Attacking Zionism - Defending Chaos

 "The attempts to attack Israeli websites are an ongoing, routine occurrence. Israel is frequently attacked by terror groups, hacktivists and hackers."
Israel's National Cyber Bureau spokesperson

Hackers posing as social activists, acting as swiftly-trialed juries, finding fault with all governments, their agencies and social and political groups whose ideologies and functions and priorities and values do not meet their own, feel justified in using whatever means at their disposal to create chaos and do damage to vital operating programs accessible and used through the Internet. They like to portray themselves as defending their version of how society and politics should be played.

Where previously young people and outliers resentful of authority and social mores that held no appeal to them and affronted their sense of independence, conducted themselves in socially disruptive ways that led security authorities to them to apprehend their anti-social and destructive activities, the new game that is afoot creates a safety net for such groups who form an alliance geared toward Internet vigilante action as "concerned citizen", taking their disagreement with society to another level.

When an individual is anonymously undetectable that individual takes credit for whatever it is he/she does, but refuses personal recognition, preferring anonymity for the sake of protection. And if a collaborative group of like-minded and equally sanctimonious people skilled in the use of computer code and the writing of virus codes and surveillance capabilities lend themselves to actively disrupting business and government to display their activist and IT credits, they escape detection as Anonymous.

That group has promised  to assault the State of Israel -- on a day set aside in the Jewish calendar of memory and disaster to recall the brutal agony of the Holocaust -- through closing down, interrupting, defacing, degrading, destroying, capturing data related to State activities, academics, security, government and any other intrusive and damaging areas that pique their sense of collective pay-back for offending the sensibilities of the hacking group.

During the IDF's counter-attack on Gaza, in response to the Hamas- and Islamic Jihad-sponsored endless rocket attacks at Israeli towns and citizens, the group infiltrated and attacked what they claimed to be 700 Israeli government websites. Its more recent claims of celebratory acclaim is an attack on Israel's intelligence and special operations agency, Mossad, during which they claim to have taken the names and addresses of 34,000 Mossad agents.

The Arab news outlet Al Arabiya has reported that the personal data of five thousand Israeli officials; names, I.D. numbers and personal email accounts, have been posted online. Activists with Anonymous claim to have infected 15,000 Israeli Facebook users.

NATO, in recognition of the ongoing problem of these 'social activists' destabilizing governments through their intrusive Internet attacks, has developed a manual for its Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, laying the groundwork for counterattacks against hacktivists by governments being attacked. Experts involved in the development of international law governing cyber attacks were responsible for the manual.

The manual describes hacktivists as either an individual or a group defining them as "a private citizen who on his her own initiative engages in hacking for, inter alia, ideological, political, religious or patriotic reasons", being susceptible to responding attacks similar to those engaged in during war. "An act of direct participation in hostilities by civilians renders them liable to be attacked, by cyber or other lawful means", effectively instructing that those engaged in such activities have entered a state of war requiring a simultaneous, concomitant response.

When Anonymous first surfaced and its activities were first being reported, they assumed a mantle similar to those of public service agents covertly and expertly doing their utmost to defend the public weal against unscrupulous government or business agencies. There was a popular appeal evinced in the public in the manner in which the group went about 'defending' the values assumed to be common in polite and liberal society.

That situation has changed dramatically. Most Americans are latterly shown through poll data to be concerned about cyber attacks on their country's computer infrastructure, and most of them now consider such cyber-attacks to represent acts of war. Juries in Europe as well as the United States are beginning to increasingly convict hacktivists as serious criminals posing a real and present danger to society and to their governments.

The al-Qassam Cyber Fighters campaigned against financial institutions like Amex, Bank of America and others to blackmail YouTube into the removal of a film trailer for the anti-Muslim film that was implicated in triggering yet another one of those volcanic-blast rounds of violent protests against the Western claiming violation of Islamic core values throughout the Muslim world.

"We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy", stated President Barack Obama when he recently signed an executive order to protect the country from "America's enemies" through cyberattacks. To which the hacktivists responded by attacking Goldman Sachs.

Signalling an all-out war between governments, financial institutions, international conglomerates employing their experts in cyber-protection against the enterprising and criminal activities of those considering their activities to be well outside the mere laws of governments of whom they disapprove, or for that matter any other entities in need of hacktivist punishment.