[infowar.de] Islamic militant Web site bounces around Net

[Krystian Woznicki <krystian -! - snafu - de>]

Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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Islamic militant Web site bounces around Net

AP, New York, June 30

A bogus street address in Venezuela, a free e-mail account and a wire 
transfer to a bank in Malaysia were all that was needed to publish a 
militant Islamic Web site that promotes Al-Qaeda and asks readers to pray 
for America's destruction. The nature of the Web hosting business allowed 
the Arabic-language site's operators to keep it alive and on the run - 
despite an FBI investigation - while disguising themselves, online and off. 
Much as a fugitive lingers little in any one place, the militant 
pro-Al-Qaeda site has moved over six months among computer hosts based in 
Malaysia, Texas and Michigan. The site's persistence exemplifies the 
Internet's ability to let anyone reach a global audience in relative 
anonymity, despite law enforcers' best efforts. A federal law enforcement 
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, speculated the site was 
being used by Al-Qaeda to spread low-priority information. The site may 
also be a way for operatives to contact and direct each other toward other, 
more secure methods of communication, the official said. The "Center for 
Islamic Studies and Research," was, until several days ago, on a Web site 
hosted by Liquid Web, a company based in Lansing, Michigan. The site 
appears to have first gone up in January through the Malaysian Web hosting 
firm Emerge Systems. Five months later, when the company said it began 
receiving complaints about the content, it disabled the site and filed a 
police report. But the site resurfaced a few days later under a new 
address, this time hosted by CI Host, a Bedford, Texas-based company. 
Alerted to the site, CI Host said it launched an investigation, shut it 
down and called the FBI. But in a demonstration of just how determined the 
unknown handlers of the site are, they were back up on a new address within 
hours. Moreover, the operators seem to be able to contact sympathizers, 
possibly through e-mail and chat rooms, and notify them of the new address, 
allowing them to re-establish links to the site. Experts say they're not 
surprised given the computer-savvy nature of Al-Qaeda and many of its 
supporters. "The Internet basically gives them a global communication 
capability and Al-Qaeda is global, it represents the globalization of 
terror," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.Org, a defence and 
security policy group. Messages can be kept secret using encryption, a 
common scrambling technology. Experts speculate that Al-Qaeda may be using 
steganography, or embedding messages inside an otherwise unrelated file, 
such as an image. A splashy logo above a horseman on the site's home page 
reads "No pride without jihad". The site's reports from inside Afghanistan 
discredit US military gains and inflate the number of US and allied troops 
killed since October. Ren LeValley, a senior systems administrator with CI 
Host, said after receiving complaints about the site, his company 
determined that it was set up from Malaysia using fraudulent account 
information and translated its Arabic content. It was the third Islamic 
militant site the company had cut off and reported to the FBI since 
September 11. With more than 150,000 Web sites using their system from 179 
countries, LeValley said it would "be impossible to look at the content of 
every single site on our network. But if something is brought to our 
attention, our abuse response team does investigate." When the site 
re-emerged - on the servers of Liquid Web, a small company with a 
21-year-old chief executive - there were no Arabic translators or response 
team to scrutinize it. Liquid Web learned from The Associated Press that it 
was hosting the "Center for Islamic Studies and Research" site. The company 
later pulled the site. In Malaysia, neither law enforcers nor officials at 
Emerge Systems would comment, saying the issue was under investigation.


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