After the September 11th terrorist attacks, a Web site for the government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan -- an opponent of the region's Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden -- was flooded with hate message e-mails and forced to shut down temporarily after being hacked.

The site explains its predicament and says it will be republishing the page soon. But despite e-mail apologies from several hackers, including Americans, who mistakenly targeted the anti-Taliban site, experts say the botched hack defacements are likely to continue to be a part of hacktivisim.

On Your Side

Jalaluddin Rabbani, director of the Islamic State of Afghanistan Web site, says in a statement that despite what visitors and hackers had thought, the site does not support the Taliban and is in fact owned by the presidential palace of the anti-Taliban Islamic State of Afghanistan.

"This Web site does not belong to Terrorist Taliban and Usama bin Ladin regime," the statement says. "We have been receiving ignorant and disturbing e-mails from visitors who can't distinguish a difference between Taliban Usama bin Ladin with the Government of Islamic State of Afghanistan, who has been fighting against them for the last six years"

"Due to that reason we were hacked and were down since last week," the statement continues.

Who's Getting Hacked?

Security Focus incident analyst Ryan Russell told NewsFactor Network that the recent hacking efforts are similar to pro-U.S. and pro-Chinese defacements that occurred last May.

He said while pro-Chinese groups successfully hit more than 1,000 Web sites, many of those sites were not in the U.S., and the retaliatory hacking effort targeted a number of sites based on their domain name extension, rather than content or purpose.

"There were actually a whole bunch of Web sites that ended in "cn" that got hit with defacement," Russell said. "There were sites getting hit that had nothing to do pro or against the U.S. They were just mom-and-pop Web sites and they fell for [hackers'] exploits."

It's Only Defacement

While he recalled a hacking situation where a Pakistani group reportedly hacked a nuclear information site of the Indian government, Russell told NewsFactor that defacements resulting from hacktivism are usually just conflicts among hacker groups.

"Given the current climate, Web site defacement doesn't really hurt anyone," Russell said. "It's nothing on the order of a terrorist attack, economic sanction or military action."

Still, the unintended victims may be knocked offline, as appeared to have been the case with the anti-Taliban Islamic State of Afghanistan.

"There are times the guys making these defacements can't even read the language for the site they're defacing," Russell said. "They have no idea if they're for or against or representing the government. They could be extremely opposed to the government."