[iwar] [fc:'Hacktivism'-Spike-Expected-Following-US-Retaliations]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-13 19:02:53

Next message: Tony Bartoletti: "[iwar] On the Nature of a Response"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Card-Processors-Report-No-Interruptions]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]

Message-Id: <200109140202.TAA20283@big.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 19:02:53 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:'Hacktivism'-Spike-Expected-Following-US-Retaliations]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

'Hacktivism' Spike Expected Following US Retaliations 
By Brian Krebs, Newsbytes, 9/13/2001
<a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170071.html">http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170071.html>

Security experts and federal cyber-crime officials are bracing for a
surge in nefarious Internet activity once the U.S. retaliates for
Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. 
Chris Rouland, director of "X-Force," the research and development team
for Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems Inc., said aside from a few
loosely organized denial-of-service attacks against sites in the Middle
East, ISS hasn't yet seen signs of a corresponding cyber-threat. 
Yet, that is likely to change in the coming days, Rouland said, as U.S.
authorities zero in on the source of the attacks and take retaliatory
action. 
"Right now the script kiddies don't have a well-defined target of what
to attack yet, and they won't until the U.S. decide who they're going to
go after," Rouland said. "I think once that happens, however, we will
see a significant increase." 
Almost exactly one year ago, the world witnessed the first public hacker
war between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers. For the better part
of a month, "hacktivists" took turns defacing and crashing government
Web sites affiliated with each nation. 
Following the collision of Chinese fighter jet and an American spy plane
in May, hackers sympathetic to either side joined in a series of often
destructive attacks on U.S.- and Chinese-based Web sites. 
ISS is the lead contractor for the information technology sector's
Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), one of four such centers
formed to share information on vulnerabilities and cyber-attack data
within various industry sectors (the energy, banking and
telecommunications sectors maintain the other three ISACs). 
The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) - the cyber-crime
arm of the FBI's counter-terrorism division - has been working overtime
with computer security companies and the various ISACs to gather
information on suspicious Internet communications that could hold clues
about the source of Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. 
According to FBI sources, NIPC has asked industry ISAC centers to
prepare integrity and security status reports on their physical and
virtual infrastructure. That report could be made available as early as
Friday or next Monday, sources say. 
Phillip Lacombe, president of information and infrastructure protection
for Veridian, an IT-ISAC member and government security contractor based
in Arlington, Va., said the FBI contacted his company early on,
requesting any data that might hold clues to identifying the attackers. 
But Lacombe also noted that Tuesday's disasters have reached well beyond
the cyber-information realm into nearly every sector of the nation's
critical infrastructures. The physical destruction of the twin towers in
New York, for instance, knocked out not only portions of the nation's
communications and economic foundations, but effectively stalled the
transportation sector as well. 
"There remains a substantial physical component to our critical
infrastructures that underpins it all," Lacombe said. "For instance,
there is still no express-mail delivery. You can't just walk into the
post office or Fedex and expect to have your package in California the
next day right now." 
Lacombe said the changes may force companies to begin considering
alternative forms of communication as a rule. 
"The question is what does that do in terms of pressure on other sectors
to include the use of e-mail or authenticated transmission of documents,
for example, that would be effective backups," Lacombe asked. "And we
are perhaps not as far down the line on that as we might be." 
ISS is on the Web at: http://www.iss.net

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get VeriSign's FREE GUIDE: "Securing Your Web Site for Business." Learn about using SSL for serious online security. Click Here!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/LgMkJD/I56CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Next message: Tony Bartoletti: "[iwar] On the Nature of a Response"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Card-Processors-Report-No-Interruptions]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:43 PDT