  For decades, religious leaders, particularly Christians, have been targeted by terrorist groups for persecution, harassment, and even assassination. Now, terrorism against religious groups has entered the electronic world. ‘Two unidentified women set up Internet accounts that were used in a three-day automated attack [in early September] on religious Usenet newsgroups.
The attackers used familiar newsgroup member names in sending thousands of off-subject, often vulgar, posts to a number of alt.religion groups on the Internet.’ (Wired News, 18 September 1998). Many of the messages came with forged identities purporting to be from regular posters to the group. Reviewing the alt.religion.christianity newsgroup at the time, one could see several messages with the headers, ‘Stop using my name!’ With more than 10,000 forged messages flooding the group, the problem eventually became so rampant that posters began digitally ‘signing’ their messages using encryption software in order to verify their identity. A similar sort of cyberterrorism was exemplified by an attack on the web site edition of the New York Times, when hackers replaced the front page of the Times with a hacked version. Security experts suggest a more subtle hack—the alteration of a few smaller pieces of less-public pages on the Times’ web site—would have been virtually undetectable and could have done a significant amount of damage. This illustrates just how deadly electronic forgeries can be. Messages supposedly from Bill Gates abound on the Internet, promising free vacations if people pass the message on so an e-mail tracking program can be tested. Most people know these messages to be fakes, and would probably be suspicious of an e-mail message supposedly from Billy Graham or the Pope. On the other hand, an e-mail message forged from a local pastor carrying a solicitation for drugs or pornography could do horrific damage to one’s reputation. In fact, by 2004, an updated version of this kind of attack became widespread. New computer viruses were forging the "From" addresses, making themselves appear to be messages from authentic religious websites (as well as many other large websites).
Today, the only ones to be immediately affected by this would be individuals in the West, where such technology is most prevalent. However, as the technology becomes more useful in northern Africa and Asia, elements hostile to Christianity may very well adapt such a technique in order to drum up false charges against Christian leaders or to sully their reputation. Religious conferences being held in the East were beginning to feel the problem this year. How to avoid such a future?
Individuals regularly corresponding by e-mail could begin ‘signing’ their name using electronic signatures such as those offered by PGP Encryption or through Microsoft Outlook. News sites can similarly use digital ‘wrappers’ to sign and secure their web stories. The only other real route is to maintain a life of integrity and to quickly respond to any forgeries with evidence—which is exactly what participants in the alt.religion.christianity forum did. 
