Re: A cyber-attack alarms the Pentagon

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: No-Name <labmanager () gmail com>
Date: December 6, 2008 11:31:44 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] A cyber-attack alarms the Pentagon

Dave,

I've heard a rumor about the way the WORM made it's way into the  
Pentagon computer network. If true, it was a simple but brilliantly  
effective method.  Someone infected thumb drives with the WORM then  
dropped them around the Pentagon parking lot. The employees, picked  
them up, took them into their offices and plugged them into their  
office computers to determine the owner of the drive.


Jerry

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 8:57 PM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: December 4, 2008 8:36:03 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP: A cyber-attack alarms the Pentagon

Cyberwar
The worm turns
Dec 4th 2008

From The Economist print edition

A cyber-attack alarms the Pentagon

BATTLEFIELD bandwidth is low at best, making networks sticky and e- 
mails tricky. American soldiers often rely on memory sticks to cart  
vital data between computers. Off-duty, they use the same devices to  
move around music and photos. The dangers of that have just become  
apparent with the news that the Pentagon has banned the use of all  
portable memory devices because of the spread of a bit of malicious  
software called agent.btz.

This is a "worm", meaning that it replicates itself. If you have it  
on, say, the memory card of a digital camera it will infect any  
computer to which you upload photos. It will then infect any other  
portable memory plugged into that computer (the cyber-equivalent, one  
might say, of a sexually transmitted disease). On any computer hooked  
up to the internet, this variant tries to download more nasty stuff:  
in this case two programs that access the hard-drive. Was it a humdrum  
crime of trying to steal banking details? Or something more serious?  
The trail has gone cold.

In any case, the malicious software (malware in the jargon) penetrated  
at least one classified computer network. The problem was severe  
enough for Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of  
staff, to brief George Bush on it. Officials are saying little more  
than that.

Kimberly Zenz, an expert on cyberwarfare at VeriSign iDefense, a  
computer security company that is investigating the attack, notes that  
it is not clear that agent.btz was designed specifically to target  
military networks, or indeed that it comes from either Russia or China  
(two countries known to have state-sponsored cyberwarfare programmes  
that regularly target American government computer networks).

Indeed, she says, by the standards of cyberwarfare, agent.btz is  
pretty basic; it is a variant of a well-known bit of malware called  
the SillyFDC worm, which has been around for at least three years. By  
contrast, a government commission warned Congress last month that  
"since China's current cyber operations capability is so advanced, it  
can engage in forms of cyberwarfare so sophisticated that the United  
States may be unable to counteract or even detect the efforts."

The most remarkable feature of the episode may not be the breach of  
security, but the cost of dealing with it. In the civilian world, at  
least one bank has dealt with agent.btz by blocking all its computers'  
USB ports with glue. Every bit of portable memory in the sprawling  
American military establishment now needs to be scrubbed clean before  
it can be used again. In the meantime, soldiers will find it hard or  
outright impossible to share, say, vital digital maps, let alone synch  
their iPods or exchange pictures with their families.




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