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fragile web
As society becomes reliant on the Internet, the need
to secure it has grown urgent. but the vulnerability of
cyberspace may be intrinsic, writes David sandham
COMMUNICATIONS networks and led to about 1,800 frauds. is also a significant concern
underpin modern society like Ironically, on the day it was about the level of access
the nervous system of a living discovered, Hannaford received obtained in some cases that
organism. The public switched a certificate saying it was fully would allow a potential adver-
telephone network, the Internet, compliant with the Payment sary to become disruptive at a
VoIP, cable television, Card Industry standard, which time and place of their choosing.
submarine cables, and satellite obliges retailers to encrypt data This is a huge concern.”
communications form the major sent over publicly accessible Cyber skirmishes have
information pathways that keep networks, but not over private already begun. In 1998 the
society functioning. lines. Both supermarket chains Internet Black Tigers, a
This system is under daily thought they were safe. But the guerrilla organisation, flooded
attack. Viruses, unauthorised cyber-criminals intercepted Sri Lankan embassies with
access, security breaches, spam, unencrypted credit-card data as 800 emails a day for two weeks.
phishing, illicit electronic it travelled from shop tills to The first cyber war between
surveillance, denial of service corporate servers, from where it nations may have occurred last
attacks and cyber terrorism are would have been encrypted and year, when the digital infrastruc-
on the increase. The very inter- routed to credit-card company ture of public institutions in
connectedness that the modern servers for authorisation. Estonia, including the parlia-
world depends upon has become The extent of the problem ment, ministries, banks,
one of its major weaknesses. is hard to measure, because newspapers, broadcasters and
Recent events illustrate the reporting is largely voluntary. telecommunications companies,
threat to commercial and govern- Victims of cyber-crime don’t was attacked. Estonian
ment networks, and the informa- like to discuss it, because hacked networks were blasted with up
tion that flows over them. systems damage reputations to 90Mbit of traffic a second for
“I’m not sure that most and cost customers. The US up to ten hours. Most of the
law-abiding citizens understand Treasury Department has traffic was part of a distributed
the magnitude of the threat estimated the annual profits denial of service (DDoS) attack,
from cyber-criminals,” says from cyber-crime at $105bn. in which a network of
Colonel Gary A McAlum, “I believe that is on the low end,” computers, perhaps one million
formerly Chief of Staff, Joint says McAlum. strong, was hijacked and used to
Task Force for Global Network flood the Estonian networks
Operations at the US Strategic WAR with requests for services such
Command, who recently joined In addition to organised crime, as web-page transfers. The
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a there are other murky presences attacks happened after Estonia
global financial services lurking in cyberspace: spies. offended Russia by relocating a
company. “There is a thriving intelligence agencies, the Russian Second World War
cyber-crime market for personal shadowy groupings that assist memorial. The attacks origi-
and financial information.” them, and the military of several nated from computers allegedly
In March, thieves stole nations, are all interested in traced to Russia, but the Russian
4.2 million credit and debit card mining information from the government has denied any
numbers from Hannaford and networks of target countries. involvement.
Sweetbay, supermarket chains “A significant amount of data This year’s conflict between
in north east US and Florida, [has been taken] from federal Russia and Georgia had a
respectively. The cyber-crimi- networks over the past few cyber-war component. DDoS
nals put software on computers years. I don’t think we will ever attacks disrupted access to
to capture credit-card informa- know the true extent of how many Georgian websites,
tion. The breach went much and exactly what was including that of the Ministry
undetected for three months taken,” says McAlum. “There of Foreign Affairs.
day. It was nothing like this even that protects Web commerce, but Today, machines get their own particular security information
three years ago.” government agencies hold a firewalls. Host-based intrusion management application or a