[ISN] Sri Lanka plays leading role as APCERT conducts regional cyber crimes drill exercise

http://www.dailymirror.lk/print/index.php/business/127-local/2646-sri-lanka-plays-leading-role-as-apcert-conducts-regional-cyber-crimes-drill-exercise.html

Daily Mirror
02 February 2010

The Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) completed 
its annual drill to test the response capability of leading Computer 
Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) from Asia Pacific economies 
recently (28 January).

The theme of the drill was Fighting Cyber Crimes with Financial 
Incentives. The objective of the drill is for participating teams to 
exercise incident response handling arrangements, locally and 
internationally, to mitigate the impact of ongoing internet based 
attacks and to enable better coordination of teams in the region in 
tackling cyber incidents.

In this year's scenarios, financial web sites handling online 
transactions, including e-banking, e-auction and stock trading were 
under different kinds of attack by cyber criminals, with an aim to 
paralyse online business activities, to compromise user credentials and 
to transfer money to fuel the underground economy.

Criminals are capitalising on the popularity of online business, which 
has become a profitable revenue stream for the underground economy. 
Criminals use professionally developed botnets (networks of zombie 
computers) to obtain login credentials, to host phishing sites and to 
launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Victim computers 
may be compromised and become part of a botnet when users browse 
web-sites infected by malware.

Sixteen teams from 14 economies (Australia, Brunei, China, Chinese 
Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, 
Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) participated in the drill. They 
responded to simulated incidents and shared information to detect, 
analyse the malware. They also took action to shut down or block systems 
hosting phishing sites or involved in DDoS attacks across the region.

"This is the sixth drill organised by APCERT members," said Roy Ko, 
Chair of APCERT. "The drill is important because cyber attacks are 
borderless. It is vital for every Computer Security Incident Response 
Team (CSIRT) to share information and experience on cross-border 
incident handling, to refine and test the points of contacts and 
procedures, and to respond to active internet attacks in progress. The 
capability to organise an annual drill verifies our competence to 
protect our own cyber security and the security of our neighbours".

BKIS (Vietnam) and SLCERT (Sri Lanka) were the key contributors to the 
scenarios and artefact design.

"It is encouraging that more teams participated in the drill this year, 
with many other teams and organisations joining in as observers to learn 
from this exercise," added Ko.

APCERT was established by leading national CSIRTs from the economies of 
the Asia Pacific region, to improve cooperation, response and 
information sharing among CSIRTs in the region. APCERT consists of 23 
CSIRTs from 16 economies.


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