[iwar] [fc:U.S..Hopes.To.Unplug.Cybercrime.In.N.Va.]

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Date: 2002-01-15 20:06:34


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Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 20:06:34 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Hopes.To.Unplug.Cybercrime.In.N.Va.]
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U.S. Hopes To Unplug Cybercrime In N.Va.

By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 15, 2002; Page B1

The FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria are launching efforts to
fight cybercrime, hoping to head off potential terrorism and prosecute
criminal attacks on Northern Virginia's Internet economy.

Six prosecutors will work full time on computer crime, including software
piracy, economic espionage, online child pornography and terrorist efforts
to disrupt the electronic systems of banks, utilities and other
institutions, U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty announced yesterday.

Four of the positions are new, part of a national effort to add 50 to 60
federal cybercrime prosecutors to 10 key offices across the country.

At the same time, Van Harp, assistant director in charge of the FBI's
Washington field office, announced that he has created a cybercrime task
force to bring together prosecutors, state, local and federal law
enforcement officers, the Defense Department and industry.

Cybercrime has been a growing problem across the country, particularly in
high-tech centers such as Northern Virginia. Various government agencies,
including the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI and the Securities and
Exchange Commission, have jumped on the issue, and the three U.S. attorney's
offices in the region have had prosecutors working on the problem.

Federal officials in Maryland and the District said they devote a few
prosecutors to cybercrime.

But the coordinated efforts announced yesterday represent a growing maturity
in the federal fight against online crime and a growing awareness that the
nation's technology infrastructure could be vulnerable to a disabling
attack.

"It's not just a criminal problem," Harp said. "We see it as a problem in
terrorism, and it threatens the critical infrastructure of this country." He
said federal agencies, utilities and financial institutions are being
targeted ­ or "pinged" ­ daily by would-be hackers. "If they are successful,
it could cause some damage."

McNulty said his office wants to make sure that businesses feel comfortable
coming forward and admitting that they have been attacked, a problem that
has hampered law enforcement efforts in the past.

The new groups may help elevate the importance of cybercrime at a time when
companies sometimes have had trouble getting law enforcement to pay
attention, said Peter Tippet, founder of TruSecure Corp., a computer
security company. "It's been really hard since [the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks]," he said. "The law enforcement machinery is clogged up with 9-11
stuff . . . and the threshold is much higher than it was in early
September."

Both the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office have worked in this area before.
The Washington field office, which covers the District and Northern
Virginia, has the National Infrastructure Protection Center to track
hackers. The new task force will bring together more than 25 agents from
that squad and a second that also has been focused on high-tech crime, Harp
said.

The new head of the prosecution unit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Hanly,
handled the 1999 case of Eric Burns, a teenage hacker convicted of breaking
into dozens of Web sites across the country in a bizarre effort to impress a
high school classmate.

Burns, who used the screen name "Zyklon," scrawled messages such as "Crystal
I love you" across seemingly secure sites, including some used by the U.S.
Information Agency and then-Vice President Al Gore.

This month, authorities say, the FBI and U.S. attorney's office worked with
their counterparts in Pittsburgh to rescue a 13-year-old girl who
disappeared from her Pennsylvania home and was found several days later
chained to a bed in the Herndon home of a man she met on the Internet.

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