WASHINGTON (March 25, 1998 00:19 a.m. EST) -- Criminal cases against
computer hackers have more than doubled this year as the ranks of teenage
hackers were joined by industrial spies and foreign agents, the FBI warned
Tuesday.
The FBI told a congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing that it had
recorded a significant increase in its pending cases of computer
intrusions, rising from 206 to 480 this year.
The FBI's leading experts on cybercrime said the U.S. was increasingly
vulnerable to an attack which could undermine vital services such as
telecommunications, banking and the supply of oil and gas.
Michael Vatis, head of the FBI's national infrastructure protection
center, said: "Although we have not experienced the electronic equivalent
of a Pearl Harbor or Oklahoma City, as some have foretold, the statistics
and our cases demonstrate our dangerous vulnerabilities to cyber attacks."
The warning follows the arrest and questioning of an Israeli teenager
accused of working with accomplices in the U.S. and Israel to mount the
most sustained attack on the Pentagon's computer systems. Ehud Tannenbaum,
nicknamed "the Analyzer," is accused of breaking into unclassified
personnel and payroll records.
However, Vatis said hackers were also attacking vital domestic services.
He told how one hacker had broken into telephone systems in Massachusetts
to cut off communications at a regional airport and disconnect the control
tower last year. Last week a teenager agreed to serve two years' probation
after pleading guilty to disrupting communications at the Worcester,
Mass., airport for six hours.
Another hacker in Florida is accused of breaking into the 911 emergency
phone system last year and jamming all emergency services calls in the
region.
The FBI said the dangers of cybercrime were rising because of the
increased availability of hacking tools on the Internet, as well as
electronic hardware such as radio frequency jamming equipment.
Last week Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre toured European governments
to warn of the risks of computer crime and discuss possible
counter-measures.
In spite of the publicity surrounding hackers, industrial espionage
remains the most costly source of cybercrime, the committee heard Tuesday.
Last July an unnamed computer communications company sent a malicious
computer code which diverted communications from one of its rivals. The
FBI estimated the victim company suffered losses of more than $1.5
million.
Other FBI officials told how the U.S. was increasingly the subject of
economic attack by foreign governments using computers. Larry Torrence, of
the FBI's national security division, said foreign agents were
"aggressively targeting" proprietary business information belonging to
U.S. companies.
More frequently, criminals are using the Internet to defraud potential
investors with bogus investment schemes and banks.
Fraudulent schemes on the Internet were becoming "epidemic," said Neil
Gallagher, of the FBI's criminal division. One pyramid scheme, called
Netware International, had recruited 2,500 members across the country by
promising to share profits of 25 percent a year in a new bank which it was
claiming to form.
Investigators said they had seized almost $1 million to date.
-o-
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Received on Fri Mar 27 05:01:25 1998