[iwar] Historical posting
From: Fred Cohen
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Date: Mon, Jan 1, 1999
From: Fred Cohen
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Subject: [iwar] Historical posting
FBI contacts hackers in cyber probe
The FBI is contacting several hackers in its investigation
into last week's attacks against major Web sites, as the
attorney general and FBI director prepared to testify before
a congressional panel about money they will need to fight
cybercrimes.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/ap/docs/216154l.htm
FBI investigation swamped with tips, continue to seek Midwest 'Coolio'
It's a name that keeps popping up as the FBI continues to
seek parties believed to have information connected to last
week's attacks on popular Web sites. Agents from every FBI
field office are involved in the investigation. One hacker
they are focusing on uses the name "Coolio" and is believed
to live in the Midwest. He was identified by investigators
at the private firm Securify and Stanford University in
California. Investigators have associated a name and address
with this "Coolio."
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/16/dos.attacks.coolio/index.html
T.O. firm may know hacker who hit big U.S. Web sites
A Toronto-based Internet company says it knows the identity
of a hacker nicknamed "Mafiaboy," who may be a cyber-vandal
who hit several major U.S. Web sites last week. "We do have
the identity of this person," said Colin Campbell, senior
vice-president of Internet Direct. "With the proper warrant,
we will give this information (to police)."
http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/home.html
U.S. says cyber-crime poses huge threat
U.S. law enforcement leaders said on Wednesday that computer
attacks were one of the fastest-growing areas of crime and
that continually updated technology made it nearly impossible
to keep track of the problem. Addressing a Senate subcommittee
on Internet security, Attorney General Janet Reno said last
week's attacks on major commercial Web sites showed how
important it was for the United States to devise a coordinated
strategy against cyber-crime. ``How we deal with cyber-crime
is one of the most critical areas we face,'' said Reno.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/025681.htm
Reno, Freeh testify on cybersecurity
Attorney General Janet Reno today acknowledged substantial
challenges in tracking the hackers responsible for last
week's attacks against major Web sites, even as the FBI was
contacting several vandals in its investigation.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/ap/docs/216993l.htm
FBI, Justice Dept Request Funds, New Statutes To Fight Hackers
http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144000.html
U.S. calls cyber-crime huge growth industry
U.S. law enforcement leaders said on Wednesday that computer
attacks were one of the fastest-growing areas of crime and
that continually updated technology made it nearly impossible
to keep track of the problem.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/internet/docs/218048l.htm
Racketeering laws urged Vs. hackers
The nation's top law enforcement officials on Wednesday
described ``fast-developing leads'' finding the electronic
vandals who shut down major Internet sites last week. But
they also acknowledged serious challenges in the manhunt,
saying the hackers were sophisticated enough to falsify
their digital fingerprints. Attorney General Janet Reno
said such a disguise technique ``makes it difficult, and
sometimes impossible, to hold the perpetrator criminally
accountable.''
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/ap/docs/218718l.htm
Web Attackers Chose Assault Computers With Care
It apparently was no accident the cyberattacks on eBay.com,
Yahoo and Amazon.com last week were launched from computers
in California and Oregon. Experts say these computers were
compromised because of their proximity to the intended
targets. Cybersecurity analysts said today that although those
responsible for the attacks are likely scattered around the
country, the culprits carefully chose certain systems -- as
well as possibly dozens more that have not been discovered.
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/internetcrime/2000/02/15/hack0215_01.html
Wave of cyberattacks target Latin American portals
Internet vandals are wreaking havoc in Latin America's fast
growing cyberspace frontier, knocking out everything from a
newspaper portal in Colombia to the government's election
Web site in Peru. From Mexico to Argentina, hackers have
left behind mocking graffiti on Web sites they've violated,
boasting of their programming prowess and sometimes making
political statements.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/037236.htm
Copycat Hacker Hits Virginia DMV Web Site
The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles reported that its Web
site was hit early Sunday with a mini-denial of service attack,
similar in nature to last week's massive assault on several of
the Web's best-known sites, including Yahoo, eBay and Amazon.com.
The DMV site was down for about 45 minutes, officials said.
Robert Heath Kasbohm, 26, of Haymarket, apparently a dissatisfied
customer, has been charged with violating the state's computer
trespass law, which is a felony.
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/internetcrime/2000/02/15/dmv0215_01.html
Hackers Continue To Mutate Attack Tools
Hackers are mutating distributed denial of service (DDoS) tools,
effectively rendering many DDoS scanning tools blind, security
intelligence service iDefense said Tuesday. These mutations are
affecting well known tools such as Stacheldraht, TFN, and TFN2K,
as well as lesser known tools like fapi, blitznet, shaft, and
Trank, according to a paper it said a hacker named Mixter
released Tuesday.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000216S0002
Tokyo police "narrow" search for malicious hackers
Tokyo announced today that a series of embarrassing attacks
on government Web sites that resulted in the loss or personnel
files and the addition of links to pornographic sites had
emanated from computer servers in China and the United States.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/006737.htm
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/reuters/REU20000216S0001
Hunting Hackers: How to Fight Back
In police work, sometimes the longest journeys end with
the shortest trips. That's what happened to Brian Koref,
who spent months at the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) tracking down a pair of Swedish hackers
who invaded U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, NASA and other military
systems, helping themselves to password files and other
sensitive data in the process.
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/000214EC1E
Ex-Commandos Fight Israeli Geo's Cyberwar
In a cut-throat cyberworld, it helps to have some crack
commandos on your side, which is what Israel's Geo
Interactive Plc says is the secret to its success.
Founded by ex-soldiers from the Israeli army and backed
up by legions of former military engineers, Geo has
developed a technology to pump video and audio over even
weak Internet links which finally began bearing fruit in
November. UK telecoms company Energis Plc paid 7.5 million
pounds to market the Emblaze technology across Europe and
Samsung bought a license to put Emblaze in mobile phones
and other devices which should be available this year.
http://www.foxnews.com/vtech/0216/t_rt_0216_14.sml
CIA Effort Focuses On Web Security, Privacy
The Central Intelligence Agency's new venture capital fund,
In-Q-Tel, has entered into a $3 million contract with Science
Applications International Corp. (SAIC) for development of
software designed to protect Web sites against "denial of
service" attacks and to make computer addresses invisible to
"sniffer" programs. In-Q-Tel announced its venture with SAIC
last week as hackers commandeered hundreds, if not thousands,
of computers and launched just such attacks, flooding Yahoo,
Amazon, Excite and other major companies on the Web with
traffic that temporarily shut down their systems.
http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/143949.html
DMS security cracked during testing
Information warfare tests conducted in September 1999 on
the Pentagon's $1.6 billion Defense Message System found
serious deficiencies in the system's security protections.
During operational tests of DMS software Version 2.1,
conducted last year by the Defense Department's Office of
Operational Test and Evaluation, an information warfare
test team "was able to penetrate all but one test site with
only a moderate level of effort," according to the DOD's
1999 annual OT&E report, released this week. As a result of
the failure, the Pentagon's OT&E director concluded that
DMS Version 2.1 was "not operationally effective."
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0214/web-dms-02-16-00.asp
U.S. says China encryption rules must change
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky pressed China
on Wednesday to abandon its restrictions on encryption technology,
which curb sales of everything from software to mobile phones.
Under regulations that took effect last month, all foreign and
Chinese companies or individuals using encryption technology,
which protects electronic communication from eavesdropping,
must register with the government.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/reuters/docs/217127l.htm
When states go to cyber-war
Digital weapons could change the face of warfare
... London 2015: Welcome netizen! You are accessing this on
Gatesweb, one of the few networks to have survived the First
World Web War. Planet Earth is still reeling from its
experience of the ultimate in stealth warfare - no bombs, no
bullets, no bangs; just chaos and the total breakdown of society.
In this war, the battlefield was everywhere and nowhere; a conflict
fought by invisible warriors moving silently to bring about their
digital Armageddon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_642000/642867.stm
-- 15 February 2000 Conspiracy Theories
Suspicions that the government may be responsible for the recent barrage
of distributed denial of service attacks are circulating on the Internet.
Some suggest that the attacks are the result of a classified exercise,
and others propose that they provided a "smoke screen" for the government
to place surveillance programs on computers. Still others wonder if
the attacks were staged to increase concern about computer security.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0214/web-conspiracy-02-15-00.asp
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34285,00.html Editors Note: Most
people who have a clue disagree with these theories.
-- 14 February 2000 Banks Had Warning of Attacks
Computer experts at banks and other financial institutions received
warnings about the recent DDoS attacks, but due to rules mandated by
their security network, they were unable to share that information with
law enforcement agencies. http://www.msnbc.com/news/370221.asp
-- 10 February 2000 E-Mail Claims Responsibility for Attacks
Attrition.org received an e-mail claiming responsibility for the recent
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The author also claimed
that the intent of the attacks was to scare Internet stockholders, and
that each attacked site had an insider who helped the attack along.
While DDoS attacks do not require the help of insiders, the claim is
being investigated. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34256,00.html
-- 15 February 2000 RSA Web Site Compromised
People trying to get to www.rsa.com were instead led to a rogue page
hosted by a server in Colombia. RSA's computers were not compromised.
Two crackers have claimed responsibility.
http://www.currents.net/newstoday/00/02/15/news2.html Editor's Note
(Murray): The compromised site, rsa.com, is not the current site name
for RSA Security; the new site name is rsasecurity.com.
-- 15 February 2000 PKI at DOD a Problem of Scale
Using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to protect Defense Department
(DOD) information systems would require an "enormous" undertaking to
provide the more than a million users with digital certificates, according
to the National Security Agency (NSA).
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0214/web-nsa-02-15-00.asp
-- 11 February 2000 RealNames' Database Cracked
A cracker broke into RealNames' keyword database and redirected all
searches to a web site in China. Credit card numbers and passwords
could have been stolen, and RealNames has asked its customers to change
their passwords. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34295,00.html
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/000211E9C2
http://news.cnet.com/category/0-1005-200-1547688.html
-- 11 February 2000 Melissa Resurfaces
Washington state's Snohomosh County government's e-mail system was hit
with the Melissa worm. The system was shut down while the servers were
cleaned up. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth335.htm
FC