Government backed counter-attack-forces necessary in
future
news release
news
release & faq in pdf
London, UK - 11 November 2002, 11:30 GMT - As the damage done by radical,
criminal and intellectually motivated hackers continues to rise, about six
Billions Dollars of economic value was destroyed worldwide by overt and covert
digital attacks including viruses and worms in October alone. As a result,
the mi2g Intelligence Unit predicts there will be a growing requirement
for Governments to intervene and to mobilise counter-attack-forces that protect
economic targets and critical national infrastructure constituents on a 24/7
basis.
In a study to be released later this month, mi2g will reveal a new
trend developing with far more damaging economic consequences. The near doubling
of hacking incidents every two months in late 2002 will be shown to have shifted
away from targeting government departments and agencies towards focusing principally
on Small to Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) and large corporations where opportunity
allows.
The SMEs are incapable of sheltering themselves or having the budget and
expertise to be able to ward off sustained digital mass attacks, which have
now become a daily occurrence with widely available, automated and easy-to-use
sophisticated digital attack tools. The mounting collective losses to businesses
might impact on governments' revenue streams through reduced tax collection,
so in the future, it will be prudent to look after the SME growth engines
and not just large businesses, who on the whole have the budgets and manpower
resources to look after themselves.
National Interest
In the not too distant future, there is a likelihood that command and control
attacks, which blend cyber terrorism with physical terrorism, simultaneously
seek to disrupt transport or telecommunication hubs; financial services or
commerce; water or energy distribution; could also be manifest as hackers
organise themselves more rigorously along the lines of criminally financed
terrorist syndicates with specific ideological agendas and become more adept
at social engineering to procure insider help locally.
Historically, politicians in civilised Western democracies have challenged
their defence forces to provide adequate defence capability within limited
resources. The focus has been on the four physical dimensions - land, sea,
air and outer space - and not on the new 5th Dimension, which is cyberspace.
There is no real digital defence capability deployed so far - other than occasional
simulations and exercises which are to uncover gaps in the national critical
infrastructure's digital defences. The redressal lies primarily in developing
counter-attack-forces, which would begin to arrest the imbalance of power
between ill-motivated hackers on the one hand and little-prepared businesses
on the other.
It is unrealistic to expect that any defence department can provide 'counter-attack-forces'
against digital attacks for an entire nation's economic targets immediately
and, in any case, the expertise needed is relatively fast moving and cannot
be 'trained' into would be combatants in a short period of time.
Human intelligence
Most complex attacks take place through insider knowledge and assistance.
Just one motivated individual cannot usually perpetrate complex cross-boundary
physical or digital terrorism. Disgruntled employees in sensitive places are
suborned, coerced or indeed volunteer their services to support a cause. This
is seen in financial services when complex fraud or deeply damaging hack attacks
take place. It is also seen in large multi-nationals, in the breach of government
services security and even in the planning of the 11th September co-ordinated
attacks. More attention needs to be given to the value of human intelligence
collected by local agencies, where the information is collected in situ at
the grass roots level.
In the future, when seeking to protect the critical infrastructure constituents
and business digital systems at a national level, the economically prudent
way forward would be to combine knowledge management, analysis and counter-attack
tools with on-the-ground human intelligence sources. Surveillance and reconnaissance
dashboards of digital systems would need to be managed by experienced counter-attack-forces
on a 24/7 basis.
Next Steps
mi2g believes that this war on digital terrorism can be won decisively
and effectively. As in all wars, our collective national defences must excel
enemy aggression. We will therefore need to understand that:
1. Defence has always been about securing trade routes and markets.
Given that several Trillion Dollars of trade is routed digitally, counter-attack-forces
with electronic weapons that can disable attacking systems from various parts
of the world will ultimately need to be deployed with Governments' backing
as part of their 5th dimension defence shield. Counter-attack-forces will
save businesses a lot of lost time and money in dealing with rogue, politically
motivated, electronic attacks from radical and criminal groups scattered across
the world and within the nation.
2. Laws will have to be passed throughout the civilised world that
will declare cyber attacks that spark fear and cause damage to life and assets
as equivalent to physical-world terrorism at an international level. The perpetrators
of such attacks will have to be dealt with as terrorists.
a. This process has already begun with the US Senate and House of Representatives
passing the "Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate
Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001''
in October last year and the "Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) of
2001" in July this year. The CSEA seeks life imprisonment for anyone
putting lives at risk by electronic means. In the UK, under the Terrorism
Act 2000, enacted into law in February 2001, people who endanger lives through
the manipulation of public computer systems are to be considered under the
anti-terrorism law as would any other terrorist.
b. All business operations could also be required, by law, to possess a sufficiently
layered and tranched security architecture so that even if one layer or tranche
of defence were to be breached the entire set of valuable databases or command
and control capabilities would not be immediately compromised.
3. Mobilisation of resources including new investment will become
necessary on interoperable distributed knowledge management and analysis systems,
which allow data to be shared easily from and between different sources and
agencies collecting intelligence. Also, investment in more local human intelligence
across the globe will be essential. The expertise of the very few available
people who are proficient in the technologies of the 5th dimension would need
to be utilised to train the counter-attack-forces through the establishment
of a national centre of excellence for digital defence. Nothing significant
can be achieved without this cohesive sharing capability being made available
to the future counter-attack-forces, who would be able to ensure reliability,
availability, maintainability and scalability of SME business systems in the
event of hacker attacks.
Conclusion
"After four successive record breaking months
in the number of overt digital attacks this year, mi2g believes that we have
entered an era of sustained attacks from radicals, criminals and intellectual
power zealots, who will be difficult to contain and to deal with at the consumer
and small to medium size corporate level in the 21st Century. The roll out
of 'always on' full broadband and wireless connectivity tilts the balance
against the innocent citizens and corporations. In the years to come, government
intervention to deal with 5th dimension warfare could become imperative. It
is no longer a question of if but when," said DK Matai,
Chairman and CEO, mi2g.
"It is unlikely that governments will choose
to remain oblivious to the challenge of daily digital attacks on their citizens
and their livelihoods given the Billions of Dollars of damage being caused
to digital commerce, productivity, intellectual property and employed capital.
Organized crime syndicates embarking on identity theft, elaborate scams and
financial fraud have now become rampant. As knowledge management based authentication
systems proliferate both at airports and digital commerce sites, digital identity
theft levers are going to be exercised by future criminals."
[ENDS]
Notes to Editors
In a speech delivered last year in London which was introduced by Andrew
Pinder, the UK Government eEnvoy, mi2g's Chairman and CEO, DK Matai
had predicted that this damaging situation from digital attacks would arise
in the future based on the trends observed between 1995 and 2001. A concrete
way forward to solve this unfolding problem was suggested in the speech, which
is available at:
The
World Beyond 11th September - Focus on Asymmetric Warfare
What is EVEDA?
EVEDA stands for Economic Value Engine for Damage Analysis. EVEDA is a component
of the SIPS (Security Intelligence Products & Systems) database,
which estimates economic damage as loss of productivity, management time,
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violations, customer and supplier liabilities
and share price decline where applicable. EVEDA collects its information from
a variety of open sources and measures the economic value associated with
a particular brand or publicly listed company based on a unique set of algorithms
developed by the mi2g SIPS team in conjunction with risk analysts.
Over the last six years, the worldwide economic damage estimate for all forms
of digital attack has been estimated via EVEDA at between: $35 and $43 Billion
(2002 so far); $35 and $43 Billion (2001); $22 and $27 Billion (2000); $18
and $22 Billion (1999); $3.6 and $4.4 Billion (1998); $2.9 and $3.7 Billion
(1997); $800 and $970 Million (1996).
What is an "overt digital attack"?
Hacker attacks on digital systems, such as computers and digitally controlled
machines, can be either covert or overt. Covert attacks are not reported,
validated or witnessed by a reliable third party source, whereas overt attacks
are either public knowledge or known to an entity other than the attacker(s)
and the victim(s).
mi2g defines an overt digital attack as being an incident when a hacker
group has gained unauthorized access to an online system and has made modifications
to any of its publicly visible components (such as a broadcast, service routine,
payment / data collection or print out) whilst executing:
1. Data Attacks: The confidentiality, integrity, authentication or
non-repudiation of transactions based on the underlying databases is violated.
Such attacked databases may include confidential credit card numbers, identity
information, customer and supplier profiles and transaction histories;
2. Command and Control Attacks: SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
controlled computers, routers and switches, networks of ATMs (Automated Teller
Machines), DCS (Distributed Control Systems), SCADA (Supervisory Control And
Data Acquisition) systems or PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) have been
compromised.
What are the motives for "overt digital attacks"?
The principal motives for digital attacks have been political tension, protest
and digital warfare; espionage, surveillance and reconnaissance; destruction
of competitive advantage or share price; disgruntled or misdirected workforce
issues; anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism protest; environmental and
animal rights activism; intellectual challenge and recreational hacking; financial
gain.
SIPS Background
mi2g has been collecting data on overt digital attacks going back
to 1995 via the SIPS (Security Intelligence Products and Systems) database.
The SIPS database has information on over 107,000 overt digital attacks
and 6,100 hacker groups. The SIPS intelligence citations include the
2002 Computer Security Institute (CSI) / Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Computer Security Issues and Trends Survey [Vol. VIII, No. 1 - Spring 2002].
Detailed copies of the SIPS reports for each month, including back
issues can be ordered from the intelligence.unit@mi2g.com. A vetting process
may be carried out prior to the release of the SIPS reports to individuals
and for overseas orders. mi2g solutions engineering pays particular
regard to security. mi2g advises on the management of Digital Risk
and incorporates Bespoke Security Architecture in its SMART sourcing solutions.
mi2g has pioneered the Contingency Capability Radar to assist in rigorous
business continuity planning based on ISO 17799.
First contact: Tel: +44 (0) 20 7924 3010 Fax: +44
(0) 20 7924 3310 eMail: Intelligence
Unit
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