[iwar] Experts: Cyber violence expected following Tuesday's attacks

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-14 12:14:09
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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:14:09 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] Experts: Cyber violence expected following Tuesday's attacks
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Experts: Cyber violence expected following Tuesday's attacks
By Gwen Ackerman
JERUSALEM (September 14) - In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the 
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, US authorities are concentrating on 
locating the survivors, caring for the injured, determining the identity of 
the perpetrators and debating how to respond. 

But what should not be overlooked, terrorist experts say, is the potential 
for a cyber conflict launched by those seeking to avenge the death of 
countrymen that could spiral out of control, in much the same way that the 
Palestinian intifada spawned a spate of Mideast cyber violence. 

Ben Venzke, CEO of Tempest Publishing and its intelligence group IntelCenter 
that specializes in terrorism, national security issues and cyber threats, 
notes that the first stage of such a conflict has already been launched. 

Venzke says that shortly after the Tuesday attacks, US supporters began 
posting messages on Internet bulletin boards calling for attacks and posting 
target intelligence pinpointing Arab networks and Muslim extremist sites. 

That kind of the activity is the precursor of additional stages of cyber 
conflict which moves from the bulletin boards to discussion boards and chat 
rooms, then on to purpose-built lists and on-line communities. From there the 
move is a short one to intelligence collection and targeting, then public and 
private attacks, notes Venzke, who authored a detailed report on the 
Israel-Palestinian cyber conflict. 

"Never before have nations had to deal with patriotic populations that have 
the ability to launch potentially damaging strikes against another country on 
their own initiative," he noted in an e-mail. 

"In the past, the fact that not everyone had an ICBM sitting in their living 
room or a B-2 bomber parked in their driveway prevented individual citizens 
from launching their own attacks. These same barriers don't exist in the 
cyber realm." 

Drawing on lessons learned from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Venzke 
defines two classes of targets: 

* Targets of opportunity that can include anything from non-profit 
organizations and mom-and-pop shops to multinational corporations and 
government agencies. 

* High-profile targets attacked because of the attackers' perception of what 
they represent or the services they provide to another organization. 

At the height of the Mideast cyber conflict last fall, files on the Knesset 
were erased or lifted, the Foreign Ministry site was toppled off the Web, and 
the IDF had to move its site to an international server to fend off attacks. 

Most assaults were defined as being a nuisance, such as defacements or denial 
of service campaigns that flooded a site with traffic, forcing it to close 
down for a time but doing no permanent damage. 

But Venzke warns that many of those public attacks covered up the activities 
of a skilled cracker working behind the scenes to gain root access to 
targeted systems. 

"We are going to see more of this type of cyber-based protest/action/conflict 
in the future when tensions in the physical realm rise," he said, calling for 
all-around vigilance. 

Venzke is not alone in predicting a move from physical to cyber violence. 

The Giga Information Group, in response to a client inquiry, released 
yesterday a set of guidelines instructing organizations how to protect 
themselves from potential terrorist activity on the Internet. 

Noting that only a few months ago rising tension between the US and China set 
off an unsanctioned hacking war, Giga predicted that "there will undoubtedly 
be a cyber component to [Tuesday's] events in some form or another." 

"Just because attention is diverted to the physical world, it does not mean 
that the cyber world is sleeping," Giga said. "There may very well be cyber 
attacks under way, or planned for the near future, as a result of today's 
events." 

To defend against such assaults, Giga recommended, in consultation with the 
FBI, that organizations "lock down the Internet" by turning off all 
unnecessary Internet services, updating intrusion detection signatures and 
virus signatures and by installing any patches to known security glitches. 

In Israel, government Internet experts said that if the cyber violence 
spilled over into the region, they would be ready. 

Ori Noy, director of the Information and Internet Division at the Foreign 
Ministry, said that since the attacks on Israeli government sites almost a 
year ago, many steps had been taken to insure the country's cyber borders. 

In fact, denial of service and hacker attacks on the Foreign Ministry site 
have become a daily affair, they just differ in intensity, said Noy. 

"We have received no special warning and taken no special steps at the 
moment, but we are always being attacked and always ready," he said.

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