Highly regarded security blogger Brian Krebs – citing a confidential U.S. Department of HomelandSecurity memo – has suggested that the threatened May 7 DDoSattacks against the United States may prove to be “more bark thanbite.”

Krebs quoted the memo as stating that the attack “likely willresult in limited disruptions and mostly consist of nuisance-levelattacks against publicly accessible webpages and possibly dataexploitation. Independent of the success of the attacks, thecriminal hackers likely will leverage press coverage and socialmedia to propagate an anti-U.S. message.”

The full DHS alert on the threatened distributed denial ofservice attacks is available here.

Also Read:

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• No Takedowns Reported Tuesday
• Anonymous May 7 Target List IncludesCUs
• Threat of the Week: May 7, Ready orNot
• CO-OP Issues DDoS White Paper
• CUNA Explains Thinking BehindWarning
• Reactions Vary to May 7 Warning
• DDoS Attacks Often Fraud Diversions
• Mark Your Calendar (or Not) for May 7Attacks
• CUNA Issues May 7 DDoS Warning

Security experts have consistently told Credit UnionTimes that the seriousness of the May 7 attacks isuncertain. Other, much publicized attacks – such as lastyear's Project Blitzkrieg – amounted to next to nothing. The samemay happen on Tuesday.

The wild card in this mix is whether, or not, al Qassam Cyber Fighters will join in supporting theattacks. al Qassam, usually said to be allied withIran, has demonstrated abilities to knock money center banksoffline.

That group was purportedly involved in the DDoS attacks earlierthis year that took down at least two credit union sites for a time.

Without exception, security experts indicated that if al Qassamis involved the threats are real but, so far, al Qassam has offeredambiguous, non-committal statements of its intentions regarding May7.

Krebs, in his blog, offered this characterization of OpUSA, the group that is on the front line of the possibly May7 attacks: They are “mostly Middle East- and North Africa-basedcriminal hackers.”