Slashdot Mirror
19,000 French Websites Hit By DDoS, Defaced In Wake of Terror Attacks
An anonymous reader writes Since the three day terror attack that started in France on January 7 with the attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, 19,000 websites of French-based companies have been targeted by cyber attackers. This unprecedented avalanche of cyber attacks targeted both government sites and that of big and small businesses. Most were low-level DDoS attacks, and some were web defacements. Several websites in a number of towns in the outskirts of Paris have been hacked and covered with an image of an ISIS flag. The front pages of the official municipality websites have been covered with the Jihadist militant group's black flag. In a report, Radware researchers noted that Islamic hacker group AnonGhost has also launched a "digital jihad" against France.
It seems the attacks only targeted known vulnerabilities in Drupal and Joomla. Sites that did not use them, and site that were up to date, just experienced high loads.
I see you're unaware of the inclusive "OR".
The only source in Islamic law that all Muslims accept indisputably is the Quran. And, conspicuously, the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept. Nor, for that matter, does the Quran command stoning, female circumcision or a ban on fine arts.
Tellingly, severe punishments for blasphemy and apostasy appeared when increasingly despotic Muslim empires needed to find a religious justification to eliminate political opponents.
In addition, Muslim extremists seem selective in their outrage:
The Quran praises other prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — and even tells Muslims to “make no distinction” between these messengers of God. Yet for some reason, Islamist extremists seem to obsess only about the Prophet Muhammad.
Even more curiously, mockery of God — what one would expect to see as the most outrageous blasphemy — seems to have escaped their attention as well.
Finally, the action *actually* recommended by the Quran is simply: Do not sit with them ...
Before all that politically motivated expansion and toughening of Shariah, though, the Quran told early Muslims, who routinely faced the mockery of their faith by pagans: “God has told you in the Book that when you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.”
Just “do not sit with them” — that is the response the Quran suggests for mockery. Not violence. Not even censorship.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A "close call" you say?? I'll bet it is.
ISIS Crucifies Eight Rival Rebels For Being Too 'Moderate,' Will Display Bodies For Three Days In Syrian Town Square
Isis executioners 'kill gays by hurling them off roofs' in Mosul
Nigeria: Over 2000 Feared Dead in 'Deadliest Massacre in Boko Haram's History'
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Iraq still had engineering and medical schools after it was liberated. The Bush administration facilitated partnerships between Iraqi institutions and those in the US and Europe, ending Iraq's isolation from the international community and helped its efforts to rebuild after the long night of Saddam's rule.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web...
An education in occupation
By Hugh Gusterson
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
2 February 2012
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students -- churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country's burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries -- the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq.
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East...
And what happened in August, 1990?
Anyone? Anyone?
Iraq invaded Kuwait, which lead to the destruction of most of the Iraqi Army, massive damage to the economy and infrastructure, and harsh international sanctions that Saddam magnified the effect of by diverting money intended for food and medicine to buying weapons and building many large, expensive palaces.
From your article:
Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields.
The terrible situation Saddam created was made even worse by the Islamists and insurgents.
Killings lead to brain drain from Iraq - 17 Apr 2006
The head of Arabic studies at Baghdad University was shot 32 times when his car was ambushed on the way to work.
Abdul Latif al-Mayah was murdered after he had appeared on al-Jazeera television. Police described the killing as "professional".
In Ramadi, the president of the university, Abdul Hadi Rajab al-Hitawi, was dragged from his home and bundled into the boot of a car. A ransom demand was received a few days later.
Both men are among the growing number of intellectuals to be targeted in Iraq, a phenomenon that is resulting in an unprecedented brain drain as those who can move abroad increasingly do so before they or their families join the list of their colleagues killed or kidnapped.
At least 182 academics have been killed since the invasion in 2003 and there have been many more kidnappings and murder attempts.
And it is not just university professors who are being targeted. In the past four months alone 331 school teachers have been murdered and nine medical workers were killed in a single day in the northern city of Mosul last month.
(Mosul? That rings a bell: Isis executioners 'kill gays by hurling them off roofs' in Mosul )
Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist - January 23, 2006
Exodus is not new to the country. Iraqis who could flee Saddam Hussein's repressive rule did: Poor Shiite Muslims sneaked across the border into Iran, and Sunni Arabs crossed the mountains into Syria or the desert to Jordan. People often waited years for permission to attend a seminar or do business in another country and then would disappear there. Hussein began holding such people's families hostage to guarantee their return.
Many of those émigrés flooded back into Iraq when Hussein fell. But the country's instability and daily regimen of violence have made some reconsider their return. Others who stayed throughout Hussein's rule are finally saying goodbye to their homeland now.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell