
Weisburd, also head of The Society for Internet Research, is continuing to push for an investigation into 3asfh.com’s attack on Jyllands-Posten.
The society, he said, “is modeled after al-Qaida in the sense that we’re a global network of people and organizations all working towards the same end — namely, the defeat of the global jihad.”
