: September 16, 2005

Ever since September 11, 2001, there have been warning about Islamic terrorists planning to use the Internet to make attacks. While there has been an ever growing number of Internet worms and viruses being generated by non-Islamic Internet criminals, there have been few, if any, that can be attributed to Islamic terrorists. Recently, however, there was a Trojan horse released, Yusufali-A, which is almost certainly the work of Islamic radicals. We know that because the only purpose of Yusufali-A is to monitor the your web browser use. If you go to a website that contains words (sex, teen, xx, Phallus, jegger, Priapus, Phallic, Penis, Exhibitionism, Etc.) indicating that its a pornographic site, you are blocked from entering, and a message, in Arabic and English, pops up onto your screen. The English text says, Yusufali: Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for they fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes. If you do not leave the porn site, you will get more warnings, and then your PC will be disabled (and need a reboot.) This is apparently all that Yusufali-A, which was released last month, does. You get infected if you click on an email attachment. Very few users have been infected, because Yusufali-A does not contain virus code (which would make it use an infected PC to spread itself, by sending copies of itself to any email addresses found on the infected PC.) For that reason, its thought that Yusufali-A may be a practical joke by a non-Moslem. Then again, maybe not. Islamic radicals who have attempted hacking have not, so far, demonstrated high skill levels. It requires a bit more skill to include the virus code into a Trojan Horse program like Yusufali-A. In any event, most Islamic radicals are more concerned with morality, than killing people.  Yusufali-A could well be a typical attempt, by an Islamic radical, to control the lives of others.