Mideast ‘cyberwar’ veteran indicted

FBI clings to tiny triumph

The Turbaned Chupacabra may rest snug in his Afghan cave, and the House of Saud may be paying generous protection money to Al Qaeda behind our backs; Anthrax may spread through the postal system and India may attack in Kashmir while the US Secretary of State stands on Pakistani soil, but the FBI has struck a solid blow for Democracy and Freedom by persuading a federal grand jury to indict celebrity hacktivist DoctorNuker.

The Pakistan Hackerz Club founder, who attacked an influential Jewish lobbying group -- the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) -- with a hacked homepage featuring links to enormously disturbing photos of Israeli aggression against Palestinians, has finally been identified, the FBI claims.

He is, we're told, one Misbah Khan of Karachi. And if he ever presents himself at a US border or is extradited, he faces up to fifteen years in stir for defacing AIPAC and illegally obtaining credit-card information from its network. Sounds like a pretty hefty financial burden on the taxpayer for a relatively minor infraction to us, but what do we know.

And we're not entirely confident he's really been identified. During a conversation with the good Doctor several months ago, we developed the distinct impression that he's rather adept at concealing his comings and goings on the Net.

However, "computer hackers often leave behind a more elaborate trail of evidence than they realize, and we will follow that trail no matter where in the world it leads," FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Lynne Hunt explained in an FBI press release.

We will see. We half expect some poor bugger whose dialup account has been hacked to get hauled down to the local police precinct in his stead.

There's been scant good news in this whole anti-terror affair, so the FBI is naturally desperate for any little law-and-order straw it can grasp. We just wonder if they're grasping anything here at all. ®

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