'Nice guy' Canada involved in most hack attacks on U.S. By LISA HOFFMAN Scripps Howard News Service April 06, 2000

- Investigators are finding that Canada, a country whose main national characteristic is being nice, serves as either the source of or conduit for as much as 80 percent of hacking attacks on U.S. computers.

And China, a thorn in America's side on many global issues, now is being fingered as responsible for much of the "spamming" that drives U.S. e-mailers nuts.

Those are among the revelations surfacing as U.S. authorities get serious about ferreting out those behind cyber-attacks and other computer violations increasingly besetting America.

FBI Director Louis Freeh recently pegged America's benevolent northern neighbor as a "hacker haven." The moniker was reinforced by the discovery that at least part of a massive February cyber-attack on some of America's most prominent Internet companies involved Canadian computer servers.

The Defense Intelligence Agency identified Canadian hackers as the origin or hosts of all but about 20 percent of recent hack attacks on U.S. business and government online Web sites, according to Capitol Hill committee staffers and Internet security analysts.

Canadian law-enforcement officials are working with U.S. authorities to root out the Canadian connection, which analysts say results from the high degree of Internet use in the northern country and the good skill levels of hackers.

Many times, hackers from places outside Canada _ including some from the United States _ essentially "launder" trails by routing their hacking through Canadian sites, authorities said.

No particular animosity is motivating attacks on U.S. computers. Instead, experts said, it's a matter of prestige _ because in the hacking world, successfully penetrating well-protected U.S. government or business sites brings status.

Meanwhile, "spam," or uninvited e-mails that clog up cyber-inboxes of computer users, is spewing forth from China even as U.S. Internet service providers have been cracking down on domestic spamming.

Infoworld.com, an industry online publication, said marketers in China have begun to send messages hawking Chinese electronics and pirated software to thousands of e-mail addresses in the United States and elsewhere. Most of these messages are written in Chinese, even if those who get the messages don't speak the language.

More troublesome is the growth in U.S. e-mail spammers purposely routing their unsolicited messages through e-mail servers in China _ which are less sophisticated and easier to manipulate than more spam-proof servers and systems being used in the United States.

China also is far more likely to ignore complaints than are U.S. e-mail providers.

Giving additional heartburn to e-mailers are reports that America-bound spamming is also increasing from South Korea, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 10, 2000