[iwar] [fc:Fears.rise.over.threat.of.hackers]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-12-27 21:35:26
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:35:26 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Fears.rise.over.threat.of.hackers]
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Fears rise over threat of hackers 
By Diane Plumberg Clay, The Oklahoman, 12/27/2001
<a href="http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=801840&pic=none&TP=getarticle">http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=801840&pic=none&TP=getarticle>

It is June, the children are out of school, and as highways and airports
fill with vacationers, rolling power outages hit sections of Los
Angeles, Chicago, Washington and New York. An airliner is mysteriously
knocked off the flight control system and crashes in Kansas.  Parts of
the 911 service in Washington, D.C., fail, supervisors at the Defense
Department discover that their e-mail and telephone services are
disrupted and officers aboard a U.S. Navy cruiser find that their
computer systems have been attacked. 
The incidents seem the makings of a mock terrorism exercise. All these
incidents happened in 1997 when 35 hackers hired by the National
Security Agency launched simulated attacks on the U.S. electronic
infrastructure. 
According to a published report after the event, the exercise, dubbed
"Eligible Receiver," achieved "root level" access in 36 of the U.S.
Defense Department's 40,000 networks. The simulated attack also "turned
off" sections of the U.S. power grid, "shut down" parts of the 911
network in Washington and other cities and gained access to systems
aboard a Navy cruiser at sea. 
Cyberterrorism experts have been warning since the 1980s about the
vulnerability of the United States to such attacks, but they were often
dismissed. That changed on Sept. 11. 
On that day, key professors from universities in Idaho, Indiana, New
York, Oklahoma, Florida, Iowa and other states were preparing a plan to
defend the nation against such attacks at a meeting in Washington when
the hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center's twin towers in
New York. 
The group was evacuated from the National Security Agency in a
Washington suburb and sent back to hotels. The group's meeting the next
day at the White House was canceled. 
Spreading the word 
Sujeet Shenoi, a computer science professor at the University of Tulsa,
was among the group. 
"It was like 'Independence Day.' ... I couldn't get a flight, so I
drove. Because of how I looked, I was afraid to stop. I drove 23 hours
straight," said Shenoi, who spent the first 21 years of his life in
Bombay, India. 
He is now a U.S. citizen. 
Shenoi attended the meeting Sept. 11 along with other professors and
representatives of the federal government, including cyberterrorism czar
Dick Clarke, to discuss the creation of a national counterterrorism plan
that would defend the nation's systems from remote or domestic computer
attacks. 
Since Sept. 11, Clarke has been promoted to special adviser to the
president for cyber security through the Office of Homeland Security,
created by President Bush in response to the terrorist attacks. 
Shenoi now speaks to churches, civic groups and most recently the state
security task force about what experts believe is coming. 
"People should be aware of the problem. I would not say being alarmed,
but we need to start taking actions. We need to be prepared," Shenoi
said. 
"It was a huge wake-up call." 
Shenoi said the country's interconnecting telephone systems and computer
networks make it easy for terrorists to hack into systems from remote
locations via satellite and disrupt operations. 
He said chemical plant output could be adjusted, aircraft on Federal
Aviation Administration radar could be rerouted or cut off from
communications and 911 systems could be jammed or shut down completely. 
A greater danger, he told members of the state's Joint Homeland Security
Task Force last week, was an attack on computer networks coupled with a
traditional strike. 
He said terrorists could set off bombs, then scramble communications to
delay rescues and send false information on alert systems. He warned the
group that cyber attacks are coming. It is just a matter of when. 
Cyber safety 
Shenoi asked task force members to consider a screening process for
cyberterrorism courses like his at Tulsa University to keep colleges and
trade schools from training students in this type of warfare, then
having them attack American interests. The process would have to be
accomplished without violating students' civil liberties. 
"It's harder to do in a democracy," he said. 
When Shenoi finished his computer presentation and the screen was
dimmed, one state senator put his head on the table, another sighed
deeply and the rest of the room sat silent. 
Shenoi assured them something could be done, but no effort would make
Oklahoma or the nation immune to terrorism. 
He suggested doing things as simple as placing firewalls in state
computer systems to protect them from hackers and viruses, limiting
what's available on the Internet and reducing the number of people who
have access to computer systems, especially from outside dial-up
locations. 
Shenoi suggested each college or university conduct a risk-management
survey of its systems to find potential weaknesses, then look at
affordable solutions to protect them. 
He said the federal government is considering the creation of its own
independent network to reduce access from the outside. The new network
would remove the operations of agencies such as the Federal Aviation
Administration from the Internet to eliminate its dependence on the
system and reduce the chances of tampering. 
He and others also want to make it easier to track and prosecute
cyberterrorists across state and international lines. 
"We've learned many lessons from Sept. 11, but one of the main ones is
how so few people can hurt so many. That's what modern attacks will be,"
he said. 
"I believe, ultimately, the American people will come up with a
solution. It may not be a complete solution, but it will be a ... good
one. ... People need to be aware of the dangers and the risk, but you
can't live in fear. We have to hope for the best."

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