[iwar] Historical posting


From: Fred Cohen
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Mon, Jan 1, 1999


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Date: Mon, Jan 1, 1999
From: Fred Cohen 
Reply-To: iwar@egroups.com
Subject: [iwar] Historical posting

          

 At 08:19 PM 10/16/1999 -0700, you wrote:
>So...  how about taking [the original Jane's Cyber war article] apart >for
the rest of us and giving your perspective?

Hard to know where to start... Just to noodle around a bit, let me pick up
two paras in the middle:

   One of the first known instances of cyberterrorism occurred in
   1997 when the LTTE launched cyber attacks against Sri Lankan 
   government sites, including hacking into a government web site
   and altering it to transmit their own political propaganda.

This is terrorism?  We'd call this, uh, graffiti, back in my old
neighborhood.  If I recall correctly, the CIA's own Web site was hacked in
late 1996 or no later than early 1997, by what were apparently Scandinavian
joyriding hackers.  I'm hard-pressed to slap a "terrorism" label on what
was, at best, a public-diplomacy hack.

   Supporters of the Mexican Zapatista rebels have jammed Mexican 
   government web sites.

And Benjamin Spock used to park himself in front of weapons trains with a
couple of hundred other civil disobedients... who got more ink, or was more
disruptive?  Again, this isn't terror, this is inconvenience in an attempt
to garner attention.

   The American terrorist group, the Christian Patriot movement, is 
   active in the Internet.???

If this was in what the author delivered to Jane's, he's got some tidiness
problems...

   The Osama Bin Laden group utilises an extensive network of 
   computers, disks for data storage, and Internet for e-mail and 
   electronic bulletin boards to exchange information.

Here's where a little evidence would go a long way.  Not that they use
computers (rumor has it that they've mastered both the phone and Post Its
as well), but of how, say, BBSes were used.  The US Intelligence Community
wraps itself in knots trying to figure out how to do multi-level secure
messaging *within* air-gapped secure and vaulted environments... the real
story here would be how such a group were rendering their communication
cheaply interceptible in a digital medium.  But I'd like to see what the
author has seen, as primary materials--I suspect none... this is a friend
of a friend's anecdote, passed along yet again.

   Hamas operatives in the Middle East and elsewhere
   use Internet chat rooms and e-mail to coordinate activities
   and plan operations. Other Middle Eastern terrorist groups,
   such as Lebanon's Hizbullah and Algeria's Armed Islamic Group,
   also utilise computers and the Internet for communications and 
   propaganda. 

Hot4Hamas:  Plans to omb-bay the ailing-Way all-Way are complete-cay.
GazaMama:  Excellent-way!
MachoMan:  Do you like Britney Spears?

   Terrorists have also targeted critical infrastructure. Thus,
   for example, in the Summer of 1998, the LTTE bombed state-owned
   and private telecommunications facilities in Sri Lanka, damaging 
   buildings and disrupting telephone service.

Again, any shred of evidence to assess impact would be appreciated.  A
month or two ago, a guy bolted past the security gate at O'Hare, resulting
in the cancellation of something like a hundred United Flights, and the
disruption of thousands of travellers' schedules.  The airline ended up on
the hook for hundreds of overnight hotel bookings... I can't imagine what
sort of havoc cascaded through companies and families as connections were
missed, meetings cancelled, etc.  And this was one selfish individual late
for a flight, in all likelihood.  (As an aside, I think there'll be an
enormous opportunity in the anti-sensor business: once all US airports are
on a hair trigger with bomb-sniffing sensors, a cheap shpritzer of chemical
signature agents--not a bomb, just bomb-related chemicals--in the hands of
a flunkie recruited from any streetcorner could be used to down a whole
airport terminal for a day or two.)


So, were you Jane's, would you have pushed the original piece?  Or made
lemonade out of that lemon with a little creative squeezing on SlashDot?

Ross

_____________________________________________________________________
Ross Stapleton-Gray                     TeleDiplomacy, Inc.
director@e...                    2503 Columbia Pike, Suite 118
                                        Arlington VA 22204
http://www.telediplomacy.com            +1 703 685-5197 / 5257 fax