Forwarded From: "Prosser, Mike" <Mike_Prosser@tds.com>
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,23554,00.html?st.ne.ni.lh
CIA: Cyberattacks aimed at U.S.
By Reuters
Special to CNET NEWS.COM
June 25, 1998, 5:25 a.m. PT
WASHINGTON--China and other countries have begun to focus on U.S.
computer networks as a target for possible high-tech attacks that could
cripple anything from telephones to electricity, CIA Director George
Tenet said yesterday.
As President Clinton left for a state visit aimed at strengthening ties
with Beijing, Tenet told a Senate panel that the magnitude of the threat
from a wide range of potential foes, notably China by implication, was
"extraordinary." He cited the danger of intrusion into networked
information systems, tampering with data, and "delivery of malicious
code."
"We know with specificity of several nations that are working on
developing an information warfare capability," the chief U.S. spymaster
told the Governmental Affairs Committee. Through high-tech attacks,
"information warfare" would exploit growing reliance on the bits and bytes
that weave modern societies together for everything from
telecommunications to power grids and banking.
"It is clear that nations developing these programs recognize the value of
attacking a country's computer systems both on the battlefield and in the
civilian arena," Tenet added.
He quoted statements from officials in China, Russia, and an unnamed third
country to "illustrate the power and the import of information warfare in
the decades ahead."
"An adversary wishing to destroy the United States only has to mess up the
computer systems of its banks by high-tech means," Tenet quoted an article
in China's official People's Liberation Daily as saying. Without giving
the date of the Chinese article, he went on to cite it: "This would
disrupt and destroy the U.S. economy. If we overlook this point and simply
rely on the building of a costly army...it is just as good as building a
contemporary Maginot Line," the French fortification that Germany skirted
in World War II.
Taken as a whole, Tenet's comments sounded a sour note as Clinton set off
on a trip designed to promote what administration officials call a
hoped-for "strategic partnership" with Communist-ruled China.
In his prepared testimony, Tenet said unspecified foreign countries had
begun to include information warfare in their military doctrine as well as
their war college curricula "with respect to both offensive and defensive
applications."
"Many of the countries whose information warfare efforts we follow realize
that in a conventional military confrontation against the U.S., they
cannot prevail," he said. "These countries recognize that
cyberattacks...against civilian computer systems in the U.S. represent the
kind of asymmetric option they will need to 'level the playing field'
during an armed crisis against the United States."
According to "Strategic Trends in China," published this month by the
Pentagon's National Defense University, Chinese military officials believe
that the United States relies on satellites for 90 percent of its combat
information and communications. Targeting these satellites "could cripple
the United States at a low cost to China," the book summarized Chinese
commanders as thinking.
Tenet said the "battle space" of the information age would "surely"
extend to U.S. domestic infrastructure. "Our electric power grids and our
telecommunications networks will be targets of the first order," he said.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, head of the ultrasecretive National
Security Agency, testified to the same panel that attacks against U.S.
networks were occurring "every day." "We are only seeing the tip of the
iceberg," he said. "Even when attacks are detected and reported, we rarely
know who the attacker was."
Tenet identified potential cyberattackers as comprising everyone from
foreign nations' intelligence and militaries to guerrilla forces,
criminals, industrial competitors, hackers, and disgruntled people.
Michael Pillsbury, a research fellow at the National Defense University
who wrote a Pentagon study of China's interest in information warfare,
said Beijing had the world's largest program of its type.
"Judging by their military writings, they are saying that information
warfare is the core of what they want to do," he said in a telephone
interview. "This way they can leap over the obsolescence of their tanks,
ships, and aircraft and focus on the vulnerability of high-tech forces
like those of the United States" and Taiwan, which China regards as a
wayward province.
-o-
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Received on Mon Jun 29 10:23:43 1998