RE: Cyber terrorism is 'fantasy'

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Rob Rosenberger <junkmail () barnowl com>

Let's take a statistic of roughly 200 hard disk reformats per month
per air force base for numerous arbitrary reasons.  The colonel wants
a new OS, or the secretary can't get her machine to act right, or the
captain deleted CMD.EXE because he didn't need a program that just
displays a copyright notice, or the airman gets a hand-me-down
upgrade, or a contractor takes over a cubicle.  "Thanks, sarge.  What
happened to all the data?"  It's gone; I blew it away.  "Ouch.  Oh
well.  Thank goodness we haven't moved to the paperless office."

Let's take another statistic of 100 air force bases worldwide, times
12 months...  We can speculate our mighty zoomie electron defenders
reformat roughly a quarter-million hard disks each year.  And that's
just USAF.  Add the Army and the Navy and various purple-suit
agencies: I suggest multiplying this number by three.  We can
speculate DoD reformats roughly a million hard disks each year.

A million per year, and I didn't even talk about all the hard disks
reformatted each year by the civilian government.  Reformatted each
year by the Fortune 1000.  Reformatted each year by countless small
businesses. Reformatted each year by countless individuals.

Okay, now let's insert the word "virus" in this argument.  Let's
suppose a virus comes along and wipes out a million hard disks in two
days.  "What happened to all the data?"  It's gone; the virus blew it
away.

Go on: predict the mayhem.  How many quintillions of $$$ will we lose?

Rob


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-isn () attrition org [mailto:owner-isn () attrition org]On Behalf
Of InfoSec News
Sent: Friday, 30 November 2001 5:28 AM
To: isn () attrition org
Subject: Re: [ISN] Cyber terrorism is 'fantasy'


Forwarded from: Gary Warner <gar () askgar com>

The thing about viruses, is that so far we have not encountered a
talented rapid-spread-virus author who wished to "destroy the world".
I mean, Code Red was not nice, and Nimda was not nice, but imagine how
much less nice they would have been if they launched their attack, and
then formatted your C:\ drive!  Could they have done that?
Certainly!  Why did they not do that?  Because their purpose was not
to "destroy the world".  How many "end-users" in your own
organizations have triggered one of the recent mail-all-my-contacts
type Outlook viruses?  How many would be up the Proverbial Creek sans
Paddle if the virus had decided to delete their "My Documents"
directory?  or all their directories?  or look for all mapped network
drives and delete all files?

The fact that this has not happened is one of the greatest blessings
we have received, and yet, it has also lulled us into a false sense of
security.  Upper Management reads about the Love Bug virus, looks
around, and notices the world has not ended.  They then conclude that
the world will not end in the future.  Code Red?  No problem.  Our
servers survived.  Good, we don't have to worry about tightening our
security I guess.

My greatest fear is that someone with malicious intent *IS* behind
these viruses, and that they have thus far been demonstrating their
ability to create a high spread virus to prove their skills to someone
who may wish to pay them to "destroy the world".  What I was thinking
when I watched the Code Red spread was "what a great way to make a
list of drones/zombies!"  Launch my attack, and then start monitoring
on a Class B network for boxes that begin attacking me back.  Sense I
know the method I used to spread my virus, I now have a list of boxes
that can be instantly "owned" with a far more devastating payroll any
time in the near future. How many machines was that?  200,000?
300,000? 500,000?  What company, domain, or network could you NOT DOS
with 100,000 zombies in your control?

I know, I know, I am painting dark fantasies.  But I consider the line
in my job description that says "and other responsibilities determined
to benefit the corporation" to mean "assume a position of total
paranoia and prepare us for the worst".

Just my 2 cents worth,

_-_
gar




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