The Times: Tech column - Cyberwar/Videophones/Osama domains
By David Rowan
Sorry to add to your anxieties but have you thought how you will survive the coming cyberwar? There's no indication that it is imminent but at some stage soon, defence strategists have been warning, our information-dependent society could be paralysed by a concerted cyber attack.
Last week the Bush Administration appointed Richard Clarke, its counter-terrorism chief, to head a new Office of Cyberspace Security - to prevent what he calls the "digital Pearl Harbor" that will follow a terrorist attack on the West's computer and satellite networks. Here's how we'll know. Electricity grids will stop working; air-traffic control systems will malfunction; the credit-card network will reject your attempts to go shopping.
According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, "one well co-ordinated attack by fewer than 30 computer virtuosos strategically located around the world, with a budget of less than $10 million, could bring the United States to its knees". And that's not counting a direct attack on the Global Positioning Satellites roaming across space: when the Galaxy IV satellite suddenly stopped working three years ago, four-fifths of America's pagers went quiet, cable television came to a standstill and the credit-card system broke down for weeks. It's not just terrorists who threaten our information dependency: in July the head of the Australian Defence Forces told a conference that more than 30 countries had "advanced and aggressive programmes for waging war by computer".
The damage can be done remotely, anonymously, and without recourse to those prepared to sacrifice their lives. Imagine what would happen in Britain if the Stock Exchange found its software had been corrupted, or hospitals found their databases had been deleted. The Y2K panic will seem a mere tea party. Too many companies underestimate the threats before them. How secure is your IT network's firewall? How freely available are your colleagues' passwords? How easy is it for outsiders to gain access to terminals within your office?
According to a risk-management firm quoted in Fortune magazine, many of the contract staff who fixed Y2K bugs in corporate systems were working for foreign intelligence services, including Iraq's. "A major communications company found a virus set to explode in 2013," the magazine reports. "There may be viruses and worms in our system that have been set up to coincide with terrorist attacks."
It's time for Downing Street to start educating the private sector about the threats, while co-ordinating a cyberdefence strategy that appreciates their scale. Otherwise, some time soon, we'll all be getting a rather large "Error" message.
++++
When newsrooms from CNN to ITN buzz with excitement about their latest high-tech gadget, this column has a duty to investigate. Since September 11 orders have risen sharply for the Talking Head Videophone, whose slightly grainy images you will have seen beamed live from the Afghan hills. Correspondents say the device will redefine how the coming conflict will be reported. So has the videophone finally arrived?
Motion Media, the Bristol-based company that makes the phone, uses new video-compression technology to transmit images at 64 or 128 kbps - fast enough for tolerable TV viewing. The units are the size of a briefcase, weigh less than 10kg and do not need external dishes. The BBC has issued them to correspondents on the Afghan border, and CNN has them in most of its 30 foreign bureaux. A £1,200 desk-top version, developed with 7E Communications, uses ISDN lines for simple video-conferencing. The unit resembles a standard office phone, apart from the 5in colour LCD screen and an internal camera that can be controlled from the other end. The videophone is already being used to let patients talk remotely to doctors, and by deaf people to communicate in sign language. BT is about to market a more basic consumer version at around £650.
++++
Who said the dotcom spirit of enterprise was dead? Since September 11 some 409 domain names relating to Osama bin Laden have been registered - ranging from the predictable binladensucks.com and downwithbinladen.com to the hopeful binladencaptured.com and even binladentrial.com. Few of the domains lead to active sites, and many are clearly little more than cheap and repellent commercial opportunities. Binladengroup.com is offered for "premium sale" as a "highly marketable" domain name; even annihilateosamabinladen.com is being marketed by a company in California. But our award for scraping the barrel goes to the US site that has registered 100 domains, including nukeafghanistan.com, chemical-warfare.net and anthraxepidemic.com. Proof, at least, that US capitalism has survived the attacks intact.
(The Times, October 8 2001)
Sorry to add to your anxieties but have you thought how you will survive the coming cyberwar? There's no indication that it is imminent but at some stage soon, defence strategists have been warning, our information-dependent society could be paralysed by a concerted cyber attack.
Last week the Bush Administration appointed Richard Clarke, its counter-terrorism chief, to head a new Office of Cyberspace Security - to prevent what he calls the "digital Pearl Harbor" that will follow a terrorist attack on the West's computer and satellite networks. Here's how we'll know. Electricity grids will stop working; air-traffic control systems will malfunction; the credit-card network will reject your attempts to go shopping.
According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, "one well co-ordinated attack by fewer than 30 computer virtuosos strategically located around the world, with a budget of less than $10 million, could bring the United States to its knees". And that's not counting a direct attack on the Global Positioning Satellites roaming across space: when the Galaxy IV satellite suddenly stopped working three years ago, four-fifths of America's pagers went quiet, cable television came to a standstill and the credit-card system broke down for weeks. It's not just terrorists who threaten our information dependency: in July the head of the Australian Defence Forces told a conference that more than 30 countries had "advanced and aggressive programmes for waging war by computer".
The damage can be done remotely, anonymously, and without recourse to those prepared to sacrifice their lives. Imagine what would happen in Britain if the Stock Exchange found its software had been corrupted, or hospitals found their databases had been deleted. The Y2K panic will seem a mere tea party. Too many companies underestimate the threats before them. How secure is your IT network's firewall? How freely available are your colleagues' passwords? How easy is it for outsiders to gain access to terminals within your office?
According to a risk-management firm quoted in Fortune magazine, many of the contract staff who fixed Y2K bugs in corporate systems were working for foreign intelligence services, including Iraq's. "A major communications company found a virus set to explode in 2013," the magazine reports. "There may be viruses and worms in our system that have been set up to coincide with terrorist attacks."
It's time for Downing Street to start educating the private sector about the threats, while co-ordinating a cyberdefence strategy that appreciates their scale. Otherwise, some time soon, we'll all be getting a rather large "Error" message.
++++
When newsrooms from CNN to ITN buzz with excitement about their latest high-tech gadget, this column has a duty to investigate. Since September 11 orders have risen sharply for the Talking Head Videophone, whose slightly grainy images you will have seen beamed live from the Afghan hills. Correspondents say the device will redefine how the coming conflict will be reported. So has the videophone finally arrived?
Motion Media, the Bristol-based company that makes the phone, uses new video-compression technology to transmit images at 64 or 128 kbps - fast enough for tolerable TV viewing. The units are the size of a briefcase, weigh less than 10kg and do not need external dishes. The BBC has issued them to correspondents on the Afghan border, and CNN has them in most of its 30 foreign bureaux. A £1,200 desk-top version, developed with 7E Communications, uses ISDN lines for simple video-conferencing. The unit resembles a standard office phone, apart from the 5in colour LCD screen and an internal camera that can be controlled from the other end. The videophone is already being used to let patients talk remotely to doctors, and by deaf people to communicate in sign language. BT is about to market a more basic consumer version at around £650.
++++
Who said the dotcom spirit of enterprise was dead? Since September 11 some 409 domain names relating to Osama bin Laden have been registered - ranging from the predictable binladensucks.com and downwithbinladen.com to the hopeful binladencaptured.com and even binladentrial.com. Few of the domains lead to active sites, and many are clearly little more than cheap and repellent commercial opportunities. Binladengroup.com is offered for "premium sale" as a "highly marketable" domain name; even annihilateosamabinladen.com is being marketed by a company in California. But our award for scraping the barrel goes to the US site that has registered 100 domains, including nukeafghanistan.com, chemical-warfare.net and anthraxepidemic.com. Proof, at least, that US capitalism has survived the attacks intact.
(The Times, October 8 2001)
posted by David Rowan at Monday, October 08, 2001
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