Cyberterrorists can byte more than the US can chew

The results were frightening. This attack, run by a set of people using standard Internet techniques, would have basically shut down the command-and-control capability in the Pacific theatre for some considerable period of time, a defence official involved in the game was quoted as saying.

To make the game realistic, a team of NSA computer specialists called the Red Team prepared for months before targeting computers used by the US military forces in the Pacific and the United States. Posing as surrogates for North Korea, the hackers crashed the Pacific Command network and forced Washington to deal with the communist regime in Pyongyong.

Based in Hawaii and other parts of the United States, the invading hacker team coasted into US military computer networks using technology like network-scanning software, intrusion tools, and password-breaking log-in scripts easily available on the Internet.

The most disturbing part, asfar as the Pentagon was concerned, was that all but one of the attacking teams the invasion involved some 50 to 75 hackers remained undiscovered.

They could not be located or identified by FBI agents who joined a Pentagon tracking team. The military implications are only part of the problem.

Experts now acknowledge that a cyber attack can take apart most things Americans take for granted, from a heart pacemaker and garage door opener to air traffic control systems and utilities. Specifically, experts say, cyberterrorists can crack an aircraft8217;s in-cockpit sensors or alter the formulas of medication at pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The frightening scenario has been known for some time, but for months officials were under the illusion that hackers could be traced and punished. In stray intrusions into the American security systems, an Israeli and an Argentinean youth have in recent times been hauled up. But the Red Team proved more elusive.

Its a very, very difficult security environment when you gothrough different hosts and different countries and then pop up on the doorstep of the Keesler Air Force Base Mississippi and then go from there into Cincpac, the official said.

Potential hacker break-ins have so scared the administration that the President has appointed a commission on critical infrastructure protection. Congressional panels have also had sittings on the Hill on cyber threats and how to stop or minimise the dangers from hackers. George Washington University has a Terrorism Studies Program with a paper on Cyber-Terrorism and Information Warfare.

But nothing can prepare for the real thing. Even in the simulated game, the hackers stopped short of knocking down the American power grid, but a refereeing team which studied the attack agreed the invasion would definitely have bumped it. Already, the definition of terrorism is having to be enlarged.

No more is the terrorist one bearing the AK-47 or a canister of sarin gas. While the motivations remain the same, we are now facing new andunfamiliar weapons. The intelligence systems, tactics, security procedures and equipment that were once expected to protect people, systems, and nations, are powerless against this new, and very devastating weapon. This enemy attacks us not with guns and gas but with one8217;s and zero8217;s, says security and intelligence expert Barry Collins.