Newswise 2.0 Website Update News

Welcome friends, fans, media types, researchers, science nerds, bloggers, journalists, and John Q. Publics; Welcome to Newswise 2.0.

It's been a little over a week since we launched the new, revamped Newswise.com, and overall, things have been a huge success. There's a lot of enhancements to site navigation, including drop-down menus across the top of the site for easy access to browse news articles, and to locate various tools, resources, and support. The site is also highly optimized for SEO, so that should help users find our articles more quickly in search engines.

As with any new web site launch, we've had a few bugs and hiccups. The new search tool doesn't accept special characters, for example. Also, some users running Internet Explorer 7 or earlier are having some issues with their login, and certain pages not displaying. We recommend using Mozilla Firefox, or at least upgrading to version 8 of Internet Explorer if you're having issues.

Some users have noticed that there's not currently a "printer-friendly" link on the article page view. If you wish to print an article, you can automatically print it in a printer-friendly format by just selecting file>print from the broswer's menu. Your print-out should be a single column of only the article body, and some users are finding that this seems to take up more pages than necessary. We're working on improving the printer-friendly format, and should have fix soon.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please use our Contact Form, and someone will respond to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for bearing with us as we go through this transition while we work on improving the Newswise 2.0 experience for you. Your support and patience is much appreciated.

All the best,
Thom and the rest of the Newswise Staff

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Extremist Hackers Declare Cyber Propaganda War in Gaza Conflict

Newswise — This past weekend more than 300 Israeli Web sites were defaced in a period of 48 hours. In a string of defacements geared towards anti-Israeli propaganda, hackers replace the website's legitimate content with their own messages.

Gary Warner, University of Alabama at Birmingham's Director of Research in Computer Forensics, has some analysis of the Israel hacking incident, as well as tips for protecting your site from potentially getting hijacked by these mischievious hackers.

"As soon as Israel started bombing Gaza we began to look for signs of a cyber response," Warner said. "And we found it in the form of more than 300 Israeli Web sites that have been defaced with anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. messages."

Warner suggests the following to prevent a Web site from being used in the propaganda war.

• Review Web pages regularly for unauthorized changes.
  
• Search for products used on your Web site at the National Vulnerability Database to learn if they have known security holes.
  
• Use a strong password and change it regularly.
  
• Use a secure file transfer program to update your Website.
  
• Consider having your Web site professionally tested for weaknesses

In a Web site "defacement" a hacker violates the security of a Web server and replaces the original content with his own message. Unlike phishing sites that attempt to defraud, the current round of defacements is strictly propaganda.

"As soon as Israel started bombing Gaza we began to look for signs of a cyber response," Warner said. "And we found it in the form of more than 300 Israeli Web sites that have been defaced with anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. messages.

"In the current situation, the hackers supporting Gaza clearly believe Israel and the U.S. are culpable," Warner said. "That means American Web masters may wish to be especially vigilant right now."

"We've seen this type of propaganda war before," Warner said. "The original cyber propaganda war was launched by Chinese hackers in May 2001 after the collision of a Chinese fighter jet with a U.S. Navy plane. Tens of thousands of U.S. Web sites were defaced by Chinese hackers blaming the U.S. for the incident."

More recently, Warner said, the technique has been adopted by radical Muslim hackers, beginning with the defacement of thousands of Danish and American Web sites in February 2006 after the publication of cartoons about the prophet Muhammad. Defacements were again reported against Israeli and U.S. Web sites after the bombardment of Lebanon by Israel in August of 2006.

PROTECT YOUR WEB SITE Each Web master should decide on an appropriate level of security for his or her own site. A hobbyist Web site may be able to get by with less security than a corporate Web site or a site used for financial transactions. However, Warner said, any site hosted in the United States is at risk in the current scenario. Warner suggests the following to prevent a Web site from being used in the propaganda war.

For more information, go to Warner's personal blog at http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2008/12/muslim-hackers-declare-cyberwar-on.html

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