Planned Counter Attack Against Hackers Of Top Web Sites - Industry Trend or Event

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Feb 14, 2000

Within a 72-hour period, the Internet portal site at Yahoo, Amazon.com, CNN.com, Buy.com and others were crippled by a flood of "denial of service" strikes (involving flooding computers with fake requests for data so that legitimate users are precluded from access to the site).

While denial of service attacks have existed for many years, technology advances allow coordinated automated attacks from many computers at once thereby increasing the risk for Web sites. Each of the Web sites has advised that no personal or corporate data were compromised by the attacks.

Over the past several days the companies have met in Washington, D.C. with federal officials and have involved the FBI in an investigation of unprecedented intensity and scope to determine the location of the vandals involved in the attacks. The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) is coordinating the investigation. The attack was anticipated and even predicted in Nov. 1999 by the Computer Emergency Reponse Team (CERT), a government funded organization affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University. CERT was created by the Dept. of Defense (DOD) and designed as a clearinghouse for Internet information. Lax security among Internet companies invited the type of attack encountered and will be the subject of a Cabinet meeting this week at the White House.

Some security consultants suggest that the identity of the multiple hackers believed to be involved will inevitably become known to investigators because of the number of individuals probably involved and through the usual failing of disclosing one's identity to take credit. Informers abound among hackers. When this happens, the e-businesses will aggressively pursue individual investigations and prosecutions in an effort to dramatize and publicize the criminal nature of the activity and the serious jail time which will follow conviction, along with tougher laws.