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IP: US mounts $2bn offensive against cyber-terrorists
From: farber () cis upenn edu <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 18:07 +0000
----Original Message----- From: GLIGOR1 () aol com Date: Saturday, January 08, 2000 8:48 AM US mounts $2bn offensive against cyber-terrorists Julian Borger in Washington Saturday January 8, 2000 The Independent of London President Clinton yesterday announced a $2bn initiative to strengthen US defences against the threat of cyber-terrorism amid fears that the country's computer networks have grown increasingly vulnerable to hackers. If approved by Congress, the initiative would fund the training of a new generation of "anti-hackers", capable of devising sophisticated security software and manning America's digital ramparts looking out for intruders in the country's strategic computer systems. The Y2K bug may have failed to materialise in any significant way, but the threat it posed concentrated minds in the US government. Mr Clinton said yesterday the Y2K experience "did underscore how really interconnected we all are. "Today our critical systems from power structures to air traffic control are connected and run by computers, we must make those systems more secure so that America will be more secure," the president said. "We live in an age where one person sitting at one computer can come up with an idea, travel through cyberspace, and take humanity to new heights. Yet someone can sit at the same computer, hack into a computer system, and potentially paralyse a com pany, a city or a government." As part of a "national plan for safeguarding America's cyberspace", Mr Clinton announced the creation of a specialised college for anti-hackers, to be called the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, which would offer scholarships in return for several years of public service after graduation. The institute is designed to staunch the brain drain of computer specialists out of the government to much higher paid jobs in the private sector. Other elements in the initiative include programmes already underway in the Pentagon's defence information systems agency and the justice department's national infrastructure protection centre to upgrade hardware and software to make it harder for outsiders to break into. Work is already underway on creating a network of electronic barriers and sensors built into government computers, which will raise the alarm if anyone tries to break in, and target the source of the threat for US counter-measures. The first 500 such monitors are due to be installed in non-military government computers early this year, and the system is supposed to be complete by 2003. Chris Hellman, a senior analyst at the centre for defence information, said the plan was announced in response to a growing sense among security experts that the US was falling behind in preparations for "cyberwar". The feeling was that it had become vulnerable to a "digital Pearl Harbour", a systematic hacking attack which would paralyse US computer systems, crippling the economy and "blinding" the government and security forces. There have been a series of spectacular breaches of security on US strategic computers. In 1998, an Israeli teenager called Ehud Tenebaum, aka The Analyzer, gained access to Pentagon computers thought to have been impregnable. He has since set up a company selling anti-hacker software and advice. Then last summer, hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence were found to have broken into Pentagon systems. Martin Libicki, a researcher at the Rand think-tank, cautioned against the kind of panic which accompanied the Y2K scare. "There is an upslope in the degree of computer crime and hacking. But I'm not sure it is off the charts."
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