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[infowar.de] Angst vor Hackerangriffen im Falle eines Irak-Krieges
Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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Es geht schon wieder los. Angstmacherei der üblichen Verdächtigen,
angereichert mit vagen Vermutungen ohne harte Fakten. FUD!
Das gleiche gilt übrigens für die erwähnte Studie des Institute for
Security Technology Studies/Dartmouth College, vgl. dazu
http://archive.infopeace.de/infowar.de/msg01673.html.
RB
Prospect of Iraq conflict raises new cyberattack fears
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/story/0,10801,74688,00.html
By DAN VERTON
SEPTEMBER 27, 2002
If history is a guide, any Bush administration plan to remove Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq would likely set off a firestorm of hacker
activity targeting U.S. networks and infrastructure. And those attacks
could be greater in number and affect a broader cross-section of U.S.
businesses than anything seen before, according to intelligence
experts.
Surges in cyberattack activity have typically accompanied major
international crises during the last several years, including the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Kosovo and the collision of a U.S.
spy plane with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea last
year.
However, any significant expansion of the U.S.-led war against
terrorism, including an invasion of Iraq, could unleash an
unprecedented wave of hacker activity, intelligence and security
experts said.
Eric Shaw, a former psychological profiler at the CIA, said he will be
watching for increases in activity from specific threat groups.
"Islamic hacking groups have been uniting over the India-Pakistan and
Israeli-Palestine [conflicts] and they are traditionally Iraq
supporters and anti-U.S. and anti-Israel," said Shaw, who now works as
a cybersecurity consultant at Stroz Associates LLC in New York.
A second group includes a mixture of U.S. and European-based antiwar
hackers, said Shaw. "Think about [groups] of young, liberal, elite,
Western-educated youth [coming out] against the war. It would be a lot
smaller than the Vietnam generation but could still be potent," he
said.
Moreover, a ground war in Iraq could spur other governments in the
region to launch sophisticated state-sponsored information warfare
campaigns. That's the conclusion of a study published two weeks after
the Sept. 11 attacks by the Institute for Security Technology Studies
at Dartmouth College.
Ruth David, former director of science and technology at the CIA and
now CEO of Analytic Services Inc. in Arlington, Va., said an
orchestrated attack exploiting well-known vulnerabilities could be
launched with little regard for precise targeting, and could cause
significant disruption and financial loss to the "softest targets,"
the bulk of which are in the private sector.
"Ironically, a serious attack of this type may engender even greater
public support for any military action under way and is unlikely to
seriously impede our ability to achieve military objectives," said
David.
The Bush administration has formally stated that it is the policy of
the U.S. to respond to cyberattacks by any means appropriate,
including military action.
"Such an attack could significantly debilitate U.S. and allied
information networks," the Dartmouth study concluded. That report was
written under the guidance of Michael Vatis, a former director of the
FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.
The real change associated with such a widespread cyberconflict is the
likely expansion of the types of hacker targets, said John Pescatore,
an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. In addition to
government and military networks, a U.S. invasion of Iraq would likely
lead to the targeting of news media organizations, said Pescatore.
"Given how media-savvy the Middle East has become, I'd expect to see
the large newspaper and television news sites targeted for both
propaganda-planting and denial-of-service attacks," he said.
A global cyberconflict is also likely to affect companies that are
considered American cultural icons, such as Microsoft Corp., American
Airlines Inc., McDonald's Corp. and other multinational companies
known for their U.S. roots, said Pescatore.
"Since Sept. 11, companies have had to re-examine the various types of
crises that can impact them, from bioterrorism to computer terrorism,"
said Steve Wilson, president of The Wilson Group, a crisis management
consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio. "However, it's not just the typical
hacker they have to be concerned with now. They can just as easily be
a terrorist target as any government installation."
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