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A Pakistani hacker group, dubbed GForce Pakistan, hacked the website of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and left threatening messages regarding U.S. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In what can only be described as twisted irony, the group interchangeably condemned the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, while simultaneously pledging allegiance to terrorist Usama bin Ladin, stating, "Though GForce Pakistan, condemns the attacks on US, We also stand by Al-Qaeda. Usama Bin Laden is a holy fighter..." The group also likened President Bush's having dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to an act of terrorism.

GForce boasted of alleged possession of "very high confidential US data" and pledged it would be "given to the right authorities of Al-Qaeda" unless certain demands were met. These demands included removal of troops from Saudi Arabia and support for the Palestinians. This is not the first time cybercrime has been used to further the cause of the Palestinians. The VBS.Staple virus was released in March 2001, which launched a denial of service attack against Israeli government websites and forcibly opened browser windows on affected users' computers.

Predictably, the GForce radicals threatened further cyberattacks against U.S. and British government sites. This can hardly be considered news as the threat of cyberattack has long been predicted as an adjunct to traditional terrorism. Clark L. Staten, Executive Director & Sr. Analyst Emergency Response & Research Institute (ERRI), predicted just this in April 1998. "We would anticipate efforts to cause widespread fear by computer-generated attacks on electrical, water, banking, government information, emergency response systems and other vital infrastructures, while simultaneously suffering terrorist tactics..." This was reinforced in an October 2001 report from the FBI acknowledging the potential for cyberattack and cautioning, "Web sites that remain open to known hacking tools will have a higher probability of suffering defacement. Network administrators must remain educated and defenses must evolve along with the threats and offensive capabilities." Indeed, according to a news article by Brian McWilliams of Newsbytes, the NOAA web server "was running the Linux operating system and had open file transfer protocol and telnet ports."

According to statistics compiled by the defacement monitoring experts at http://defaced.alldas.de, GForce is one of the most active defacement groups, responsible for nearly 8% of all hacked websites.