[ISN] Hackers Attack NZ & Aust for Joining Gulf Taskforce

From: Julian Assange <proff@iq.org>
Originally To: lacc@suburbia.net


While browsing through the Australian Parliament House library,
I came across this report:

   Thinking about the Unthinkable: Australian Vulnerabilities
   to High-Tech Risks 

   Dr Adam Cobb 
   Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group 
   29 June 1998 

   [http://www.aph.gov.au/dpl/pubs/rp/1997-98/98rp18.htm]

Which appears to be your typical info-worrier paranoia inducing budget
purloiner. What struck me however, was the disingenuous `cover grab'
used on page one:

         Hackers Attack NZ & Aust for Joining Gulf
                            Taskforce

    AZP London: A hacker group calling themselves the 'Anti-Christ
    Doom Squad' was involved in attacks against New Zealand and
    Australia just days after Wellington and Canberra announced troop
    deployments to the latest Gulf Crisis.

    In a secret UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
    report leaked today, the Auckland blackouts that crippled the city
    for weeks earlier in the year, were traced to electronic attacks
    on New Zealand's electricity distribution network, launched by
    computers in Amsterdam over the Internet. A senior government
    source in the Australian equivalent to GCHQ, the Defence Signals
    Directorate (DSD), confirmed that the widespread blackouts across
    the Australian state of Queensland were also traced to the same
    source.

    The 'Anti-Christ' hackers traversed computer systems worldwide
    using 'spoofed' user-names and stolen passwords to try to conceal
    their identity. Once inside the New Zealand power companies'
    supercomputer, the hackers accessed a control system commonly used
    in energy distributions systems to launch their attack. The
    Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system controls
    switches and flows across most modern power distribution networks.

    The 'Anti Christ Doom Squad' then concentrated on manipulating one
    key choke-point on the outskirts of Auckland. It was the location
    where all five main powerlines converged before entering the
    city. The 'Doom Squad' altered the temperature within the
    gas-encased power lines thereby crippling them within minutes. The
    whole operation was launched and conducted from a drug café in
    Amsterdam using a lap-top and a modem.

    Simultaneous widespread blackouts across the Australian state of
    Queensland disrupted businesses, schools and emergency
    services. However, the DSD refused to comment on whether any other
    critical Australian infrastructures were affected.

    Because the attacks passed through computers in over 10 countries
    and legal jurisdictions, it will be almost impossible to bring the
    hackers to justice, the GCHQ report notes.

    The government of Iraq denies any connection with the blackouts.

Which is of course complete fiction. Telling the reader that the
splash page (and a big splash at that) is an outright lie, doesn't sit
easily with Dr. Cobb. In fact in following 100 or so pages that
comprise the body of the FADaT report, the only reference we see to it
is this:

    In early 1998, both Queensland and Auckland, New Zealand, were
    afflicted with severe blackouts as key choke-points (or nodes) in
    the electricity distribution networks collapsed(2). As the
    Auckland crisis proved, contemporary cities quickly grind to a
    halt when electricity, telecommunications and financial networks
    are out of action.

Which if anything is re-enforcing the lie the report started with.
Observant readers will be asking about that little (2) in `.. networks
collapsed(2).'? Is it a footnote? No, however, some 100 pages later we
find this endnote:

    2.The exact cause of each failure has not been made public as of
    04/06/1998. However, as the fictitious news story was attempting
    to suggest, aggressive attacks are now just as plausible as
    technical failure.

Which, taking aside the fact the statements about causes are
completely untrue, has got to be the worlds most half-hearted apology
for scientific fraud I've ever seen.

--
Prof. Julian Assange  |"From each according to his abilities
                      | to each according to her needs."
proff@iq.org          |
proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu  |                -Mrs. Karl Marx    

-o-
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