Posted on 10/10/2004 2:54:02 PM PDT by blogbat
Attack used FEMA site to take offline over 5 million other sites in official act of "cyber terrorism":
Millions of websites were recently brought down due to a security breach of FEMA’s DMAT servers, according to a source where the servers were initially compromised. Victims including multitudes of e-commerce and government sites. No one knows yet truly how deep the breach went.
DMAT is the Disaster Medical Assistance Team for the United States Public Health Service and is the medical wing of the NDMS (National Disaster Medical System), which serves the Department of Defense, Department of veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services and FEMA.
(Excerpt) Read more at xanga.com ...
Could this be part of the North Korean cyber-terrorism campaign they told us about?
The North Koreans aren't skilled enough to do this. It's either the Chinese or Iranians testing us.
I can see the Chinese having the skills but not the Iranians, here is some more about North Korea
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9649
Communist North Korea is believed to have trained up to 600 computer hackers to launch cyberattacks against countries such as the United States and South Korea, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry.
Computers are a rarity and Internet access is almost nonexistent for most people in the impoverished North Korea, but the Defense Ministry said in a report submitted to the National Assembly's national defense committee that it believes North Korea's intelligence warfare capabilities have already reached the level of those in advanced countries.
Computer experts in North Korea are trained in a five-year university course, and computer hackers are selected from these experts, it said.
One of their duties is to gather military intelligence from the countries such as the United States, South Korea and Japan, and to launch cyberattacks.
Hackers, possibly based in China, attacked computers at South Korea's National Assembly and the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in July, raising concerns about national security.
"We believe that North Korea's military intelligence warfare capabilities have reached the level of advanced countries," the Defense Ministry report said on Monday.
In 2002, then-White House technology adviser Richard Clarke told a U.S. Congressional panel that North Korea, Iraq, Iran China and Russia were training people for Internet warfare.
A spokesman for the State Department said the agency was looking into the report, but had no immediate assessment.
Oxblood Ruffin, an expert on computer security and hacking, said Tuesday that he was worried about North Korea's potential for damage. Ruffin founded the human rights group Hactivismo that helps activists encrypt Internet communications from China and other authoritarian societies.
Ruffin called South Korea's hackers "some of the most talented and relentless technologists I've encountered, so it makes me think that going North there is a similar, if nascent, group of enthusiasts, possibly even more motivated."
"The fact that some of the network activity was traced back to China makes me think that there is some possible collusion with the PRC," Ruffin told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
"I can't imagine that the Chinese would tolerate an intrusion on their sovereignty. We do know that the Chinese have extremely refined Netwar capabilities, so why not their clients? The North Koreans might even have instructors from China," he added.
But Toshi Yoshihara, a visiting professor at the Air War College, at Montgomery, Ala., noted that it takes practice and initiative to develop top hacking skills.
"In a country as closed to the outside world as is North Korea, where the freedom of the individual is curtailed greatly, the pool of talent is limited," he told AP.
He noted that China and Taiwan have attempted hacking attacks on each other, by both official programmers and devoted amateurs, but achieved little real damage.
"It's fairly low-level," he said. "It sort of slows things down a little bit," the way denial-of-service attacks gum up commercial sites.
He noted that in the event of an attack, "We do have to distinguish between civilian and government installations. Government computers are much more secure, redundant and robust."
South Korea is one of the world's most wired countries, with nearly 70 percent of all households having high-speed broadband access to the Internet, and computer hacking has increased dramatically in recent years, government statistics show.
Reports of hacking from South Korea into computers in other countries increased from 6,531 in 2002 to 14,063 in 2003, and then to 10,634 in the first half of 2004, the Korea Information Security Agency said in a report earlier this year.
North Korea's purported cyber warfare program has a powerful sponsor: paramount leader Kim Jong Il. He visited software labs and high-tech hubs during his rare trips to China and Russia in 2000 and 2001, and under his rule, North Korea has opened computer labs and made computer education compulsory at schools.
Ruffin, who is also a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, a group or programmers that monitors hacking activity, saw that as an unhealthy interest in computers.
"Recently the IAEA has warned of cyberattacks against nuclear facilities," he said, referring to the U.N. watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency.
"They don't need physical nukes to create problems," he added. "They could just exploit our network vulnerabilities. It's completely doable. Poo-pooing the North Koreans is easy, but is it wise?"
If no-one dies, it ain't terrorism, it's annoyance.
Criminy...the idiot who came up with the ridiculous notion of "cyber-terrorism" needs to be flogged in a public square.
In fact, they are speculating one of the reasons the attackers chose the hijacked DMAT servers as the source of their DDoS attacks was the very fact those DMAT servers are supposed to be among the best secured. The attackers apparently wanted to show they could inflict maximum damage and there wasn't much we could have done about it. Of course the manner of the breach has yet to be divulged- so before we declar the attackers as extraordinariy sophisticated, let's remember the terrorist hijackers on 9/11 used box cutters. It's possible the cyber attackers could have used "social engineering" to gain easier access, in my opinion.
This might interest you!
If they shut down the economy, it can cost lives in the long run, so I have to disagree with you about their official designation there. But still, the implicaions of hijacking the servers of FEMA should make us a little nervous on its own marits.
This sounds VERY urban legendish. It is highly unlikely for one server to take down "Millions of websites". OTOH, millions of hits, widely distributed, can take down one website. This is called a a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDOS attack.
I believe your "inside confidential source" might have his cause and effect switched.
Scenario 1. Did the DMAT server choke? Maybe. If so, then it was brought down, recovered, and came back up with little fanfare.
Scenario 2. Did "millions of websites" go down? No - there would have been a HUGE outcry about it.
Scenario 3. This is an example of disinformation. This is possible, given the misspellings, stilted language, and incorrect capitalizations in the original posting.
Scenario 4. The poster is simply mistaken. Most likely.
Verdict: I go with Scenario 4.
The Russians are some of the best programmers, and don't discount the frogs...
Speking of this what the heck happend to Adelphia coast to coast today?
Good question- I don't recall it either. My source unfortunately is not among the IT guys there but is one of the medical people. While they knew about it, it seems for some time, their knowledge of the details with regard to the attacks on outside computers is sparce. If any of you know someone in DMAT or its related agencies and can, it would be good to glean some more information - especially technical- about it.
Best keep an eye on those H1B jihadist contractors.
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