Charleston (SC) Post and Courier May 10, 2001 Moles In Cyberspace Most of us know the Internet as an instant library and a virtual shopping mall. Now meet the Internet as a tool for spies. For the past three years, the Pentagon has experienced a series of repeated attempts by unknown hackers to take control of some unclassified but sensitive Pentagon computer networks. The hackers use a technique known as "tunneling" to plant command codes that allow them to have access to the networks and to divert information to unauthorized computers. According to an article in the current Foreign Affairs magazine, the U.S. government has made formal protest to the Russian government because the attacks appear to have originated at seven Russian Internet addresses. The author, security consultant James Adams, reports that the Russian government denied knowing anything about the attacks, which the Pentagon has code-named "Moonlight Maze." His report gives a new twist to an old story. During the Cold War both sides frequently dug tunnels to listen in on the other's secrets, imparting additional meaning to the term "mole" as applied to a secret agent. So the presence of moles in cyberspace should come as no surprise. What is surprising - and alarming - is the difficulty of determining the identity of the moles' employer and the damage they have done. Despite "the largest cyber-intelligence investigation ever" by U.S. authorities, Mr. Adams writes that our government still doesn't know "who is behind the attacks, what additional information has been taken and why, to what extent the public and private sectors have been penetrated, and what else has been left behind by the hackers that could still damage the vulnerable networks." This report comes on the heels of evidence suggesting that Chinese hackers have recently attacked American government and commercial Web sites in apparent retaliation for the loss of a Chinese fighter in a collision with a U.S. EP-3E aircraft off Hainan Island. The new information technology of the Internet and high-speed communications is hailed by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan as the underlying cause of the nation's recent strong economic growth. But it is becoming clear that in the field of national security the new technology is a double-edged sword. ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribeat_private
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 14 2001 - 23:26:50 PDT