The beginning of war in
Unquestionably, the hostilities in
Two new worms were discovered in the past two weeks with
One, named Prune, arrives in e-mail messages with the subject "US Government Material - Iraq Crisis." An attachment named UN_Interview.txt.vbs launches the Visual Basic Script worm, which spreads copies of itself using e-mail, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and network shares, according to F-Secure.
A second worm, Ganda, arrives in messages with a variety of subjects and messages, many of them linked to the tensions over
Web site defacements also spiked in the days leading up to war, according to F-Secure.
"We've seen a huge increase in the number of [Web site] defacements related to the
Web site defacements require hackers to compromise Web servers belonging to their targets, then replace the official Web page content with their own content, often inflammatory statements or political messages.
F-Secure recorded around 200 defacements in the 48 hours before hostilities began. On Friday, another 1000 sites were defaced, F-Secure said.
Many of the Web sites that were defaced belonged to
The Web page for the U.S. National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a Web-based e-mail portal belonging to the U.S. Navy were both defaced, as was the home page of Routeco PLC, a distributor of industrial automation and control products in the
Hundreds of defacements were attributed to Unix Security Guard (USG), a pro-Islamic hacking group, according to Hyppönen.

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