U.S. warns of possible Qaeda financial cyber attack

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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.

[mawilson 2,133]

Ooh scary, Al Qaeda are going to destroy a database. I guess we're just going to have to restore it from a backup tape then.

[melly 0]

Actually I was really disappointed when I read the article a couple of hours ago. I had considered at the time that it was irresponsible reporting. Why did they have to mention that it was a Muslim group? Especially as they said they aren't even sure about an attack!!!!

This country doesn't need any more fuel to spread the hatred towards Muslims.