FBI Installs New Task Force aimed at Fighting Cyber Crimes

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FBI Installs New Task Force aimed at Fighting Cyber By Erik Siemers

TRIBUNE-REVIEW

The aqua Macintosh G3 computer, its electronic guts exposed, appeared harmless as it sat on a table in the Pittsburgh FBI offices Tuesday.

But its hard drive tells investigators a different story - it was used to print counterfeit corporate checks.

That Macintosh is one of the computers under examination by the Pittsburgh High Tech Computer Crimes Task Force.

The medley of federal and local authorities trained to investigate computer-related crimes was unveiled yesterday

The task force, one of the first in the nation, pools experts from local agencies such as Pittsburgh police with federal agencies such as the Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service into one room to combat the rapid growth of cybercrimes.

"Crimes we couldn't have conceived years ago are now routine," said U.S. Attorney Harry S. Litman, whose office is involved in the task force. "It is critical that we respond to these crimes by marshaling our resources."

Western Pennsylvania is open to crimes such as hacker attacks and "a whole array of Internet fraud," partly because it has more software development firms than Silicon Valley, Litman said.

"Our position poses significant vulnerability to cybercrimes," Litman said.

The task force will be free to use each agency's resources along with those at Carnegie Mellon's Computer Emergency Response Team, said Richard D. Pethia, manager of CERT's networked systems survivability program. CERT will provide technical assistance to the task force, Pethia said.

Each agency offers one representative to the task force who has been trained in forensic examinations of computers, said Dan Larkin, supervisor in charge of the FBI's White Collar and Computer Crimes Division.

Aside from providing intelligence and technical assistance to computer investigations, the task force will focus on investigations where the Internet was used as the main tool in committing the crime.

Michael Vatis, director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center in Washington, D.C., said all FBI field offices will eventually house task forces similar to Pittsburgh's.

Pittsburgh is one of the initial task force sites partly because "we have a wealth of talent," said John P. Joyce, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Pittsburgh office.

The city also has a good track record for law enforcement agencies working with each other and with Carnegie Mellon's technology resources, said FBI Special Agent Bill Crowley.

Task force members will use traditional investigation skills along with advanced knowledge of technology to crack computer cases, said Vatis.

"We need to have the technology to get the digital evidence," Vatis said.

Getting that digital evidence can be as simple as copying the contents of the hard drive for analysis on its own computers, said Special Agent Tom Hyslip, the Secret Service's representative to the task force.

"When we go to court we can say we never touched (the evidence)," Hyslip said.

http://www.triblive.com/digage/dfbi0323.html

-- Jen Bunker (jen@bunkergroup.com), March 22, 2000


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