An internet "Jihadist" has posted a message to an Internet chat room that suggests people who are angry about the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay should retaliate with cyber-security attacks on its stock market and banking web sites in the run up to Christmas.

The Associated Press news wire reported that the warning was issued as a routine notice of US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT). But a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses CERT, played it down.

He said the threat was unconfirmed and posed no immediate danger. It was merely a "routine" alert prompted by an "abundance of caution".

In other words, someone made an idle comment in an Internet chat room. How have the stock markets reacted to that one? Need we bother checking?®

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