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Terrorists launch cyber attacks on US defence companies |
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Crime
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Written by Peter Warren
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Monday, 18 April 2005 |
Terrorists are using the internet to attack Western military and
defence targets, according to the author of a new book on computer
crime.
Journalist and internet crime specialist Peter Warren claims he has
found evidence that known terrorist organisations have been using the
internet to attack US businesses involved in defence contracting.
Warren, whose book Cyber Alert was published last month, says the US
Government has begun an urgent investigation into the cyber attacks
which are believed to originate in the Middle East.
The evidence of the attacks comes in the form of unusual flows of
internet traffic showing that concerted attacks by cyber ‘armies’ have
been made against the selected targets.
“We have been speaking to a number of people involved in the mapping of
traffic patterns on the data and they have told us that there would
appear to be a what are known as bot attacks coming from the Middle
East,” said Warren.
“One of the companies used by BT and the US Government to identify what
are known as ‘behaviour anomalies’ have confirmed that odd patterns of
data have been coming from the Middle East but declined to say any more
about it because of the sensitivity of the issue.”
Up till now bot attacks – bot is short for internet robot - have been
mainly used by criminals to blackmail gambling sites by inundating them
with internet messages. The criminals threaten to crash the lucrative
gambling sites unless they are paid protection money.
These so-called ‘bot armies’ normally are made up of networks of
household computers that have unwittingly downloaded a rogue computer
program from the internet. This programme then assumes control of the
computer and uses it to send thousands of automated messages, all
directed by the criminal or terrorist in charge.
Messages that are then added to those from other hijacked computers to
cause an irresistible flood of data to the target, known as a denial of
service or DoS attack.
“We have been told by credible sources that Hizbollah was inviting
visitors to its Arabic site to download a bot program that ‘donated’
their computer to Hizbollah so they could be used for bot attacks.
“We have also been told by technology suppliers to the US defence
industry that they have been selling large amounts of equipment to
their clients who have complained to them that their computer systems
and websites are increasingly coming under DoS attacks and that they
are being forced to buy technology to cope with the attacks,” says
Warren.
Hizbollah is a Shiite resistance movement formed for the liberation of
the Lebanon and other Israeli occupied territories, that became
notorious for the bombing of the barracks of the US Marines and French
headquarters in Beirut in 1983, which killed 300 soldiers of the
Multinational Force.
Bot attacks on the websites and communications of US defence companies
offers terrorists a tempting opportunity to combine an expression of
popular discontent with a technique that can disrupt and slow the US
military supply chain while also hitting the US at home.
In Cyber Alert, co-author Warren claims that close ties between Chechen
crime gangs and Moslem terrorists have led to the development of
funding links between pornographic websites and terror organisations.
The South Korean authorities claimed last autumn that North Korea has
recruited a team of 500 computer hackers to wage cyber war on the US
and other Western countries.
Cyber Alert is published by Vision Paperbacks
www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk
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