IP: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight

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

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> Civilians "contribute" to Infowarfare against Yugoslavia.
>
> - -
> James D. Wilson
> "non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem"
> William of Ockham (1285-1347/49)
>
>
> - -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-cypherpunks () toad com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks () toad com]
> On
> Behalf Of Luther Van Arkwright
> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 1999 11:39 AM
> To: InfoSec News
> Cc: cypherpunks () toad com; iufo () world std com
> Subject: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight
>
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/stage11.sml
>
> E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage:
> Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight
> 7.19 a.m. ET (1119 GMT) April 15, 1999
> By Patrick Riley
>
>
> Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
> earlier this month that NATO's Web site had been attacked by Belgrade
> hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to
> his keyboard.
>
> Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
> an "e-mail bomb" to www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government's main Web
> site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
> site went down, Clark said.
>
> Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
> assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
> "played a part."
>
> He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
> conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
> questions about the role of civilians during times of war.
>
> The Internet Onslaught
>
> Although classified NATO or Yugoslav information is not connected to
> the Internet, tactics like e-mail bombing — sending mail non-stop to
> the same address until it floods its server — can still cause major
> trouble. Crashing public Web sites could cut off main channels of
> propaganda or disrupt important budgetary information that militaries
> do store online.
>
> "If you got the right access you could actually turn their machines
> off," stated Clark, who said he served in the Army and has worked for
> the Department of Defense and the FAA, and now runs a private firm
> which sets up computer networks. "That has a whole snowball effect."
>
> But he admits his was a low-tech attack. He likens it to "stuffing a
> T-shirt down your toilet and flushing it."
>
> "There's probably real hackers out there trying to do it, doing things
> that are far more sinister than what I was doing," he said.
>
> Indeed this appears to be the case. The Boston Globe reported that an
> American hacking group called Team Spl0it has broken into several Web
> sites and posted statements such as "Tell your governments to stop the
> war" and a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling
> themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites
> with black and red "Free Kosovo" banners.
>
> On the other side, in addition to the attacks on the NATO site —
> suspected to be the work of Serbs — Russian hackers have gone after
> U.S. Navy sites.
>
> Any damage caused by such stunts, however, is often quickly remedied —
> the Yugoslav site was back online soon after its early April troubles.
>
> And the biggest attack on Yugoslavia's information infrastructure has
> come not from the hands of hackers but from NATO bombers blowing up
> bridges used to carry wires, and even from the Yugoslav government
> itself dismantling communications systems to deprive its people of
> outside information.
>
> Vigilantes and 'Hacktivists'
>
> Still, encouraging civilians to participate in a diplomatic or
> military conflict "would set a dangerous precedent," said John
> Vranesevich, founder of AntiOnline, a Web site that tracks the hacking
> culture. He worries that vigilante "hacktivism" in the name of a
> nation could have War Games-like consequences.
>
> "You could have shut down communications to a country and all of a
> sudden it looks like something our country did on an official stance,"
> he said, adding that diplomatic relations with Beijing were strained a
> few years back when a site run by hackers Legions of the Underground
> posted a declaration of war against China.
>
> "I think hacking is a bad idea, no matter what it's directed at," said
> Peter Tippett, president and CEO of the International Computer
> Security Association, a Reston, Va.-based consulting firm.
>
> Such terrain should be left in the hands of the military, he said. "If
> the military thought it was appropriate to attack the infrastructure
> of Yugoslavia they would certainly do it," he said. "They can do it if
> they want to and they would be far more effective than a kid with
> tools of the Internet."
>
> The Department of Defense, the State Department and the FBI's National
> Infrastructure Protection Center all declined to discuss ongoing
> cyber-warfare. The Department of Justice did not return a call for
> comment.
>
> Clark hopes the military is doing its best to hack Serb systems. "It
> would seem to me that you'd want to use all your assets at a time like
> this," he said.
>
> He says his own vigilantism is therefore easily justifiable. "This is
> war and everyone should do their part," Clark said. "I think the
> illegality stops when you're at war, really."
>
> Brief Triumph
>
> But before Clark could revel in his victory too long, he got an
> unpleasant response from his Internet service provider. The ISP,
> Pacific Bell, cut off his service. (However, he said, he can still log
> into his e-mail account through a friend's computer.)
>
> While he expected the Internet and phone company might inquire as to
> his activities — especially if the mail had bounced back and clogged
> PacBell's server — he said he didn't expect such punishment.
>
> A PacBell spokeswoman said Internet behavior like Clark's violates its
> spamming policy — and war is no excuse for that. "In general, they
> don't change their policies based on what's going on in the world,"
> she said. "Somebody else could come back and say they need to spam
> this dog site because 'they didn't take good care of my dog.'"
>
> "How, in a time of war, can my ISP cancel my account for attacking the
> enemy?" he asked via e-mail. "This is not right. We can pound these
> military targets with bombs, but a private citizen cannot hack the
> enemies' Web presence? This is just ludicrous!!"
>
>
>
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