This might explain recent hacking

-- W. Arning (Warning@this.now), February 10, 2000

Answers

Would the truth of this surprise me? Heck no. But if you think for one moment TPTB will/would admitt to this - think again. The American Public will be the last to learn that any internet problems come from outside the country. Just my opinion.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), February 10, 2000.

. If the attacking side [i.e., China] secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, they write, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponents computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic- dispatching network, financial-transaction network, telephone- communications network and mass-media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots and a political crisis.

and this

. The PLA authors see the United States as vulnerable to such unrestricted warfare. The U.S. military is culturally unequipped to deal with the problem, they argue; they have never taken into consideration and have even refused to consider means that are contrary to tradition and to select measures of operation other than military means. The United States, the Red Chinese officers say, should be better prepared: What is surprising is that such a large nation unexpectedly does not have a unified command structure to deal with the threat.

I think I'll add to my preps!

-- Johnny (jljtm@bellsouth.net), February 10, 2000.

Hmmm... Insight Magazine... Is that still owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon?

-- Andrew Koenig (ark@acm.org), February 10, 2000.

Maybe this week was a dress rehersal for the `main` event? what a coincedence that the CIA would state that one of the tools of this new warfare would be Hacking! And the truly sad thing is their concensus about how the americans can`t cope with the unknown is true! Hate to say it, but they just might have a winning idea! God forbid! Gotta go shopping now. need to buy more canned goods. :}

-- mutter (murmur@ya.com), February 10, 2000.

I understand that Clinton Adm. introduced legislation to regulate the internet on Monday and the hack attacks started Monday afternoon. Don't know the details yet.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), February 10, 2000.

Thursday February 10 4:35 PM ET

Hacker Raid Helps Clinton Cyber-Crime Push

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clinton administration is using this week's Web site woes to push for bigger budgets to short-circuit computer hack attacks by anyone from a foreign foe to a 15-year-old boy.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the nation's top law enforcement official, appeared at a press conference with six other officials Wednesday to highlight what she termed a growing threat from computer intruders.

Clinton's proposed spending hikes ``will help address the cyber-attacks of recent days, and they will help us deal with attacks in the future,'' Reno said.

In a fiscal 2001 spending plan sent to Congress Monday, President Clinton sought $37 million more than this year for the Justice Department to fight Internet crime. The FBI-led Infrastructure Protection Center, which is coordinating the probe into the raids, would be a big beneficiary.

Overall, in the year starting Oct. 1 Clinton would spend $2 billion to protect U.S. critical infrastructure like computer networks and power grids, 15 percent more from this year.

The raids began Monday against Yahoo, the largest independent Web site. It spread Tuesday to leading retailers Buy.com Inc., eBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s CNN.com news site.

On Wednesday, online brokerage E-Trade Group Inc. and technology news site ZDNet Inc. became victims.

``It is obvious from today's news that we need to fight the hackers,'' said Commerce Secretary William Daley in a telephone conference call with reporters Wednesday from Chicago.

Eric Holder, the number two person at the Justice Department, said Thursday that responding to ``the growing threat of cyber-crime requires constant vigilance and additional resources.''

``And in order to keep up with those who would do the kinds of things that we are concerned about now, we're going to have to spend additional amounts of money, do a lot of training, just to keep current,'' he told reporters.

Much of the extra $37 million sought by Clinton would go to setting up ``response teams'' to keep up with Internet crime, Holder said.

New technology ``has changed the way criminals do business,'' creating challenges ``to keep pace with cyber-criminals of the new millennium,'' said Reno in her press conference.

The Republicans who lead Congress appear to agree that more should be done to defend the digital nervous system against any threats from hackers, terrorists, criminal organizations and foreign enemies.

``To me this is a serious issue, and which not only threatens our security but the future of our economy as well,'' said Orrin Hatch (news - web sites), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and a Utah Republican, said Wednesday in announcing he would hold hearings on this week's hacking incidents.

Clinton himself said there may be limits to what Washington can do to protect Internet sites.

``But I have asked people who know more about it than I do whether there is anything we can do about it,'' he said Wednesday.

Civil liberties groups have opposed key parts of a Clinton plan to bolster network protection as an undue expansion of surveillance of communications inside the United States.

Specifically, critics have voiced opposition to a proposed Federal Intrusion Detection network, or FIDNet, that the administration says would act as a kind of ``burglar alarm'' in event of a network penetration.

The proposed FIDNet, to be based in the General Services Administration rather than at the FBI as once contemplated, would violate ``the spirit of the federal wiretap statute, the plain language of the federal Privacy Act and the history of the Fourth Amendment'' outlawing unreasonable searches, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Congress last month.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), February 10, 2000.