A Malaysian has been hit with federal charges for hacking financial institutions and possessing thousands of stolen credit card numbers. – A Malaysian man was charged today by a federal grand jury with hacking into
a Federal Reserve Bank computer network and possessing more than 400,000 credit
and debit card numbers.
Lin Mun Poo, 32, was arrested shortly after his arrival in the United
States Oct. 21 and has been in custody
sinc…
A mother is facing misdemeanor harassment charges for posting messages on her son’s Facebook account. The son, 16, said his mother hacked his account and posted slanderous messages about his private life.
– An Arkansas mother has been charged with harassment for accessing her 16-year-old sons Facebook account and posting messages.
The mother, Denise New of Arkadelphia, was hit with the misdemeanor
charge March 26, after her son, Lane, filed a complaint with the Clark
County Prosecutor’s Office. Acco…
The CanSecWest security conference’s annual Pwn2own contest claimed another set of victims, including the Apple iPhone 3G S, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
–
Score another for the hacker
community.
At the Pwn2Own contest at this
weeks CanSecWest Applied Security conference in
Vancouver, hackers have had their way with
the Apple iPhone, Mac and Safari, as well as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft
Internet Explorer. The iPhone fell courtesy of Vincen…
Apple has patched 16 vulnerabilities affecting its Safari Web browser as the annual Pwn2Own contest held at the CanSecWest security conference approaches.
– Apple issued patches for 16 vulnerabilities in Safari, including 12
bugs that could be used to execute code on a vulnerable machine and
potentially take full control.
According to Apples advisory,
nine of the 16 flaws rested in Webkit, Safaris open-source browser
engine, and all but one of th…
Ethical hacking is a process that utilizes the same techniques that malicious hackers use, but for the purpose of assessing security threats to your organizations information assets.
Notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez adds guilty pleas for cracking the networks of Heartland Payment Systems, 7-11 and Hannaford Brothers in one of the largest data breaches ever investigated and prosecuted in the United States. Gonzalez previously pleaded guilty to hacking TJX Companies, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes Noble and Sports Authority.
– Notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez pleaded guilty Dec. 29 to conspiracy to
hack into the computer networks of credit card processor Heartland Payment
Systems, nationwide convenience store chain 7-Eleven and supermarket chain
Hannaford Brothers. The hacks netted Gonzalez access to data from tens of …
The FBI unsealed charges recently against Ryan Harris, 26, who they say developed hardware and software tools to enable people to configure their cable modems to give them free Internet access.
– Federal authorities unsealed charges in Boston
Nov. 2 against a man they allege developed tools to help people steal free
Internet access by modifying cable modems.
Charges against 26-year-old Ryan Harris, who has residences
in Redmond,
Ore., and San
Diego, were unveiled Nov. 2. According…
In the latest legal twist, Gary McKinnon, the hacker accused of compromising computers at NASA and the Pentagon, may be out of options to fight extradition to the United States. A court in the United Kingdom today denied him permission to appeal to the British Supreme Court.
– Computer hacker Gary McKinnon may finally be heading to the
United Statesto stand trial on charges of breaking into
U.S.military and NASA computers.
McKinnon, who has fought extradition for seven years,
was denied permission today by a court in the UK to take his
battle against extraditio…
PandaLabs discovers a service offering to hack any Facebook account for $100. But security researchers say the site is likely a scam.
– PandaLabs has uncovered an
online
service offering to hack Facebook accounts for a fee. But would-be
customers may find out the joke is on them.
According to PandaLabs,
the service which was discovered this week offers to break
into Facebook accounts in exchange for $100. But researchers at Pa…
• Cyber sabotage and phone hacking rife, agent says
• Several Chinese workers caught stealing secrets
Germany is under attack from an increasing number of state-backed Chinese spying operations that are costing the German economy tens of billions of euros a year, a leading intelligence agent said.
Walter Opfermann, an espionage protection expert in the office for counter-intelligence for the state of Baden-Württemberg, said that China was using an array of “polished methods” from old-fashioned spies to phone-tapping, and increasingly the internet, to steal industrial secrets.
He said methods had become “extremely sophisticated” to the extent that China, which employs a million intelligence agents, was now capable of “sabotaging whole chunks of infrastructure” such as Germany’s power grid. “This poses a danger not just for Germany but for critical infrastructure worldwide,” he said.
Russia, he said, was also “top of the list” of states using internet spying techniques to garner vital German know-how which “helps save billions on their own economic research and development”. He said while Russia only had “hundreds of thousands of agents”, compared to China’s million, it had “years more experience”.
Opfermann estimated that German companies were losing around €50bn (£43bn) and 30,000 jobs to industrial espionage every year.
“China wants to be the world’s leading economic power by 2020,” Opfermann said. “For that they need a speedy and intensive transfer of high-level technological information which is available in developed industrial lands, if you can get your hands on it”.
The areas most under attack include car manufacturing, renewable energies, chemistry, communication, optics, x-ray technology, machinery, materials research and armaments. Information being gathered was not just related to research and development but also management techniques and marketing strategies.
Opfermann said internet espionage was the biggest growth field, citing the “thick fog of Trojan email attacks” taking place against thousands of firms on a regular basis and the methods employed to cover up where the emails had come from.
But he said “old-fashioned” methods were also rife, such as phone-tapping, stealing laptops during business trips or Chinese companies who regularly sent spies to infiltrate companies.
“I cannot name names but we’ve dealt with several cases of Chinese citizens on work experience in German companies, who stole highly sensitive information from them,” he said.
In one case, the police raided the house of a Chinese woman suspected of stealing company secrets from a German business where she was working, and discovered 170 CDs containing highly sensitive product details.
In a separate case a highly qualified Chinese mechanical engineer employed by a company in the Lake Constance region was discovered to have passed on information for a machine it was developing to the company’s Chinese competitor, who constructed an exact copy.
“As is often the case the man disappeared and went back to China – so often the attacker is way ahead of the game and it’s also hard to find out who they’ve been working for.”
Opfermann said although the problem was “huge and growing”, it was not being discussed, “because companies don’t want to admit their weaknesses and lose customers and they don’t want to ruin business opportunities with China. As a result we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
Two years ago the consultancy firm Corporate Trust estimated that around 20% of German companies – mainly small and middle-sized businesses – had been the victims of industrial espionage.The findings chime with fears across the industrial world about the threat of cyber crime and the corresponding increase in efforts being put in place to fight it.
In Britain last month the GCHQ, the government’s electronic spy centre, which estimates that the UK loses GBP 1bn a year to e-fraud, set up operations to deal with the growing threats. The Pentagon also announced it is to create a new “cyber command” and in May President Obama said he would establish a White House role to oversee cyber defence, saying the nation’s digital networks had to be recognised as a “strategic national asset”.
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
The microblogging service Twitter is taking legal advice after hundreds of documents were hacked into and published by a number of blogs.
TechCrunch has made public some of the 310 bits of material it was sent.
It posted information about Twitter’s financial projections and products.
"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker and anyone who accepts…or publishes these stolen documents, " said Twitter’s Biz Stone.
In a blog posting he wrote that "About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked.
"From the personal account, we believe the hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to this employee’s Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars and other Google Apps Twitter relies on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and more within the company."
Mr Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, went on to stress that "the attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps".
He said this was more to do with "Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can be a target".
In his blog post, Mr Stone underlined the need for increased online security within the company and for staff to ensure their passwords are robust.
It is believed a French hacker who goes by the moniker "Hacker Croll" illegally accessed the files online by guessing staff members’ passwords.
"News value"
A number of technology blogs were offered the documents for publication in what is now being dubbed "Twittergate" in some online forums.
TechCrunch, one of the most respected blogs in Silicon Valley, has set off a firestorm of criticism and debate over its decision to post some of the material.
It started things off with what it called a "softball" and published details about a reality TV show involving Twitter. Details of such a programme were made public in May.
That was followed by documents relating to an internal Twitter financial forecast that the company said is no longer accurate.
"There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us.
"But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them," wrote TechCrunch Editor and founder Michael Arrington
Mr Arrington noted the site received a deluge of comments on the issue and said "many users say this is "stolen" information and therefore shouldn’t be published. We disagree.
"We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also "stolen," usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company."
The TechCrunch founder cited examples of stories it has covered in the past that involved information it had acquired and also those covered by newspapers like the Wall Street Journal that had done a similar thing.
Mr Arrington said that he has also consulted lawyers about the laws that cover trade secrets and the receipt of stolen goods.
"Embarrassing"
Many in the technology industry said this latest episode points to the potent reminder of how much information is stored in the cloud and the vulnerability or otherwise of that data.
The hacker has claimed to have wanted to teach people to be more careful and in a message to the French blog Korben, wrote that his attack could make internet users "conscious that no one is protected on the net."
"The security breach exploited "an easy-to-guess password and recovery question, which is one of the simplest ways to make a username and password combination really insecure," said Phil Wainewright of ZDNet.com
"Unfortunately, users won’t wise up until the cloud providers force them to."
In a study last year the security firm Sophos found that 40% of internet users use the same password for every website they access.
The affair has put Google on the defensive because the information was stored in Google Apps, an online package of productivity software that includes email, spreadsheets and calendars.
The company issued a blog post. While it highlighted the need for strong security, it said it could not discuss individual uses or customers.
Twitter’s Mr Stone tried to play down the importance of the information being touted around the web.
"Obviously, these docs are not polished or ready for prime time and they’re certainly not revealing some big, secret plan for taking over the world.
"This is "akin to having your underwear drawer rifled: Embarrassing, but no one’s really going to be surprised about what’s in there." That is an apt apology," Mr Stone said.
At the social media blog Mashable, Adam Ostrow agreed.
"It’s another embarrassing moment in Twitter’s torrid growth, but nothing that’s likely to bring the house down."</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Shadow home secretary says he hopes MPs will send a message to the government that hacker should be tried in UK not US
The Conservatives will today use a Commons vote to signal their opposition to the proposal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US to face trial for hacking into American military computers.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he hoped MPs would “send a message” to the government that McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, ought to be put on trial in the UK and not in the US, where he faces a sentence of up to 60 years.
McKinnon is still using the courts to try to block his extradition and MPs will not vote directly on his case. But the Tories have tabled a motion expressing “very great concern” about the way the extradition system is working and calling for the Extradition Act 2003 to be reformed “at the earliest opportunity”.
The Tories are hoping that the Liberal Democrats and some Labour MPs will support them when the Commons votes on the motion this afternoon.
Ministers claim that the act, which affects extradition between the UK and the US, has benefited both countries and that the government does not have the power to stop McKinnon being sent to face trial in the US.
McKinnon, who is being backed by a high-profile Daily Mail campaign, yesterday asked the high court to overturn the refusal of Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to put him on trial in the UK on charges of computer misuse. If there were no UK prosecution, McKinnon would inevitably be extradited to stand trial in the US, the judges heard.
The court reserved judgment and said it hoped to give a decision in writing by the end of July.
McKinnon has admitted computer hacking and leaving a message in US military systems saying “I will continue to disrupt”, but his lawyers said his intention was only to cause “temporary impairment”, not lasting damage to the system.
They argue that his extradition would lead to “disastrous consequences”, including possible psychosis and suicide, because of his medical condition, which is on the autistic spectrum.
This morning Grayling told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “People on the autistic spectrum find it very difficult to deal with a big change in surroundings. To extradite somebody in that position to the US to a strange environment is undoubtedly going to cause health issues for Gary McKinnon. In the past, where there have been similar cases, we have seen trials take place in the UK.
“There is no doubt that an offence has been committed; Gary McKinnon has admitted that. But why on earth is this trial not taking place in the UK?
“I hope the House of Commons will send a message to the government that really this is not what the extradition system is supposed to do. These new rules were set up for very serious offences, for terror offences. I don’t believe parliament ever intended them to be used to extradite somebody with autism issues to face a charge like this.
“There are some suggestions that the home secretary has more powers to intervene than have so far been used.”
But the Home Office dismissed this claim. It said that the home secretary did not have the power to block McKinnon’s extradition.
“The case of Gary McKinnon remains before the courts. As such it would not be appropriate for us to comment on it in detail, except to say that this case has been subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness. The home secretary [then Jacqui Smith] gave very careful consideration before deciding in July 2006 to order extradition,” the statement said.
“It is important to be clear that, under the terms of the Extradition Act 2003, the home secretary must order extradition unless certain limited conditions are met. The courts have already said that those conditions are not met in Mr McKinnon’s case; and his attempts to defeat the US request have since been dismissed by the high court, the House of Lords and the European court of human rights.
“The information that must be provided by both the United States and the United Kingdom is effectively the same. The United Kingdom must demonstrate ‘probable cause’ to the United States courts, while the United States must demonstrate ‘reasonable suspicion’ to ours.
“Extradition is a key crime-fighting measure in our increasingly globalised world and, within what the law permits, we give maximum assistance to all of our extradition partners.”
Shadow home secretary says he hopes MPs will send a message to the government that hacker should be tried in UK not US
The Conservatives will today use a Commons vote to signal their opposition to the proposal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US to face trial for hacking into American military computers.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he hoped MPs would “send a message” to the government that McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, ought to be put on trial in the UK and not in the US, where he faces a sentence of up to 60 years.
McKinnon is still using the courts to try to block his extradition and MPs will not vote directly on his case. But the Tories have tabled a motion expressing “very great concern” about the way the extradition system is working and calling for the Extradition Act 2003 to be reformed “at the earliest opportunity”.
The Tories are hoping that the Liberal Democrats and some Labour MPs will support them when the Commons votes on the motion this afternoon.
Ministers claim that the act, which affects extradition between the UK and the US, has benefited both countries and that the government does not have the power to stop McKinnon being sent to face trial in the US.
McKinnon, who is being backed by a high-profile Daily Mail campaign, yesterday asked the high court to overturn the refusal of Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to put him on trial in the UK on charges of computer misuse. If there were no UK prosecution, McKinnon would inevitably be extradited to stand trial in the US, the judges heard.
The court reserved judgment and said it hoped to give a decision in writing by the end of July.
McKinnon has admitted computer hacking and leaving a message in US military systems saying “I will continue to disrupt”, but his lawyers said his intention was only to cause “temporary impairment”, not lasting damage to the system.
They argue that his extradition would lead to “disastrous consequences”, including possible psychosis and suicide, because of his medical condition, which is on the autistic spectrum.
This morning Grayling told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “People on the autistic spectrum find it very difficult to deal with a big change in surroundings. To extradite somebody in that position to the US to a strange environment is undoubtedly going to cause health issues for Gary McKinnon. In the past, where there have been similar cases, we have seen trials take place in the UK.
“There is no doubt that an offence has been committed; Gary McKinnon has admitted that. But why on earth is this trial not taking place in the UK?
“I hope the House of Commons will send a message to the government that really this is not what the extradition system is supposed to do. These new rules were set up for very serious offences, for terror offences. I don’t believe parliament ever intended them to be used to extradite somebody with autism issues to face a charge like this.
“There are some suggestions that the home secretary has more powers to intervene than have so far been used.”
But the Home Office dismissed this claim. It said that the home secretary did not have the power to block McKinnon’s extradition.
“The case of Gary McKinnon remains before the courts. As such it would not be appropriate for us to comment on it in detail, except to say that this case has been subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness. The home secretary [then Jacqui Smith] gave very careful consideration before deciding in July 2006 to order extradition,” the statement said.
“It is important to be clear that, under the terms of the Extradition Act 2003, the home secretary must order extradition unless certain limited conditions are met. The courts have already said that those conditions are not met in Mr McKinnon’s case; and his attempts to defeat the US request have since been dismissed by the high court, the House of Lords and the European court of human rights.
“The information that must be provided by both the United States and the United Kingdom is effectively the same. The United Kingdom must demonstrate ‘probable cause’ to the United States courts, while the United States must demonstrate ‘reasonable suspicion’ to ours.
“Extradition is a key crime-fighting measure in our increasingly globalised world and, within what the law permits, we give maximum assistance to all of our extradition partners.”
A recent wave of cyber attacks that crippled thousands of computers and websites in the United States and South Korea could have originated from inside Britain, experts have warned.
According to security researchers in Vietnam, the source of last week’s string of attacks by the Mydoom virus – which overwhelmed systems belonging to the US Treasury and the office of the South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak – can be traced to the UK.
“We have analysed the malware pattern that we received” said Nguyen Minh Duc, a director of Vietnamese security company BKIS, in a post on the company’s blog. “We found a master server located in the UK.”
Investigators said they had discovered new details on how the strikes took place by investigating and tracing back the attacks.
According to BKIS, infected computers had tried to contact one of eight so-called command and control servers every three minutes. These machines then gave instructions to the hacked PC – generally ordering them to direct traffic straight at victim websites, in attempt to overload them and force them to crash.
But these eight servers were themselves being controlled by a single source, which evidence indicated was located somewhere in Britain.
“Having located the attacking source in UK, we believe that it is completely possible to find out the hacker,” wrote Nguyen. “This of course depends on the US and South Korean governments.”
The findings contradict some earlier reports that the surge in attacks may have been coordinated from North Korea, a theory largely driven by intelligence reports presented to the authorities in Seoul.
Despite the news, government officials in South Korea are still trying to ascertain whether the strikes actually originated in the UK – or whether Britain was simply being used to screen the true location of those behind the attacks.
“We don’t know that the attackers were actually based in Britain, or mainly hacked a British IP address and used it for delivery,” an official from the Korean Communications Commission told the Korea Times.
Gary McKinnon, who hacked into US military computers, will suffer psychologically if imprisoned there, his lawyers say
“Humanitarian considerations” that have arisen in the case of Asperger’s syndrome sufferer Gary McKinnon mean he should not face trial in the US for hacking into American military computers, the high court heard today.
In a last-ditch attempt to overturn earlier court decisions that the 43-year-old “UFO enthusiast” should be extradited, his lawyers accused prosecutors of ignoring the “disastrous consequences” of facing trial and a possible lengthy prison sentence in an American “supermax” prison.
The case also comes as the Tories are expected to devote an opposition day debate in parliament tomorrow to McKinnons’ extradition, after David Cameron said he was “deeply saddened and worried” about the case.
McKinnon’s barrister, Ed Fitzgerald, told the high court: “The Crown Prosecution Service wrongly failed to address the specific human rights issues, and the humanitarian issue, raised by the claimant’s Aspergers syndrome.
“The CPS, as a public authority, had a duty to consider whether its failure to prosecute [in the UK] has inevitably exposed him to an avoidable and unnecessary risk of serious psychological suffering,” he added.
The hearing comes after McKinnon signed a statement earlier this year admitting he had committed an offence under UK law by hacking into 97 computers belonging to the US navy and Nasa. The incident, which the US government says is the “biggest military hack of all time” and cost more than $700,000 (£430,000) in repairs, has led to talks between UK prosecutors and the US department of justice since charges were originally brought against the 43-year-old in New Jersey in 2002.
Although previous attempts to halt the extradition – which reached the House of Lords last year – failed, McKinnon’s lawyers have since obtained a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome after consulting two psychiatrists last year.
“Both experts referred to the grave risk to his health if he was extradited to the US, and [autism expert] Professor [Simon] Baron-Cohen referred to the risk to his life,” Fitzgerald said. “[The director of public prosecutions] failed to confront the human rights arguments for prosecutions in this country rather than in the US,” Fitzgerald added.
Both former home secretary Jacqui Smith and the current home secretary, Alan Johnson, have said they would comply with US requests for McKinnon’s extradition, while prosecutors argue that although McKinnon has admitted to “computer misuse” under UK law, it is less serious than the offence of “computer fraud” alleged against him in the US
The CPS, which defended its positiontoday , claims that the damage caused by the offence took place in the US, and that the investigation and most of the witnesses and evidence were located there. In February the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said there was not enough evidence to try McKinnon in the UK, an argument which McKinnon’s lawyers deny.
“This was inconsistent with the CPS’s own finding that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute,” Fitzgerald said. “McKinnon’s computer hacking conduct all took place in the UK, insofar as he was located here and using a computer in his home in the UK when he gained unauthorised access to the US systems.”
McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, is described as “vulnerable” and “misguided” by his supporters, who contrast the efforts to extradite him with terrorist suspects who have been kept in the UK.
“I will not give up this fight until the government intervenes to protect my vulnerable son,” McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, said. “When considering the extradition of Abu Hamza, the then home secretary said ‘Had we evidence in this country of a crime committed here then of course the police and the attorney general would have taken action’. Well, if that’s the approach for a convicted terrorist, why not for a gentle, misguided Asperger’s sufferer like Gary?”
Intelligence service claims document shows hackers across border waged internet war on Seoul and the US
South Korea has obtained intelligence that North Korea ordered a military institute of computer hackers known as Lab 110 to “destroy” its neighbour’s communications networks last month, news reports said.
The National Intelligence Service told parliament of its finding on Friday, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing evidence the north was behind cyber attacks that paralysed major South Korean and US websites in recent days.
The newspaper, citing unidentified members of the parliament’s intelligence committee, said Lab 110, which is affiliated with the north’s defence ministry, received an order to “destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant”.
The JoongAng Ilbo said Lab 110 specialised in hacking and spreading malicious programmes.
The NIS – South Korea’s main spy agency – said it could not confirm the report. Calls by Associated Press to several key intelligence committee members went unanswered.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency carried a similar report, saying the NIS obtained a North Korean document issuing the order on 7 June. The report, quoting an unidentified senior ruling party official, said the North Korean institute was affiliated with the people’s army.
The state-run Korea Communications Commission said it had identified and blocked five internet protocol (IP) addresses in five countries used to distribute computer viruses that caused the wave of website outages, which began in the US on 4 July.
The addresses point to computers distributing the virus that triggered the “denial of service” attacks in which many computers try to connect to a single site at the same time, overwhelming the server. They were in Austria, Georgia, Germany, South Korea and the US, a commission official said on condition of anonymity.
The attacks targeted high-profile websites, including those of the White House and South Korea’s presidential Blue House.
Though fingers were immediately pointed at the north, the IP addresses themselves provide little in the way of clarity. It is likely the hackers used the addresses to conceal their identities – for instance, by accessing the computers from a remote location. IP addresses can also be faked or masked, hiding a computer’s true location.
South Korean media reported in May that a North Korean internet warfare unit was trying to hack into American and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service. The Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the north had between 500 and 1,000 hackers.
Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in recent days that the NIS also suspects North Korea because of a threat it made in state media last month where it boasted of being “fully ready for any form of hi-tech war”.
The fact that some of the attacked sites – such as that of the ruling party and the office of President Lee Myung-bak – have links to the South Korean government’s hardline policies toward the north were further cited.
The north has drawn repeated international rebukes in recent months for threats and actions seen as provocative by the international community. Those include a nuclear test in May and short-range ballistic missile launches on 4 July.
• White House, Pentagon and treasury targeted
• Seoul spy agency accuses Pyongyang of being culprit
A paralysing barrage of electronic cyber attacks has been let loose on government computers and networks in the US and South Korea, including the White House and Pentagon, underscoring the growth in assaults against vital state infrastructure.
Other targets affected by one of the most serious cyber attacks to hit the US included the New York stock exchange, the national security agency, homeland security department, state department and the Washington Post. In South Korea, the presidential Blue House came under fire from the rain of electronic interference, along with banks, government computers and media.
South Korean intelligence officials quickly pointed the finger at North Korea, or pro-Pyongyang forces. But computer security analysts in Seoul said that they had tracked the attack as an updated version of the Russian MyDoom virus – the world’s fastest spreading virus when it was first unleashed in 2004.
The new type of the virus appeared on Saturday in the US when it targeted a number of key US government institutions in a so-called denial of service attack, which bombards and jams networks with messages from infected computers, making them inaccessible. Two government officials acknowledged that sites belonging to the US treasury and secret service were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their internet service providers to resolve the problem.
Also hit was the US federal trade commission and the transportation department. So resilient was the attack that some sites were down for two days, while others are reported to be still suffering problems. The White House and Pentagon apparently deflected the incoming gremlins without major disruption.
A second wave of attacks began on Tuesday, targeting South Korean institutions. Both the US and South Korea suffer thousands of computer attacks daily, but rarely on this scale.
Cyber warfare is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most contentious security issues, with the US and Russia split over whether a treaty is required to formally ban it in international law, in a similar way to chemical weapons. Experts have warned that the world is confronting a “cyber arms race”, with Russia and China being the biggest global menaces.
According to AhnLab, a computer security consultancy in Seoul that has analysed the computer worm, it is an updated version of MyDoom that not only contains lists of the sites to be attacked, but also compromises the infected computer.
Others who examined the virus’s code said that it listed 13 South Korean and 23 US computer networks, although the writers had included the ability to add new targets at will.
South Korea’s main spy agency told MPs it believed that North Korea was behind the attacks. John Bumgarner, director of research at the US Cyber Consequences Unit, said: “There’s been a lot of chatter recently about cyber war. The North Koreans may have felt they were not getting enough attention launching missiles, so they moved into another potential warfare – cyber. It’s a form of sabre rattling. But did the North Koreans launch it themselves, or did someone do it for them?”
Asia has become the most active cyber-war front. North Korea is understood to have set up a computer warfare unit in the late 1980s, mirroring China’s military investment in cyber warfare capability.
The first versions of MyDoom were traced originally to Russia. Both western and Russian security firms, which examined version one of the virus, said they were certain it had originated there.
Analysts studying the US outage said the fact that government websites were still affected three days later indicated an unusually sophisticated attack.
But Professor Peter Sommer, an expert on cyber-terrorism at the London School of Economics, warned against jumping to immediate conclusions about the source of the attacks.
“Even if you are right about the fact of being attacked, initial diagnoses are often wrong,” he said.
Estonia v Russia
In 2007 a flood of bogus visits from computers worldwide brought down Estonian media, banking and government websites. The “denial of service” attack came days after a row with ethnic Russians over a Red Army statue.
Russia v Georgia
In 2008 another denial of service attack, this time against Georgia, coincided with Russia’s military advance against the former Soviet republic.
China v US
Last year a US congressional panel reported that Chinese hackers regularly targeted networks and databases used by the US government and American defence contractors.
