[Moderator: The CIA?! Lets see, we have a failing agency that finds itself
with little work to do, facing a lot of public heat... wonder what favors
were cashed in to give them the work for this.]
Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>
17May98 USA: US AT MERCY OF CYBER TERRORISTS.
By Matthew Campbell, Washington.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton will announce plans this week to build ramparts
against a new and invisible enemy threatening to spread more chaos in
America than any conventional terrorist attack. He will unveil defence
measures unprecedented in the history of human conflict to protect America
from the potentially devastating peril posed by cyber warfare, in which
computer systems controlling airports, hospitals, traffic lights, banks
and even nuclear weapons could be destroyed, creating havoc.
It sounds like a science fiction fantasy. But it is already happening.
This month the Pentagon reported "a series of systematic attacks" on its
computer systems in an incident considered so ominous that the president
was told it could be the work of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The prospect of
Saddam hiring a computer hacker to try to cripple American computer
systems fills defence experts with horror: by a strange para dox,
America's technological superiority and consequent dependence on
computers, leave it more vulnerable than most countries to cyber attack.
Britain is also at risk.
Clinton will announce the creation of two government organisations to
concentrate on monitoring the cyber threat and informing the public of the
danger. He will also appoint a "ter rorism tsar" to co-ordinate efforts to
prepare for cyber warfare.
Advisers have presented him with chilling evidence about the vulnerability
of America to cyber attack. A series of war games conducted by experts has
revealed that the world's greatest superpower could be disabled by a
handful of determined "cyber attackers" para lysing airports, markets and
military systems with a few taps on a keyboard.
Clinton's plan, to be unveiled in the White House on Friday, aims to make
America safe from that within five years. The president will appoint
Richard Clark, a State Department official, to co-ordinate the activities
of various government agencies involved in counter-terrorism; he will also
order the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do more to prepare against
the threat.
"Because of our military strength, future enemies, whether nations, groups
or individuals, may seek to harm us in non-traditional ways, including
attacks within the United States," says Clinton's 18-page "presidential
order", a copy of which has been obtained by The Sunday Times. "Because
our economy is increasingly reliant upon cyber-supported infrastructures,
non-traditional attacks on our infrastructure and information systems may
be capable of significantly harming both our military power and our
economy."
Making things even more difficult for American defence experts is not
knowing who the enemy is. Whether they are disgruntled Americans, Hamas
terrorists or pariah dictators such as Saddam, the attackers could wage
cyber warfare undetected on any laptop computer from the Sinai desert to
Singapore.
Just as exasperating for the government would be deciding how to deploy
its vast military. "If you don't know who your enemy is, how can you
retaliate?" said one expert.
This makes cyber warfare the great equaliser, a cheap and effective weapon
for any Third World rogue state or small terrorist organisation wanting to
wage war against a superpower - and win. All they might need is a few
million dollars to hire a handful of "cyber mercenaries" capable of
penetrating supposedly secure government systems.
"The Gulf war showed that you cannot fight a tank battle against America
and win," said a security adviser to the president. "The threat in the
future will be weapons that can be used in the manner of David's sling
against Goliath: information warfare is definitely one of those." Until
recently, hacking into government computer systems seemed the preserve of
teenage pranksters. Now things are taking a more ominous turn. In events
reminiscent of Sneakers - a Hollywood film in which a hacker played by
Robert Redford steals a code-cracking device that can break into any
computer in the world - the Pentagon said last week it was taking "very
seriously" claims by a group calling itself Masters of Downloading that it
had successfully penetrated defence department computers to steal software
controlling military communications.
Similar events have formed the basis of countless war games being played
in Pentagon briefing rooms to simulate a cyber war crisis. One of them,
called the Day After, started with communications systems going down in
Texas; then the systems on the railway track between Washington and New
York failed, causing a horrific crash; the air traffic control system at
Los Angeles airport also failed, prompting delays and cancellations at
every big American airport.
The experts had to decide whether this could all be coincidence or a clear
case of a concerted cyber attack. When the power went in four northeastern
states, Denver's water supply dried up, the computerised records of all
patients in Chicago's biggest hospital vanished from the screen and spy
satellites over the Middle East were reported to be out of order, there
could be no doubt what was going on.
Clinton is determined to prevent such a crisis in real life. He is
ordering the immediate formation within the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) of a group called the Infrastructure Protection Centre
to warn of potential threats and gauge the vulnerability of computer
systems to cyber attack. It is also charged with finding a way of fighting
back in the event of an attack. Another group called the Information
Sharing and Analysis Centre will be set up to liaise with the private
sector.
Clinton will warn the CIA, blamed last week for failing to alert the
government to India's nuclear tests, to make intelligence gathering on
potential cyber terrorist threats one of its top priorities. "The
intelligence community shall develop and implement a plan for enhancing
collection and analysis of the foreign threat to our national
infrastructure," says his presidential order.
The penalty for failure could be severe. "Massive networking makes the US
the world's most vulnerable target," said William Studeman, former deputy
director of the CIA. Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney-general, was
even more blunt in her address to a Senate hearing on the subject: "We
will have a cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor."
-o-
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Received on Tue May 19 08:57:26 1998