Danish counter-attacks

The islamic boycot of Danish goods, and the cyber attacks on Danish media over the weekend are not eliciting a response from the general population. On one hand, there is a cyber-counterattack brewing (Jyllands-Posten):

Chain-mail suggests attack on arab media

A Danish chain-mail that is circulating by email urges people to take part in a web-based attack on arab media. This happens in reaction to the hacker-attack on Danish papers´ websites over the weekend.

The affair about the Mohammed-drawings of the paper Jyllands-Posten has now set off a hacker-war on the internet. Over the weekend several Danish papers´ web-versions, among them Jyllands-Posten, were attacked by hackers, and speculation has been rife, that the drawings might be the reason for the attack. Now a Danish chain-mail spreading via email urges to take part in a counter-attack on arab media.

The email starts out with the headline "Denmark under attack by moslem hackers" and contains an attached program, that starts a so-called denial-of-service attack on five arab media, among them Al-Jazeera, Arab News og Gulf News.

In the letter the recipient is urged to let the program run on his computer to bombard the arab media with data and thus block their homepages.

The Danish security firm CSIS explains that they received the first notifications about the mail sunday evening.

"If the user sends the email on - and accepts that the script is being run, then his computer is taking part in a targetted denial-of-service attack on several media in the arab world. An action, that can contribute enormously to the already heated situation," says Peter Kruse, virus analyst at CSIS.

He suggests that people erase the email right away, and says that his company has notified the Danish police, that currently is investigating the case.

At the same time, oppinion pages are full of demands for a boycot of the gas station chain Q8 (its Kuwaiti-owned), and there is a general consumer boycott of moslem businesses being urged by text messages. Two versions are known to me, and they read as follows:

This text message urges everybody to boycot the moslem-owned pizzarias and kiosks in Denmark. It is the same thing they do to our Danish companies, all because of a measely drawing in a paper. Send this text message to everybody you know.

and

Moslems are boycotting Danish goods because of satirical drawings. Soon Donald Duck will have to wear pants and Daisy a veil. Let us christians boycot moslem vegetable sellers, pizza-bakers and taxi-chauffeurs in Denmark. Pass this text message on if you agree.

The sender of the latter message is an atheist.

Screen caps soon.