Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk@private> http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=60aaa14a-2a5f-47e1-9a8d-3fbb919529cc David Pugliese The Ottawa Citizen May 29, 2005 Step aside terrorists, teenage computer hackers and members of the Chinese military. Once thought of as being the most likely perpetrators in any cyber attack on military computer networks, they have now been replaced by an even more nefarious threat -- disgruntled Ottawa public servants. A war game scenario put together by the Department of National Defence details how federal workers, during a tense and lengthy labour dispute, try to bring down the military's main computer system. In the scenario, the attack comes from inside National Defence headquarters on Colonel By Drive, perpetrated by a civilian employee who embeds a virtually undetectable malicious computer code to disrupt operations. The exercise, dubbed "Scenario 10 -- Defence of North America Cyber Attack Variant," argues that it is entirely plausible that a smaller, deliberate attack by a Defence Department employee, such as corrupting data through various means, might take place during labour negotiations. "However, in a prolonged and vexed strike (like in the one featured in this scenario), a more serious attack (for instance, data contamination by a knowledgeable employee as illustrated in this scenario) could be expected," Scenario 10 states. The document was obtained by the Citizen through the Access to Information law. Defence analysts, as well as military and civilian intelligence reports, tend to focus on terrorists, foreign countries, in particular China, or hackers with no cause except to create chaos, as the usual potential perpetrators of a large-scale disruptive cyber attack. Scenario 10 does briefly mention that other nations, terrorists and hackers out to create problems are all potential culprits. Scenario 10 does not, however, detail why the threat from disgruntled public servants was elaborated on and turned into a threat scenario. "It is also possible that an employee who has been influenced by an outside agency or a hostile country or organization might propagate an internal attack," the documents add. A more serious threat, although less likely, would be if a civilian employee gained access to the department's classified computer networks, according to the records. The Defence department could not respond to a Citizen request for comment. Defence union chief John MacLennan said he was aware of the Scenario 10 report, but he described the events contained in the documents as unlikely to happen. Mr. MacLennan said it is doubtful that a labour organization would do such a thing, although he conceded there could be disgruntled employees either in or out of uniform. "You've got irate military (personnel) in there too," said Mr. MacLennan, national president of the Union of National Defence Employees. Mr. MacLennan noted that, in terms of security issues, his organization supports the department, adding that after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., his union, then involved in a labour dispute, pulled down its pickets around military bases within 20 minutes. The Professional Institute of the Public Service, which represents some of the department's scientific and technical employees, declined to comment on Scenario 10. In the past, Defence department computers have had their share of hacker attempts. In 2003, hackers were able to gain access to military computers on at least 10 occasions. In other cases, Defence department employees were being targeted by suspicious e-mails designed to plant viruses and other malicious codes inside military computers. At least one computer was compromised by such a mystery e-mail in 2003. In 1999, it took a 17-year-old high school student in the U.S. just 10 minutes to breach the Defence Department's computer system. "The DND site was an easy target," Russell Sanford told the Citizen in 2002. "It was pretty weak." Mr. Sanford said he went in and out of the military computer network over a period of three days. When the Citizen story emerged, Defence officials acknowledged the breach, but claimed the teenager was only able to infiltrate the department's Internet website, which did not contain any classified information. But the teen claimed that he had hacked into one of the department's secure computers via its public website. While he did not access or intercept any classified data, Mr. Sanford said he could have done so if he had wanted to. Instead, he left tips on the website on how the military could improve its computer security. © The Ottawa Citizen 2005 *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* _________________________________________ InfoSec News v2.0 - Coming Soon! http://www.infosecnews.org
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