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Syndicate: Bakotin: Russian hackers steal


Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 01:51:00 +0200 (CEST)
From: Zvonimir Bakotin <zone@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Syndicate: Russian hackers steal US weapons secrets


THE SUNDAY TIMES http://www.sunday-times.co.uk
FOREIGN NEWS

Photo Caption: Cyber assault - Clinton wants an extra $600m to combat 
threats such as Moonlight Maze

Russian hackers steal US weapons secrets

by Matthew Campbell
Washington

AMERICAN officials believe Russia may have stolen some of the nation's most 
sensitive military secrets, including weapons guidance systems and naval 
intelligence codes, in a concerted espionage offensive that investigators 
have called operation Moonlight Maze.

The intelligence heist, that could cause damage to America in excess of that 
caused by Chinese espionage in nuclear laboratories, involved computer 
hacking over the past six months.

This was so sophisticated and well co-ordinated that security experts trying 
to build ramparts against further incursions believe America may be losing 
the world's first "cyber war".

Investigators suspect Russia is behind the series of "hits" against American 
computer systems since January. In one case, a technician trying to track a 
computer intruder watched in amazement as a secret document from a naval 
facility was "hijacked" to Moscow from under his nose.

American experts have long warned of a "digital Pearl Harbor" in which an 
enemy exploits America's reliance on computer technology to steal secrets or 
spread chaos as effectively as any attack using missiles and bombs.

In a secret briefing on Moonlight Maze, John Hamre, the deputy defence 
secretary, told a congressional committee: "We are in the middle of a cyber 
war."

Besides military computer systems, private research and development 
institutes have been plundered in the same operation. Such institutes are 
reluctant to discuss losses, which experts claim may amount to hundreds of 
millions of dollars.

"We're no longer dealing with a world of disgruntled teenagers," said a 
White House official, referring to previous cases of computer hacking in 
which pranksters have been found responsible for incursions. "It is 
impossible to overstate the seriousness of this problem. The president is 
very concerned about it."

The offensive began early this year, when a startling new method of hacking 
into American computer systems was detected. A military computer server
near San Antonio, Texas, was "probed" for several days by hackers who had
entered the system through an overseas site on the internet.

Dozens of infiltrations ensued at other military facilities and even at the 
Pentagon in Washington. When research laboratories also reported incursions
using the internet technique, officials realised that a "cyber invasion"
was under way.

"There were deliberate and highly co-ordinated attacks occurring in our 
defence department systems that appeared to be coming from one country," 
said Curt Weldon, chairman of a congressional committee for military 
research and development. "Such a thing has never happened before. It's very 
real and very alarming."

Even top secret military installations whose expertise is intelligence 
security have been breached. At the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
(Spawar), a unit in San Diego, California, that specialises in safeguarding
naval intelligence codes, Ron Broersma, an engineer, was alerted to the
problem when a computer print job took an unusually long time.

To his amazement, monitoring tools showed that the file had been removed 
from the printing queue and transmitted to an internet server in Moscow 
before being sent back to San Diego. "It turned out to be a real tough 
problem for us," he told a private computer seminar last month.

It is not clear precisely what information was contained in the stolen 
document. Beyond its role in naval intelligence, Spawar is also responsible 
for providing electronic security systems for the Marine Corps and federal 
agencies. It is suspected that several other intrusions had gone undetected.

Oleg Kalugin, a former head of Soviet counterintelligence now resident in 
Maryland, said such facilities were prime targets for Russian intelligence. 
He said the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, a
former KGB unit that specialises in electronic eavesdropping, was certain to 
be exploiting the internet for spying on America. "That's what they're good 
at," he said.

America's high-precision technologies, including weapons guidance systems, 
are of particular interest to a country such as Russia where economic woes 
have prompted crippling cutbacks in funding for military research. "Russia 
is quite good at producing technology but can't afford to finance the 
research," said Kalugin. "It's easier to steal it."

The computer assaults have given fresh impetus to measures ordered by 
Clinton more than a year ago to protect the country's electronic 
infrastructure. Alerted to the threat of Moonlight Maze, the president has 
called for an extra $600m to help fund a variety of initiatives, including 
an infrastructure protection centre in the FBI to gauge the vulnerability of 
computer systems to attack.

He has ordered the military to develop its own information warfare 
capabilities to respond to such attacks. But Weldon, describing dependence 
on computer systems as "the Achilles heel of developed nations", said this 
is not enough. He is advocating the creation of a unit in the Pentagon under 
a senior commander to oversee the defence of computer systems.

According to other experts, America has been so preoccupied with beating the 
Y2K (year 2000) or millennium bug - a programming problem that could 
paralyse computers on the first stroke of the new year - that its military, 
scientific and commercial communities have neglected the overall security of 
their computer systems.

At the same time, the huge number of systems being overhauled to make them 
Y2K-compliant has heightened the risk of infiltration.

Alarmed by the theft of military documents whisked to Russia, American 
officials argue that the country should brace itself for other, equally 
disturbing forms of information warfare that, in theory, could bring the 
country to its knees.

China, Libya and Iraq are developing information warfare capabilities and, 
according to one White House official, "we see well-funded terrorist groups 
that also have such capabilities".

A series of war games conducted by experts last year revealed that the 
world's greatest superpower could be at the mercy of a handful of determined 
computer hackers paralysing airports, markets and military systems with a 
few taps on a computer laptop.

Suspicions that Russia is responsible are based partly on the involvement of 
Moscow-based internet servers in some attacks. But experts caution that 
evidence of a Russian hand in the operation may not signal a Kremlin 
connection.

"It could turn out to be Russian organised crime," said one expert. "And 
they could be acting as a front for the intelligence community."

Ironically, the Russians are pressing for an international treaty to freeze 
information warfare. "We cannot permit the emergence of a fundamentally new
area of international confrontation," Sergei Ivanov, the former Russian 
foreign minister, wrote in a letter to Kofi Annan, the United Nations 
secretary-general in October.

Subsequently, Russia's relations with America have reached their lowest ebb 
since the cold war because of Nato's intervention in Yugoslavia. Relations 
with China have also suffered. An offensive in cyberspace may be their one 
way of retaliating without getting into a shooting war.

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