FBI Plan: Cybercrime Info Sharing

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41030,00.html

Reuters
1:40 p.m. Jan. 5, 2001 PST

WASHINGTON -- The FBI announced Friday the completion of a program
that seeks to combat cybercrime by encouraging companies to share
information about Internet attacks they have experienced.

Participating companies and the FBI would use encrypted e-mail and a
secure website to warn each other about new hacking attempts, computer
viruses and other Internet-based criminal activity.

By encouraging communication among tech companies, the FBI hopes to
reduce the impact of Internet crime, which according to one estimate
takes a $1.6 trillion bite annually out of the global economy.

The FBI is currently investigating 1,200 cybercrime cases, up from 450
in early 1998, said Michael Vatis, head of the FBI's National
Infrastructure Protection Center.

Attorney General Janet Reno said tech businesses and the FBI must
cooperate to fight cybercrime, and that the InfraGard program was an
important step.

"This will assist individual companies in providing a stronger,
better-informed first line of defense against computer attacks," Reno
said.

InfraGard started as a pilot project in Cleveland in 1996. Since then
it has been expanded to all 56 regional FBI offices and has attracted
the participation of 500 companies. Representatives of academic
computer centers and tech firms such as IBM sit on the board.

Participation in the program is free, Vatis said, but companies must
undergo a criminal background check before they are admitted.
Participating companies can remain anonymous if they desire, and are
not required to share confidential information.

"That is the key to all of this, that companies can share only as much
information as they want," Vatis said.

In addition to using the national online communication system,
InfraGard companies can organize local activities such as seminars and
workshops to better educate themselves about Internet security.

Vatis said the InfraGard system was used last fall to alert companies
to the existence of "zombies," or hostile computer programs, on their
servers.

Zombies are used to launch denial-of-service attacks such as the one
that swamped Yahoo and other websites with massive amounts of data
last February.

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