FBI on look-out for foreign government hackers

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33898.html

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus
Posted: 10/11/2003 at 17:39 GMT

How seriously does the U.S. government take computer intrusion? 
Seriously enough for the threat of foreign hacking to take a prominent 
role in new rules governing the FBI's national security investigations 
issued by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft this week. 

Ashcroft released a new version of the "Guidelines for FBI National 
Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection" on 
Wednesday. The new guidelines, billed as a response to the September 
11 terrorist attacks, permit the Bureau to engage in the "proactive 
collection of information on threats to the national security," 
displacing an older policy that obliged the FBI to have a specific 
investigative purpose before collecting information on individuals or 
groups. 

Like the older rules, the new guidelines allow the Attorney General to 
specify anything as threat to national security at any time. But a few 
threats are specifically hardcoded into the new rules: terrorism, 
espionage, sabotage, political assassination, and "foreign computer 
intrusion." 

The latter is defined as "the use or attempted use of any 
cyber-activity or other means by, for, or on behalf of a foreign power 
to scan, probe, or gain unauthorized access into one or more 
U.S.-based computers." 

The language is broader than a similar issue that debuted on the FBI's 
National Security List in 1995, when then-Attorney General Janet Reno 
added the "targeting of the national information infrastructure" to 
the list of threats, citing a danger of espionage or sabotage against 
U.S. systems by foreign powers. 

So far, there have been no confirmed cases of state-sponsored hacking 
into U.S. computers. But an investigation into a series of 
sophisticated cyber attacks on Defense Department and university 
networks beginning in 1998 led investigators to a dead-end at the 
Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, prompting some officials to 
conclude that the intrusions were supported by the Russian government. 
The case, code named "Moonlight Maze" at the time, is reportedly still 
under investigation. 



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