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What's the Biggest Security Problem? |
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Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Experts, hackers debate cyberterror, digital teens, and holey software.
Cyberterrorism is a joke, organized crime syndicates grow their own hackers, and the greatest threat to e-commerce is a metaphorical "angry Bulgarian teenager," said security experts in a lively panel here.
The sometimes serious, sometimes riotously funny debate covered many of the most pressing computer security threats of the day. Participants were reformed former hacker Kevin Mitnick; Maryann Davidson, Oracle's chief security officer; Gregor Freund, Zone Labs' chief executive; and Jeff Moss, organizer of the Black Hat security conference
Mixed Concerns
"Generally, cyberterrorism is considered a joke. You're much more likely to piss off some teenagers in Bulgaria than Hezbollah," Moss said, referring to the Palestinian terrorist organization. "If you can defend [your networks] against teenagers, you can defend against terrorists."
Oracle's Davidson decried how quickly today's malicious hackers can turn a just-announced software vulnerability into a usable hacking tool.
"The gap between a theoretical exploit to a practical hack has gone from weeks, to days, to hours," she said.
The telecommunications networks are a weak spot, noted Mitnick--and he should know. He spent years evading capture while manipulating telephone networks. "The possibility that an outsider can compromise a telecom provider is pretty likely," he said.
But a cyberattack alone is unlikely to do much real damage. "If our enemies were going to attack, they would have to combine a physical and a cyberattack to increase the likelihood of casualties," Mitnick said.
"What's the worst that could happen? They'd DOS my site and knock it off the Web for a couple of hours or a day," Moss said, referring to the common denial-of-service attack.
Source: PC World
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