Ahmadenijad Blog Contains A Little Surprise For Israeli Readers Using Windows and Internet Explorer

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad now has his very own blog. That's fine. The content is entirely what you might expect with one notable exception. Several Israeli bloggers, including Yael K.'s Step By Step, which I read regularly, report that if you access the Ahmadenijad blog from an Israeli IP address the site sends you a little gift, a cyberattack in the form of a virus or trojan (reports vary) designed to exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability.

To quote Yael:

Does Iran now use the Internet to harass Israeli citizens? To take advantage of the increasing Iranian-Israeli dialog online?

In a word: yep. The attack is smart enough to mostly ignore IP addresses from anywhere other than Israel, though it has been reported to have been triggered from Spain as well.

My one little piece of advice for friends and readers in Israel: Ehad Linux, an Israeli Linux distribution based on Mandriva 2006, is really quite easy to install and use. (Yes, I plan to write a review.) Those of us who run Linux have been blissfully immune to all the security nonsense which routinely plagues Windows users.

No, installing Linux is not a security panacea. You still need to patch regularly and become educated about keeping your system secure. It is, however, a very good start.

[NOTE: This piece is a first. It appears not only in Blogs of Zion, but in the O'reilly Linux Dev Center blog as well.]

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