http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=615531 By Bernhard Warner European Internet Correspondent 4 November, 2004 BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - Future widescale terror attacks will be executed by a person sitting behind a computer, not necessarily by a suicide truck bomber or plane hijacker, a United States lawmaker predicted on Thursday. Counter-terrorism agents are grappling with a new type of security threat -- a malicious piece of computer code capable of disabling the world's critical infrastructure from power grids to air traffic control networks. "If you're a terrorist, you don't even need the bombs. If you can control the (power) grids, if you can do it from a computer somewhere, you can do a lot of damage," U.S. congressman Tom Davis, a co-chair of the U.S government's Information Technology Working Group, told Reuters in an interview. "We're nervous about it," the Virginia Republican said. "The U.S. is not where we need to be on defending against this (type of threat). Europe is not where they need to be on this. "You don't want to wait for a cyber Pearl Harbor." With the U.S. elections over, a victorious Davis has come to Europe to discuss further collaboration between America and the European Union on fortifying information networks against increasingly damaging cyber attacks. SHARING THE WEALTH Davis said he would like to see America spend more of its $60 billion annual IT budget on network security-related measures. And, he said, he'd like to see more of that money flow to European and overseas technology companies. He said European and Israeli technology firms may be perfectly suited to win more security contracts from the U.S. government because these regions have been dealing with domestic terrorism for longer. "There is some interesting expertise here," he said following a keynote speech at a security conference in this Spanish coastal city. Moreover, he said, the U.S. has run up an $8 billion trade surplus in IT products and services. "That's all the more reason our government shouldn't just say 'buy American'. That just invites retaliation," he said, adding that as the world's largest consumer of IT products, the U.S. government should shop around for the best software at the best price. But an equally urgent matter is for the Bush administration to bolster ties with Europe in the area of cyber defences, he said. He pointed to a growing level of denial-of-service attacks on Web sites and online con jobs that appear to be the work of organised crime as a sign more international policing efforts are needed. If some of these cyber tools fall into the hands of extremist groups, he continued, they could be turned into weapons used to interrupt business _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
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