E-WAR & E-SPIONAGE — THE HEADLINES

 2001/9/19 

Mailing-list of 'God's warriors' hacked

 2001/6/21 

.mil policies

 2001/4/06 

Plane crisis could initiate cyber-attacks on US

 2001/4/05 

German government on e-alert: first cyber-manoeuver

 2001/4/03 

Hackers got missle-related software from US Navy machine

E-WAR & E-SPIONAGE — THE LINKS

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E-WAR & E-SPIONAGE — THE NEWS

2001/9/19

15:45 +0100

Mailing-list of 'God's warriors' hacked

[eWar & eSpionage] According to the German news magazine "Der Spiegel", a hacker has posted the email addresses of users, who were subscribed to a newsletter of militant muslims. The German federal criminal police BKA is now "examining the list," a BKA speaker confirmed Spiegel Online. Users who had just been curious would not need to worry, "we will diversify between passive readers and those involved in the terror attacks."

Visitors of the German Web site qoqaz.de could learn until recently, where you could be trained for the "Holy War" and learn how to handle various arms. Those providing their email address were supplied with a "newsletter."

Shortly before the Web site disappeard on the weekend, an anonymous hacker managed to download the newsletter's address file and posted it on an Internet forum of the swiss Web site symlink.ch. "It took a little effort," said the hacker, "but it was comparatively easy."

The email addresses which are currently checked for authenticity by officials contains mostly arabian names. In several cases, the addresses include domains of German universities, among them Berlin, Bremen, Konstanz, Tübingen, Stuttgart and Münster.

One of the first 20 subscribers is a user with the address [email protected]. The 26 year-old TU-Harburg student Said Bahaji is currently on the run, he is suspected to be the top-logistics specialist of the group, which is supposed to be responsible for the assaults on NYC and DC. After what the BKA has learned, it was Bahaji who had done the paper work for the suicide pilots' visa for the flight into the US. Furthermore, he had rented the apartment in Hamburg, where some of the terrorists lived prior to their move to the States. // infowar.de :: [dre].

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2001/6/21

13:46 +0100

.mil policies

[eWar & eSpionage] Is the US military hiding hacks? Staffers at Alldas, the Norwegian/German successor to the attrition.org archive that maintains copies of websites that have been involuntarily altered, believes that their site is being deliberately blocked from accessing defaced websites owned by the United States military. Spokespeople from the US military would not comment on whether they have blocked Alldas to WiredNews reporters, but a retired army lieutenant general, who requested anonymity, said he wouldn't be surprised if some site administrators had decided to block Alldas.

"It's a public relations problem when your site has been defaced," he said. "It can also become an employment issue for systems people who can find their military career track has come to a dead end, due to allowing hackers into their site. The military takes security very seriously."

Taltos, a Budapest-based hacker, said that he believes the US military is operating on the theory that if hackers get no glory from defacing websites, they will scamper away and hack sites that can be mirrored in Alldas' archive. He also suggests that a bit of national pride may be at work.

Then, the Department of Defence has banned soldiers from accessing personal emails because doing so may also compromise the department's top-secret super computers. "The use of services such as Hotmail, Excite and Freemail leaves the defence network more vulnerable to viruses and hackers," defence information systems head Patrick Hannan told Army newspaper.

Defence already spends more than $8 million a year protecting itself from hackers. Almost $1 million of that goes on a crack team of hacker busters to combat attacks. :: [dre].

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2001/4/06

12:44 +0100

Plane crisis could initiate cyber-attacks on US

[eWar & eSpionage] Chinese Internet chat rooms and other sites are seething over US refusal to apologize for the collision between a US Navy EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter that occurred Sunday over the South China Sea, the Chattanooga Free Press reports.

The plane and crew remained Tuesday on China's Hainan Island, and President Bush reiterated his demand that the crew and craft be released immediately. "We should not return the plane. Then let's see what they can do about it," one angry Chinese Internet message said. "We are not Yugoslavia."

In May 1999, after a US guided missile struck the Chinese embassy during NATO's bombing of Belgrade during the Kosovo crisis, Chinese hackers broke into an estimated 1,000 US civilian Web sites during the first two days after the accidental attack, according to security experts. Hackers traced to China also infiltrated at least four US government sites, including the Energy and Interior departments' Web sites, the US Embassy site in Beijing and the US Naval Communications Command. The Energy site was shut down for a day as a result and the others were disrupted temporarily.

Also of significance was a coordinated attack by Chinese hackers on NATO computers. "They came at us daily, hell-bent on taking down NATO networks," Lt. Gen. William Donahue, commander of the Air Force Communications and Information Center, said at the time.

Some in the Chinese leadership have embraced the use of cyber-war tactics by militarily weaker countries against their stronger opponents, viewing electronic warfare as a way to level the battlefield. In the months after the NATO embassy bombing, the Liberation Army Daily — a mouthpiece for China's Peoples Liberation Army — called for the recruitment of civilian hackers and training of army soldiers in cyber-tactics.

As Chinese animosity against the United States again flares on the Internet over the ongoing American spy plane incident, computer security and Pentagon experts say the United States could encounter a similar wave if the situation isn't defused soon. // c.f. Cybercrime-Alerts :: [dre].

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2001/4/05

13:25 +0100

German government on e-alert: first cyber-manoeuver

[eWar & eSpionage] As the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reports, a governmntal working group came to the conclusion, that attacks in cyberspce may eventually substitute conventional warfare. Experts from the chancellor's department and the intelligence community estimate, that terrorists or mercenary hacker might get hired to attack the civilian infrastructure like the power supply, the health system or the police forces.

The group calls for immediate measures to enhance the protection of all critical systems, from telecommunication to power and traffic, to the administration of states and the federation. In addition, a rapid reaction force should be established with the Federal Office for the Security of the Information Technology BSI.

In that context, a first cyberwar manoeuver is under preparation with the co-operation of the Department of the Interior. It is a simulation of a co-ordinated attack on the German networks. The power suppliers of the federal capital Berlin is supposed to be the target of a mafia-like, international organisation which extorts the country to withdraw its KFOR/UN troups from the Kosovo crisis region.

To achiev this, the attackers will first penetrate machines of Berlin's power distributor and cause an hours-long power failure. At the same time, specialists from police, the German Telekom and the Department of the Interior try to get the damage undone. During their efforts, the attackers will continue to attack the capital's telephone network and the computing center of one of the large banks. // c.f. Golem :: [dre].

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2001/4/03

12:51 +0100

Hackers got missle-related software from US Navy machine

[eWar & eSpionage] According to a St. Louis Post dispatch, Naval officials are investigating how hackers broke into a computer at a Navy research facility in Washington and stole the source codes to a missile guidance program.

The Navy has been working on the theft with the FBI and police forces in Germany and other unidentified countries since Dec. 24, when officials believe the break-in occurred. An FBI spokesman played down the theft, saying that the software stolen was unclassified. "We are trying to see who's responsible," said Paul O'Donnell of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). "This has led us to several foreign countries."

O'Donnell said the target was an unclassified computer. Chris Murray, an FBI spokesman, confirmed that the guidance system source codes — the building blocks of a program — had been stolen. Murray said the target computer was at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Representatives of Exigent Software Technology, based in Melbourne, Fla., said Friday that they had developed the stolen program, called "OS/COMET." The Air Force has installed OS/COMET, which can also be used to guide satellites and spacecraft, to a Global Positioning Satellite system in Colorado Springs, Colo., Exigent said.

A spokesman for the German federal office for criminal affairs (BKA) said an investigation was under way there and was in the hands of the state prosecutor's office in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The area around that city is the home of several US military installations, including Ramstein Air Base.

The Swedish newspaper Expressen, which first reported news of the break-in, said the perpetrator was believed to have used a computer at Kaiserslautern University in Germany, as well as an account with Carbonide, a Swedish Internet service provider. // Cybercrime-Alerts :: [dre].

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