[iwar] [fc:Alert.issued.for.China's.next.cyber.attack]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-05-22 07:30:26
Next message: Tim Kramer: "Re: [iwar] Some thoughts on the latest so-called scandal"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:IT.Scorecard:.Hackers.Still.Ahead.of.Security.Gurus.-.[With.comments]]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200205221430.g4MEUQ807160@red.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: Wed, 22 May 2002 07:30:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Alert.issued.for.China's.next.cyber.attack]
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Alert issued for China's next cyber attack

By James Borton, 5/21/02
Asia Times, 5/21/02

WASHINGTON - Washington's War Situation Rooms are abuzz these days with
a score of major flashpoints scattered across the globe, from the Middle
East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Central Asia and North Korea to
Cuba, and has now an issued alert of China's readiness to launch a cyber
attack targeting key government computer systems.

Alarm bells have not stopped ringing at the Central Intelligence
Agency's (CIA) Langley, Virginia, headquarters. The agency has been
under an increasing media assault since September 11 for its recognized
intelligence failures. It is even more distressing for the
multibillion-dollar-funded agency since it is now certain that the White
House had been warned as early as last August that Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda agents were seeking to hijack aircraft.

With morale sagging, the ubiquitous and vast CIA appears to be operating
on one overloaded circuit-breaker with its patriotic director George
Tenet prominently in the crosshairs of terrorists and the US Congress.
Incongruous as it seems, another intelligence report or early warning of
an attack on the US is not being taken seriously. The insightful
findings that China is gearing up for a cyber attack on defense and
civilian computer networks in the United States and Taiwan is being
dismissed outright as not potentially injurious to any computer
networks.

The paradox is startling. The Institute for Strategic Studies, run by
the US Army War College, released a classified report as an early
warning directed to all government policy shapers, the Defense
Department, US diplomats and law-enforcement agencies to be vigilant for
Chinese student hackers' efforts some time in early summer to spread
computer viruses to deface sensitive government Internet sites. This is
a disturbingly similar message to that which was issued to intelligence
agencies a month before the devastating attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center.

"We do use our website for outreach and we are sensitive to its
security. But it's important to put the defacing of Web pages in
perspective. Admittedly it can be done, even with security measures in
place, but it's more akin to vandalism than a security threat," said Dr
Steven Metz, director of research and chairman of the Regional Strategy
and Planning Department at the Strategic Studies Institute at the US
Army War College.

It is precisely this kind of denial of any clear and present danger from
senior sources at the Pentagon and even the CIA that is causing an
increasing firestorm among congressional leaders. This week,
Washington's top lawmakers will be pushing for tougher inquiries about
last year's breakdown in intelligence communication between the CIA and
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In testimony presented to the US Senate Armed Services Committee last
month, Tenet revealed, "I think we have a deep concern that the Chinese
are also engaging in activities that continue to be inimical not just to
our interests, but that their activity stimulates secondary activities
that only complicate the threat we face."

Code Red: No longer just a threat No one in Washington has forgotten
when Chinese anger spilled over from the streets into cyberspace to
protest the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) bombing three
years ago of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade resulting in the deaths of
three Chinese journalists. At that time, most of the major Chinese media
organizations, including the People's Daily, CCTV, Xinhua News Agency,
Guangming Daily, China Youth Daily, and Beijing Youth Daily, published
extensive coverage of the street demonstrations against the bombings on
their websites.

As a direct result of that international incident, Chinese hackers broke
into the US Department of Energy's website and replaced its homepage
with a note written half in English, half in Chinese, which read: "We
are Chinese hackers who take no cares about politics. But we can not
stand by seeing our Chinese reporters being killed. Whatever the purpose
is NATO, led by the USA, must take absolute responsibility. You have
owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for. We won't stop
attacking until the war stops."

Only a year ago, a successful Chinese cyber attack aimed directly at the
heart of America's political pulse knocked out the White House's website
for almost four hours. A White House spokesman at that time refuted the
seriousness of the action, stating that "there was no security breach,
and the attack remains under review". Never mind that it was exactly a
year ago, almost in a memorial salute to the Belgrade bombing of the
Chinese Embassy, that Chinese hackers defaced more than 660 sites in the
US, according to Michael Cheek from the security firm iDefense.

US technologies of surveillance, encryption, firewalls, and even viruses
have been willingly transferred to Chinese partners in the past several
years as part of China's budding efforts to enter the New Economy. Rand
Corp's James Mulvenon maintains that such US companies as Network
Associates (McAfee Anti Virus), and Symantec (Norton Anti Virus) gained
entry to China's market by voluntarily providing China's Public Security
Bureau with more than 300 computer viral strains.

Although senior Chinese Internet network officials maintain even today
that a Code Red worm is far too sophisticated for China to have
produced, several senior US analysts strongly disagree and confirm that
the technology to launch cyber attacks has already been successfully
deployed by China. After all, China has already developed a
sophisticated surveillance system to monitor activities on the Internet.
The system, which is similar to the data-recording "black box" installed
in commercial airplanes, will be able to monitor all communications
through the Internet.

"Was there a failure of intelligence?" asked House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt. "Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the
proper way? These are things we need to find out." That was the question
raised this past week on Capitol Hill. These legislators were not
addressing these previous Chinese-inflicted cyber attacks, but rather
the enormity of the September 11 tragedy.

Intelligence agency aims to boost image The intelligence community, in
an effort to boost US confidence in national security, is maneuvering to
cast a wider safety net through the newly refurbished Washington naval
complex at the intersection of Cryptologic Court and Intelligence Way.
The Threat Monitoring Center, housed in a three-story, red-brick
building, is an expansive room with a bank of televisions, numerous
workstations with computers and nine clocks. Although there are still
plenty of empty offices and cubicles, Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security
director, states that the facility will soon be manned by
representatives of more than a dozen federal agencies, among them the
CIA, the FBI, the departments of Energy, Transportation and State and
the National Security Agency, posted to alert Americans of any future
terrorist attacks. That warning shot has already been issued and few
Americans are listening. A report produced by the Strategic Studies
Institute titled "Chinese Information Warfare: A Phantom or Emerging
Threat?" demonstrates that China has more than an intense and acute
fascination with information warfare (IW). Both the National Security
Council and the CIA believe that the potential advances in Chinese IW
capabilities have direct implications for US national security.
Exhaustive research of Chinese information-warfare literature confirms a
goal of information dominance.

"The Chinese military views cyberwarfare as a way to overcome America's
superiority," claims Toshi Yoshihara, a research fellow on security
issues with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysts and doctoral
candidate at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Two years ago, John Serabian, the CIA's information operations manger,
revealed in written testimony presented to the Joint Economic Committee
that the US was indeed vulnerable to a major cyber attack from China's
military inflicting much more injury than just defacing government
websites, but creating truly damaging interruptions to the national
economy and infrastructure. The "Cyber Terrorism Threat" report does
include a carefully worded assessment that the Chinese government or
military currently lacks the ability to conduct this intended goal of
disrupting Taiwanese computer systems or US military logistics.

Some close observers of America's intelligence community believe it is
precisely this kind of mixed information, laced with naivete and denial,
that fits squarely into the demands made by Senator Richard Shelby, the
Alabama Republican who serves as vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, that a leadership shakeup may be required soon
at the CIA.

Just as America experienced in 1993 at the World Trade Center a shocking
preview of what the entire world gravely witnessed a few years later on
September 11, 2001, the next Code Red worm may prove to be much more
than just a mere nuisance to government websites.

(Š2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
<a href="mailto:ads@atimes.com?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20Alert%20issued%20for%20China's%20next%20cyber%20attack%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;200205221059.g4MAx6w11738@smtpsrv2.mitre.org">ads@atimes.com</a> 
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Tied to your PC? Cut Loose and
Stay connected with Yahoo! Mobile
http://us.click.yahoo.com/QBCcSD/o1CEAA/sXBHAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

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

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: Tim Kramer: "Re: [iwar] Some thoughts on the latest so-called scandal"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:IT.Scorecard:.Hackers.Still.Ahead.of.Security.Gurus.-.[With.comments]]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2003-08-24 02:46:32 PDT