Charleston (SC) Post and Courier
May 10, 2001
Moles In Cyberspace
Most of us know the Internet as an instant library and a virtual shopping
mall. Now meet the Internet as a tool for spies.
For the past three years, the Pentagon has experienced a series of
repeated attempts by unknown hackers to take control of some unclassified
but sensitive Pentagon computer networks. The hackers use a technique
known as "tunneling" to plant command codes that allow them to have access
to the networks and to divert information to unauthorized computers.
According to an article in the current Foreign Affairs magazine, the
U.S. government has made formal protest to the Russian government because
the attacks appear to have originated at seven Russian Internet
addresses. The author, security consultant James Adams, reports that the
Russian government denied knowing anything about the attacks, which the
Pentagon has code-named "Moonlight Maze."
His report gives a new twist to an old story. During the Cold War both
sides frequently dug tunnels to listen in on the other's secrets,
imparting additional meaning to the term "mole" as applied to a secret
agent. So the presence of moles in cyberspace should come as no surprise.
What is surprising - and alarming - is the difficulty of determining the
identity of the moles' employer and the damage they have done. Despite
"the largest cyber-intelligence investigation ever" by U.S. authorities,
Mr. Adams writes that our government still doesn't know "who is behind the
attacks, what additional information has been taken and why, to what
extent the public and private sectors have been penetrated, and what else
has been left behind by the hackers that could still damage the vulnerable
networks."
This report comes on the heels of evidence suggesting that Chinese hackers
have recently attacked American government and commercial Web sites in
apparent retaliation for the loss of a Chinese fighter in a collision with
a U.S. EP-3E aircraft off Hainan Island.
The new information technology of the Internet and high-speed
communications is hailed by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan
as the underlying cause of the nation's recent strong economic growth. But
it is becoming clear that in the field of national security the new
technology is a double-edged sword.
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Received on Tue May 15 01:28 CDT 2001