The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has started defensive measures to protect its e-mail and Web-site systems against a well-prepared propaganda campaign launched by Serbian hackers.
NATO is taking the measures "as soon as possible, but given the size of the problem, it will be difficult," a source at NATO military headquarters today confirmed, declining to provide any details. "These are open systems, and although we do not want to close them to the public, this is an option," the source said.
The disruptions began last weekend, three days after NATO began its bombing missions. That afternoon a hacker in Belgrade saturated the NATO site with ping bombardment-a tactic in which one computer automatically and repeatedly calls another, the source said.
On a daily basis, another Belgrade-based hacker is flooding NATO's e-mail system with some 2000 messages and introducing up to five additional computer viruses into the system.
"This is clearly a new element in warfare in the 21st century," the source said.
The risk is that without a rapid solution, the hackers may move on to more damaging activities such as downloading press releases and tampering with and releasing overhead imagery available on the site as official policy.
"All of this is well-prepared and part of Milosevic's propaganda war," the source explained.
