"Flypaper" for Fleas

If you’re going to take a day off the blog to enjoy the fine weather, it helps ease the conscience to know the site was down, anyway.

Yes, HostingMatters suffered another DoS attack yesterday, thanks probably to an al Qaeda affiliate.

Dan Darling at Winds of Change thinks the two attacks in less than a week are just a taste of things to come:

The fact that they’ve decided to expand their hacking campaign to war bloggers may mean that their supporters or whatever crude cyber-terrorists are actually working for the organization are testing the waters to see what they can do (let’s face it, they can use bloggers as guinea pigs fairly easily without any fear of the authorities) and eliminate what could best be described as their ideological opponents in the process.

Joe Katzman, who runs Winds of Change, sent me the following in an email:

Welcome back to the blogosphere, and congratulations. The enemy took the war to our online homes, and you had the privilege of being there on the firing line.

If the warblogs are a frontline, let’s at least be honest — we’re not even a tertiary front. I’m flattered by Joe’s thoughts, but it’s silly to think that what bloggers do will have any significant impact on the war. Or that DoS attacks on us will, either.

What I do find heartening is this: If al Qaeda-sympathizing hackers are wasting their time on blogs, then they aren’t spending their time more “productively” attacking the Pentagon. Or worse.