A report on the site - which is a news portal focusing on information of importance to Kenosha and Wisconsin - states: “Several times over the past month a sex-website entrepreneur has bombed KenoshaOnline… with… links to incest, bestiality, gay sex and other inappropriate media.”
The article was posted next to a photo of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” the famous pop icon of angst that depicts a screaming individual. A version of this painting was recently stolen from a museum in Norway.
KenoshaOnline’s administrator, John Norquist, estimated that there have been up to 300 porn bomb attacks so far. The site’s report said that the spammer “appears to be a Defense Department employee or family member using a PC connected through the Defense Department.”
According to the Wisconsin newspaper The Journal Times, the Internet Protocol address accompanying the porn bombs in the site’s anonymous comments section are from a computer located in Room BF655A of the Pentagon. The U.S. military is headquartered in this five-sided building that is located near Washington, D.C. and was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
The same Pentagon IP has been used in similar spam slams on other sites, including a number of blogs. Some believe that the reference to a Defense Department computer is a spoof.
However, other more conspiratorially-minded people disagree. They contend that in this era of security, surveillance and cyber-snooping that it would be politically naïve to discount a possible Pentagon role.
Simon Aronowitz, who edits the London-based ThoughtCrimeNews.com, said: “I seriously doubt these people are spoofing government addresses. That’s asking for trouble.”
An example of an activist site that has been visited by the computer in the Pentagon’s Room BF655A is Fathers4Justice.com. This is the Canada-based website of a group that fights for paternal rights. In May, two of its members threw bags of purple-dyed flour at British Prime Minister Tony Blair while he spoke on the floor of the House of Commons.
KenoshaOnline’s Norquist has contacted the Pentagon regarding the porn bombs, but the Department of Defense has not commented. In the meantime, since the site’s anonymous forum was disconnected, traffic has nosedived to about a third of what it had been prior to the alleged attack.
Norquist expressed concern that the steep decline in hits would affect advertising revenue for the free site.