Foreign Hackers Take Big Bytes Out of U.S. Websites

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 4, 2001 | by John Elvin

The White House was among recent victims of denial-of-service attacks that blocked access by regular users. Denial of service results when a huge wave of requests swamps the capacity of a server. Vandals have crippled many large Websites such as Yahoo using similar tactics in the past. Some experts attributed the White House attack to "pro-China hackers."

United Press International (UPI) quoted FBI sources as saying "malicious attackers" based in China had launched millions of attempts to shut down or deface U.S. Websites. The "war" is expected to escalate as U.S. hackers have been joined in retaliatory attacks on Chinese sites by allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Argentina and Malaysia.

Hackers based in Eastern Europe (primarily Russia and Ukraine) have hacked into hundreds of online businesses, including banks, stealing more than 1 million credit-card numbers, as well as other valuable information. Thefts of 100,000 to 300,000 credit-card numbers have been reported from popular individual Websites. The thefts usually are followed with demands for large sums of money from the sites to prevent further invasions, as well as unauthorized charges to the stolen card accounts.

In an elaborate sting, the FBI lured two Russians accused of being hackers to the United States with promises of jobs and instead arrested them. Alexey Ivanov and Vasiliy Gorshkov, alleged members of one of several suspected Russian computer crime groups, are said to have hacked into numerous business sites with the intent of extorting fees from owners. They may have stolen nearly 16,000 credit-card numbers from one site.

The volume of attacks and sophistication of the criminals has opened up a relatively new career field -- computer forensics. Practitioners are adept at a range of computer-related skills and must have a wealth of patience and an analytic turn of mind. Businesses, the military and local, state and federal law enforcement are among clients of this fast-growing field of experts. Several institutions of higher learning now are offering degrees or certificates in computer forensics.