http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7366995.stm
BBC News
25 April 2008
High street chains will be the next victims of cyber terrorism, some of
the world's elite hackers have warned.
They claim it is only a "matter of time" before the likes of Tesco and
Marks & Spencer are targeted.
Criminals could use the kind of tactics which crippled Estonia's
government and some firms last year, they warned.
The experts were members of the infamous "Hackers Panel" which convened
in London this week at the InfoSecurity Europe conference.
The panel includes penetration testers and so-called "white hat"
hackers, who help companies tighten up their digital security by
searching for flaws in their defences.
Previous panellists include Gary McKinnon, known as Solo, alleged by the
US government to have hacked into dozens of US Army, Navy, Air Force,
and Department of Defense computers.
The "hackers" usually remain anonymous, "for security reasons", but this
year's panellists agreed to break cover.
Common cause
First up was Roberto Preatoni, the founder of the cyber crime monitoring
site, Zone-H, and WabSabiLabi, a trading site for security researchers.
His appearance came just a few months after he was arrested by Italian
authorities on charges of hacking and wiretapping, as part of the
ongoing investigation into the Telecom Italia scandal.
Mr Preatoni told the audience that the attacks in Estonia were a
harbinger for a new era of cyber warfare.
"I'm afraid we will have to get used to this," said Mr Preatoni, also
known as SyS64738. "We had all been waiting for this kind of attack to
happen.
"Estonia was just unfortunate to be the first country to experience it.
But very soon, our own [western] companies and countries will be getting
attacked for political and religious reasons.
"This kind of attack can happen at any time. And it will happen."
During the two week "cyber war" against Estonia, hackers shut down the
websites of banks, governments and political parties using
"denial-of-service" (DoS) attacks, which knock websites offline by
swamping servers with page requests.
As many of the attacks originated from Russia, the Estonian government
pointed the finger at the Kremlin. But Mr Preatoni said that, having
spoken to contacts in the hacking community, he was clear that "Putin
was not involved".
"In my opinion, this was a collection of private individuals who
spontaneously gathered under the same flag.
"Even though Estonia is one of the world's most advanced countries in IT
technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees.
"That's the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don't need a lot of money,
or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort of your living
room, with a beer in your hand.
Gate control
His warning was echoed by Steve Armstrong, who teaches seminars in
hacking techniques, at the SANS Institute for information security
training.
"If someone wants to have a pop at the UK, they are unlikely to go for
the government web servers. They will go for the lower hanging fruit -
companies which are seen as good representatives of the country.
"The likes of Tesco, Marks & Spencer and B&Q can be seen as legitimate
targets.
"We have to get the message across to companies [to invest in
information security].
"At the moment Chief Executives are only interested in the bottom line.
But remember - if tesco.com goes down, that's a lot of shopping."
Mr Preatoni said that the Estonian government's repeated failure to
thwart the attacks was proof that we still have "no good solutions" for
denial of service attacks.
The panellists then argued over whether Internet Service Providers
should do more to tighten security, by helping customers' protect their
computers from being "zombified" by hackers for use in distributed DoS
attacks.
"Actually, I don't think the ISPs should have any role in security,"
said Preatoni.
"In my opinion, that's like asking the Royal Mail to be responsible for
the quality of your post."
But his view was immediately challenged by the third panellist, Jason
Creasey, head of research at the independent Information Security Forum.
"I believe ISPs can play a phenomenal role in security, with a little
bit of legal pressure," he claimed.
Net weakness
He was backed by an audience member, Angus Pinkerton, of Lynks Security
Consulting. "The only way to defend against a distributed attack is with
a distributed defence," he argued.
"I think it's unacceptable that ISPs are content to let their customers
be part of bot-nets."
He challenged Steve Armstrong's view that asking ISPs to perform
security duties was "fundamentally, censorship."
"This is not about free speech," said Mr Pinkerton. "Free speech does
not entitle you to shout fire in a crowded theatre."
In the meantime, Mr Preatoni warned the audience it is "only going to
get easier" to carry out a DoS attack, because he claimed the latest net
address system, known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), is actually
more amenable to DoS.
Later, he told the BBC that the rise in cyber attacks originating in
China was a convenient cloak for western countries to disguise their own
cyber espionage activities.
"It's too easy to blame China," he said. "In fact, legitimate countries
are bouncing their attacks through China. It's very easy to do, so why
not?
"My evil opinion is that some western governments are already doing
this."
_______________________________________________
Subscribe to the InfoSec News RSS Feed
http://www.infosecnews.org/isn.rss
Comments