HACKERS HOLIDAY - The Internet underwent three days of hack attacks against some of the biggest e-commerce and information sites based here in the United States on this World Wide Web . From the most popular site around, Yahoo! to Ebay, CNN, Buy.com, ZDnet the buzz words "Denial of Service"(DoS) made it onto the 11 o'clock news all over the world.
This was high profile cyber-terrroism affecting people's bottom lines and the Justice Department of the United States was called into action. It only served to underscore what US President Clinton had said only weeks earlier in an exclusive interview with PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. (The News Hour did a special report on the incident tonight which you can access by following the link.)
The interesting part of this attack was that it was done, when you look at the details, by placing a "call" command on various computers with high speed Internet access directed to the target sites which would only be activated in the future. A virtual "time bomb," in other words, of the targetted e-commerce site using *multiple remote computers where the program had been embedded* WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE USERS ON THOSE COMPUTERS.
Slick trick that points up Scott McNealy's assertion that there is no such thing as privacy on the 'Net.
But what it also does is make the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) job that much harder. Ostensibly it would seem that the tracks of the masterminds of this scheme no longer exist. They planted the software program, much like the infamous "script kittie," weeks or months ago and have since gone away.
This attack, in other words, could have originated in Bulgaria or Peoria, Illinois, USA.
US Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, in charge of the investigation, had to admit tonight that his investigation into locating the perpetrators focuses on finding someone who brags about being part of this assault to friends. Lots of luck!
There are certainly people out there clueless enough to expose themselves this way, especially if this was an example of an adolescent prank. But serious cyber "criminals" --- if you want to call them that --- like most professional criminals, DON'T want to reveal their identities.
Worse yet, if you take the conspiracy theory route, this attack could very well have been accomplished by a government or governments who have vested interests in tighter Internet regulation. I don't personally espouse that theory, but I know of people who do.
What better way to get the Libertarian, Information-Wants-To-Be-Free crowd to come to heel than show that national economies are threatened by cyber-terrorists?
This issue of Internet security is something which I've written about on various levels for years now, and one which cuts both ways. Whether one takes it as a property issue or a personal privacy issue the implications as regards social policy need to be considered rationally --- rather than hysterically.
How important was it that Yahoo! or Buy.com was unaccessible for a few hours in a given week? That depends on whether you're a stockholder or a stakeholder.
In the larger scheme of things, how much of our personal freedoms are we willingly to give up --- and this is internationally --- in order to ensure that these large concerns can continue to make Internet millions? The EU's draft Action Plan for e-commerce, to be released at the end of the month, certainly asks us to consider these issues as does the United States' latest legislative initiatives on encryption.
And as more of our personal data becomes available electronically, what do the three tremors of the last 'Net year, the Melissa virus, the Y2K bug and this hack attack mean about our nascent efforts at forming global communities of interest?
In my personal e-mail in-box this week I've received concerned questions from readers about their inability to access certain sites not involved in the attack and whether this was part of the fall-out. I've had to answer, honestly, yes indeed. UUnet, for example, had major problems along the nodes in its network.
But then, I also received this e-mail, which you should consider:
"Our medical privacy is going to be lost by bureaucratic fiat unless we act now.ð We have until February 17, 2000 to tell the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington what we think.
"Please go to http://www.StopBigBrother.org to learn more about it and to help out."
Thanks for reading RDR. Stay informed. Come back again tomorrow.
