Israeli Web Sites Under AttackIsraeli Web Sites Under Attack

Once again tensions in the physical world are spreading to the Web. According to risk-management firm mi2g software, the Israeli domain .il has suffered the most Web-site defacements since the start of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000. And, so far this month, Israel has experienced 67%, or 10 of the 15 major Web-site defacements, mi2g says.

Of the 1,295 Middle East Web-site attacks, 42% were against domains in Israel, 13% in Turkey, and 12% in both Morocco and Egypt.

Politically motivated Internet attacks aren't new. In the past, political tensions spread online during the Serbian conflict, the 1999 China-Taiwan face-off, and last year during the episode with the U.S. spy plane in China.

Internet-terrorist and information-warfare experts agree that these sporadic Web-site attacks are just a glimpse into the future of information warfare, and it's only a matter of time and training before hackers stop targeting Web sites and start targeting critical Internet and communication infrastructure. "They hackers are practicing for the future," says Michael Erbschloe, VP of research at the consulting firm Computer Economics and author of several books on cyberwarfare. "The folks out there that have done the defacements are just at the beginning of their skill-level development."