CastleCops® - Red alert on the e-war front

By Duncan Graham-Rowe
New Scientist Magazine
05 July 03

I'M SITTING in a swanky conference room in Washington DC, surrounded by 65 computer experts from several businesses, and just about every US government agency and branch of the military. Normally their job is to defend the computer networks of such weighty establishments as the Department of Defense, the FBI, the National Security Agency, Air Force Intelligence, the Marine Corps and several large corporations. But everyone has switched allegiance. Today, we're the bad guys.

We have enrolled in hacking school. Using only our cunning and some basic software tools downloaded from the internet, we are about to learn about breaking into computer networks. The reason so many military, security and corporate bodies have sent people along to this event is a growing concern that the US is vulnerable to a full-scale electronic attack. In February, President Bush published a "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace". It pointed out that, given a malicious intent, potential adversaries now have access to internet-based tools that could seriously harm the nation 's infrastructure. We are not talking here about simply defacing a website or putting it out of action for a few hours. With networked computers running the phone lines, air traffic systems, water supply, dams, power stations, financial markets and services, food distribution, communications, healthcare and emergency services, a return to the Stone Age could be just a few hacks away. "Waiting to learn of an imminent attack before addressing important critical infrastructure vulnerabilities is a risky and unacceptable strategy," the report says. "Cyber attacks can burst onto the Nation 's networks with little or no warning and spread so fast that many victims never have a chance to hear the alarms."

New Scientist continued...


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