S'kiddies have taken out the mail server used by the moderators of an Islamic Usenet group in the latest of a serious of untargeted attacks by "vigilante" hackers following last week's terrorist attacks on the US.

The admin of soc.religion.islam told us that hackers threw a mail attack against its server over the weekend which crashed the old machine it used.

Service has now been restored and people can once again post to the newsgroup, none of the postings to which we looked through advocated the use of terror tactics.

The FBI has warned against the likelihood of collateral damage from DDoS attacks mounted by "vigilante" hackers who have decided to mount electronic attacks against the Internet infrastructure of Moslem countries associated with terrorism.

A defacement attack on www.terrorism.uk.com by The Dispatchers, a group which has been singled out for criticism by the FBI, showed the risks of this "vigilante" approach. Terrorism.uk.com is run by the Special Risks Terrorism Team, whose parent company Aon Corporation is based in the World Trade Centre, Newsbytes reports.

In effect, The Dispatchers have hit out at one of the victims of the attack.

Other hackers, most notably the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), have criticised The Dispatchers, a loose-knit collective of more than 60 defacers. The Internet needs to be left open for communication at a time of high international tension, CCC argues. ®

Assault on America: complete coverage