Nice to see the UK catching up. -- MW Electronic Attacks On Banks A Myth (12/04/97; 6:00 p.m. EST) By Douglas Hayward, TechWeb LONDON -- Accusations that criminals are using high-tech weapons to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from banks and stock exchanges are "pure imagination," according to Europes largest defense electronics research agency. Gangs of criminals and hackers were said to have extorted last year more than $600 million from stock exchanges and major financial institutions across the world by threatening a variety of high-tech attacks on mission-critical IS systems. These threatened attacks were said to include hacking, virus attacks, and use of radio-frequency weapons capable of destroying computer systems with blasts of high energy. But statements that cybercriminals and terrorists have access to radio-frequency weapons are nonsense, according to Michael Corcoran, principal analyst in the information warfare group of Britains Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, which is responsible for developing the United Kingdoms electronic warfare technology. "There are no radio-frequency weapons out there that anyone is in a position to use against banks," said Corcoran at a seminar Tuesday at the International Center for Security Analysis in London. Radio- frequency weapons are not yet a point of concern, he said. "They will be in the future, but they are certainly not yet. The reports in some newspapers last year were pure imagination." Corcoran also blasted the idea that the United States and its allies are vulnerable to a strategically devastating electronic and computer-based attack on their national IS and communications infrastructures - a possibility dubbed by some defense analysts the "electronic Pearl Harbor" threat. According to this threat scenario, the increasing dependence of developed countries military and civilian infrastructures on networked computers lets terrorists and rogue nations such as Iraq cripple essential infrastructures through electronic attacks. "An electronic Pearl Harbor wont ever be possible," Corcoran said. "If you look at the intelligence requirements to do it, they are quite horrendous." Tactical attacks capable of sabotaging important individual computer systems - such as those controlling air traffic control or water supplies - may be possible, Corcoran said. "But that is a tactical attack, not a strategic attack," he added. The agency is nevertheless convinced that foreign powers are already using hacking methods to conduct preliminary reconnaissance into the British militarys computer and communications systems, Corcoran said. It had traced at least two incidents in which military systems were penetrated, but computer audit trails were switched off in both systems, letting the hackers avoid detection. "We are going to be attacked," Corcoran said. "We have got to train people to deal with having no communications or perhaps having no computer system, or a much degraded system." Part of the problem is that Britains military systems change so rapidly that the Ministry of Defence does not know where the weak points are in its network, he added. TW
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