Day off for all internet traders! Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:23pm ET17 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has warned U.S. private financial services of an al Qaeda call for a cyber attack against U.S. online stock trading and banking Web sites beginning Friday, officials said.
This has to be one of the stupidest plans they have come up with. The number of levels of redundancy at different locations are such that they could never do any real damage. Why come half way around the world to blow up something inconsequential when all they need to do to really cause some pain is blow up oil facilities in their own back yard. These people are backward in their philosophy and everything else.
U.S. warns of possible Qaeda financial cyber attack WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has warned U.S. private financial services of an al Qaeda call for a cyber attack against U.S. online stock trading and banking Web sites beginning Friday, officials said on Thursday. The officials -- a person familiar with the warning and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security -- said the Islamic militant group aimed to penetrate and destroy the databases of the U.S. stock market and banking Web sites. Homeland Security said it had no evidence to corroborate the threat but had issued the warning out of an "abundance of caution". The department said in a statement that the threat was for all of December. "There is no information to corroborate this aspirational threat. As a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution, US-CERT issued the situational awareness report to industry stakeholders," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke. US-CERT is the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. The U.S. government said the threat was to avenge the holding of suspected terrorists at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo.
U.S. Warns of Cyber Attack on Financial Institutions (Update2) By Jeff Bliss Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Homeland Security Department unit issued an advisory about a potential attack on U.S. financial institutions' computers, a department spokeswoman said. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which sent the warning to financial institutions earlier today, had ``no information to corroborate'' the seriousness of the threat, spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez said. The advisory stemmed from a posting on the Web site of a group called al-Firdaws urging an attack on financial institutions, said a Homeland Security Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Al-Firdaws is related to al- Qaeda, the Islamic radical group behind the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The Homeland Security official said that the Web site posting called for denial of service attacks against financial institution Web sites starting tomorrow and continuing through the ``infidel new year.'' Such attacks may try to cripple a Web site with a flood of e-mails, for example. The al-Firdaws posting, which was translated by U.S. authorities, asked for people with computer skills to conduct the attacks on their own, the official said. Russ Knocke, a Homeland Security Department spokesman, said the posting ``is a relatively unsophisticated threat and something that these institutions are well fortified for.''
what expertise do you have to make the above statements. if your broker's web site would be down for a few days or weeks as a result of an attack, you would be whining nonstop. someone who says that the breakdown of the banking system and trading resulting from an attack is inconsequentail should not be trading. at all . it is obvious that you don't have an understanding of what are the functions of markets or of the role banks play in the economy.. a successful attack against financial institutions is is much more serious than blowing up a few oil facilities
Get a clue for goodness sakes. What I do know is that there are several levels of redundancy, both in server farms and in physical format in tape banks. Maybe, and this is a huge maybe they might be able to cause some very minor temporary disruption at some FI's but that is about it. A major attack on some important oil field, or oil fields would have a far greater impact and for a longer period of time. Thanks for your concern regarding my own situation but you can sleep easy. I have three access points to the markets, one in another country. Besides I don't whine