Cyber warriors gather as online battles rage

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark.

"We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks off on Monday.

"We need corporations, government and community working closer together."

Social networking and applications being hosted as services in the Internet "cloud" are among hot Internet trends presenting opportunities for hackers and challenges for those guarding networks.

Gone are the days when protecting computers meant building virtual fortress walls to keep attackers out and then hunting down software viruses by simply matching codes to lists of known offenders.

Conference topics will include finding ways to let workers visit online social networking sites or let employees or partners access business networks safely from distant spots without opening computers to infections.

Legitimate websites must remain vigilant against being booby-trapped by hackers.

Computer defenses have broadened to include automated systems on constant watch for suspicious behavior, such as online bank account log-in information being entered faster than humanly possible.

Cyber crooks use programs that enter data quicker than fingers can type.

Organized crime and espionage themes promise to dominate at RSA, in part thanks to a slick online assault on Google and the recent discovery of some 75,000 computers worldwide woven into a "Kneber botnet" by malicious code.

"Malware has become important as the sophistication of the attacks has increased," said Courtot, whose company was founded in France in 1999 and later moved to California.

"That is underscored by the Google Aurora attack. Now we know for a fact more than a hundred companies were compromised in very targeted attacks of industrial espionage," Courtot said.

FBI chief Robert Mueller will detail cyber threats ranging from identity theft to how extremists and hostile foreign powers abuse the Internet.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Richard Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser at the National Security Council, will discuss dealing with cyberspace threats "without creating Big Brother."

Napolitano is to focus on how online threats hit society. Schmidt will take part in a "town hall" talk.

Technology firms ranging from big guns such as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Symantec will join smaller cyber warriors specializing in fields including biometrics, encryption, and online behavior.

"There are so many security topics high on the agenda," Cellcrypt chief executive Simon Bransfield-Garth told AFP.

"Certainly one of the topics is how mobile devices are becoming more like computers with the benefits and drawbacks as well." afp

Internet Fraud Finances Terrorism

A Q&A with Tom Kellermann on how terrorists are using the Internet for money laundering, fundraising, and identify theft.

If your credit card number has been stolen recently, that may not be the work of a petty criminal. It could be a terrorist cell, according to cyber security consultant Tom Kellermann. Increasingly, Kellermann says, terrorist groups and organized crime syndicates are resorting to cyber crime to finance their activities. From 1999 to 2005, Kellermann was a member of the Treasury Security Team at the World Bank, where he advised central banks on monitoring illicit online activity. He’s currently vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies, in Boston. Robert N. Charette, IEEE Spectrum contributing editor, spoke with Kellermann in August. Read the Q&A at - Discovery

Defending virtual borders

The risk to government networks and major financial institutions from cyber warfare is increasing every day but what is being done to defend national borders?

Estonia is an online savvy state and champion of so called 'e-government,' a paperless system with many government services online. The population can even vote via the web.

In 2007 a large number of Estonian government and financial websites were brought to a standstill as they came under sustained online attack.

On 4 July 2009, US and South Korean government websites and those of certain banks and businesses ground to a halt as they came under denial of service assaults. In the United States, the Pentagon and the White House were also targeted.

These cyber attacks were all initially thought to be orchestrated by countries unfriendly to Estonia, South Korea and the US and to date have been the highest profile examples of so-called cyber warfare.

Digital battlefield

Conventional warfare relies on tanks, troops, artillery, aircraft and a whole gamut of weapons systems. Cyber warfare requires a computer and an internet connection.

Professor Sommer claims that most of the attacks are over the internet

Rather than sending in the marines, the act of typing a command on a keyboard can have a devastating effect on computer systems and networks.

According to Clive Room of Portcullis Computer Security: "It is possible to bring an entire state to a standstill theoretically and we've seen it done on a small scale practically, so the threat ahead of us is very big indeed."

From criminal gangs trying to steal cash, to foreign intelligence services trying to steal secrets, the threat of cyber warfare is now very real.

Nato suspects that along with the tanks and troops involved in the conflict in Georgia in 2008, Russian forces also engaged in cyber attacks against Georgian government computer systems.

Professor Peter Sommer of the London School of Economics explained that cyber warfare should just be seen as a part of modern warfare in general:

"[Carl Von] Clausewitz said war is diplomacy conducted by other means. What cyber warfare gives you is a whole range of new types of technologies which you can apply."

Zombie machines

These international attacks are not isolated instances. Everyday government and corporate websites fend off thousands of attempts to infiltrate hack and cause disruption.
BBC News

World War III Could Be Fought on Internet, Says ITU Head

Threats of cyberwar and a story of real violence rubbed shoulders at a news conference to mark the opening of the ITU Telecom World exhibition and forum in Geneva on Monday.

"The next world war could begin in cyberspace," warned Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency that organized the event.

The beginnings of such an unconventional war could be out of the control of conventional diplomacy, he said, because in cyberspace "there is no such thing as a superpower: Every citizen is a superpower." With an army of "bots," or compromised computers, at their command, almost anyone could wield great power in a virtual battle, as a number of recent denial-of-service attacks against targets around the world have shown.

"We know from conventional wars that the best way to win is not to start," Touré said.

That's why the ITU is pushing an ambitious worldwide program for cybersecurity and peace.

"By the end of next year, we will broker a global agreement with every country to protect its citizens online, not to harbor cyberterrorists, and not to start an online attack," he said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon began by expressing his sorrow at news of an all-too-real attack, the suicide bombing earlier in the day of the Islamabad, Afghanistan, office of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, which left several people dead.

Returning to the theme of the conference, he highlighted "a world divided," those with access to information on one side, and those without on the other.

Encouraging the participation of "our youth, drivers of innovation and change," is vital if those divisions are to be eradicated, he said.

Investment in infrastructure and services must be encouraged too in order to eliminate the technology divide -- but the motive should be profit, not charity, Touré said.

"In our strategy of connecting the world, we have no need for charity: It's pure business. If you have the right business plan, you will have investment," he said.

The telecommunications industry will always have investment, because it's a profitable industry, he said.

That's turning out to be the case in Rwanda, said President Paul Kagame, where state infrastructure projects have attracted investment from Chinese network equipment manufacturers.

"The availability of capital for everything is getting more and more scarce, but in our country there is a strong partnership between public and private sectors," he said.

China continues to invest internationally, despite the impact of the global economic crisis and the attraction of the untapped potential of its home market, said Wang Jianzhou, chairman and chief executive officer of China Mobile, also present at the news conference.

"We have still got challenges from the international financial crisis," he said. In the company's home market, revenue from international calls is down 20 percent because of a reduction in tourism and manufacturing exports, he said.

PC World