Forwarded From: "Prosser, Mike" <Mike_Prosserat_private> http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,23554,00.html?st.ne.ni.lh CIA: Cyberattacks aimed at U.S. By Reuters Special to CNET NEWS.COM June 25, 1998, 5:25 a.m. PT WASHINGTON--China and other countries have begun to focus on U.S. computer networks as a target for possible high-tech attacks that could cripple anything from telephones to electricity, CIA Director George Tenet said yesterday. As President Clinton left for a state visit aimed at strengthening ties with Beijing, Tenet told a Senate panel that the magnitude of the threat from a wide range of potential foes, notably China by implication, was "extraordinary." He cited the danger of intrusion into networked information systems, tampering with data, and "delivery of malicious code." "We know with specificity of several nations that are working on developing an information warfare capability," the chief U.S. spymaster told the Governmental Affairs Committee. Through high-tech attacks, "information warfare" would exploit growing reliance on the bits and bytes that weave modern societies together for everything from telecommunications to power grids and banking. "It is clear that nations developing these programs recognize the value of attacking a country's computer systems both on the battlefield and in the civilian arena," Tenet added. He quoted statements from officials in China, Russia, and an unnamed third country to "illustrate the power and the import of information warfare in the decades ahead." "An adversary wishing to destroy the United States only has to mess up the computer systems of its banks by high-tech means," Tenet quoted an article in China's official People's Liberation Daily as saying. Without giving the date of the Chinese article, he went on to cite it: "This would disrupt and destroy the U.S. economy. If we overlook this point and simply rely on the building of a costly army...it is just as good as building a contemporary Maginot Line," the French fortification that Germany skirted in World War II. Taken as a whole, Tenet's comments sounded a sour note as Clinton set off on a trip designed to promote what administration officials call a hoped-for "strategic partnership" with Communist-ruled China. In his prepared testimony, Tenet said unspecified foreign countries had begun to include information warfare in their military doctrine as well as their war college curricula "with respect to both offensive and defensive applications." "Many of the countries whose information warfare efforts we follow realize that in a conventional military confrontation against the U.S., they cannot prevail," he said. "These countries recognize that cyberattacks...against civilian computer systems in the U.S. represent the kind of asymmetric option they will need to 'level the playing field' during an armed crisis against the United States." According to "Strategic Trends in China," published this month by the Pentagon's National Defense University, Chinese military officials believe that the United States relies on satellites for 90 percent of its combat information and communications. Targeting these satellites "could cripple the United States at a low cost to China," the book summarized Chinese commanders as thinking. Tenet said the "battle space" of the information age would "surely" extend to U.S. domestic infrastructure. "Our electric power grids and our telecommunications networks will be targets of the first order," he said. Air Force Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, head of the ultrasecretive National Security Agency, testified to the same panel that attacks against U.S. networks were occurring "every day." "We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg," he said. "Even when attacks are detected and reported, we rarely know who the attacker was." Tenet identified potential cyberattackers as comprising everyone from foreign nations' intelligence and militaries to guerrilla forces, criminals, industrial competitors, hackers, and disgruntled people. Michael Pillsbury, a research fellow at the National Defense University who wrote a Pentagon study of China's interest in information warfare, said Beijing had the world's largest program of its type. "Judging by their military writings, they are saying that information warfare is the core of what they want to do," he said in a telephone interview. "This way they can leap over the obsolescence of their tanks, ships, and aircraft and focus on the vulnerability of high-tech forces like those of the United States" and Taiwan, which China regards as a wayward province. -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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