IP: US mounts $2bn offensive against cyber-terrorists

[farber () cis upenn edu <farber () cis upenn edu>]

----Original Message-----
From:           GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date:           Saturday, January 08, 2000 8:48 AM

 US mounts $2bn offensive against cyber-terrorists 

Julian Borger in Washington 
Saturday January 8, 2000 
The Independent of London

President Clinton yesterday announced a $2bn initiative to strengthen US 
defences against the threat of cyber-terrorism amid fears that the country's 
computer networks have grown increasingly vulnerable to hackers. 
If approved by Congress, the initiative would fund the training of a new 
generation of "anti-hackers", capable of devising sophisticated security 
software and manning America's digital ramparts looking out for intruders in 
the country's strategic computer systems. The Y2K bug may have failed to 
materialise in any significant way, but the threat it posed concentrated 
minds in the US government. Mr Clinton said yesterday the Y2K experience "did 
underscore how really interconnected we all are. 

"Today our critical systems from power structures to air traffic control are 
connected and run by computers, we must make those systems more secure so 
that America will be more secure," the president said. "We live in an age 
where one person sitting at one computer can come up with an idea, travel 
through cyberspace, and take humanity to new heights. Yet someone can sit at 
the same computer, hack into a computer system, and potentially paralyse a 
com pany, a city or a government." 

As part of a "national plan for safeguarding America's cyberspace", Mr 
Clinton announced the creation of a specialised college for anti-hackers, to 
be called the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, which 
would offer scholarships in return for several years of public service after 
graduation. 

The institute is designed to staunch the brain drain of computer specialists 
out of the government to much higher paid jobs in the private sector. Other 
elements in the initiative include programmes already underway in the 
Pentagon's defence information systems agency and the justice department's 
national infrastructure protection centre to upgrade hardware and software to 
make it harder for outsiders to break into. 

Work is already underway on creating a network of electronic barriers and 
sensors built into government computers, which will raise the alarm if anyone 
tries to break in, and target the source of the threat for US 
counter-measures. The first 500 such monitors are due to be installed in 
non-military government computers early this year, and the system is supposed 
to be complete by 2003. 

Chris Hellman, a senior analyst at the centre for defence information, said 
the plan was announced in response to a growing sense among security experts 
that the US was falling behind in preparations for "cyberwar". The feeling 
was that it had become vulnerable to a "digital Pearl Harbour", a systematic 
hacking attack which would paralyse US computer systems, crippling the 
economy and "blinding" the government and security forces. 

There have been a series of spectacular breaches of security on US strategic 
computers. In 1998, an Israeli teenager called Ehud Tenebaum, aka The 
Analyzer, gained access to Pentagon computers thought to have been 
impregnable. He has since set up a company selling anti-hacker software and 
advice. 

Then last summer, hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence were 
found to have broken into Pentagon systems. 

Martin Libicki, a researcher at the Rand think-tank, cautioned against the 
kind of panic which accompanied the Y2K scare. "There is an upslope in the 
degree of computer crime and hacking. But I'm not sure it is off the charts."