US Department of Defense Prepares Cybercrime Database

theater, grass-roots organizing and graffiti tocyberspace. Operations include espionage, Web pagedefacements, ‘denial-of-service’ attacks to swamp thetarget and virus infections.

“We’re going to start seeing this sort of thing for awhole range of issues”, including animal rights andother fringe causes, said Anderson, a data securityexpert whose resume includes consulting jobs forthe FBI and its counterparts in Britain, Russia,Germany, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.Hacktivists are increasingly focusing on companiesrather than governments, he told a press conference.Calling it a “gray area” for law enforcers, Andersonsaid in some ways the phenomenon was not unlikeold-fashioned picketing.

The survey listed 12 countries or parts of countries asrepresenting “extreme” political and security risks tomultinational companies, up from five in 1997, whenControl Risk introduced its current ratings scale.Those countries are Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad,Congo (Brazzaville and Democratic Republic ofCongo), Eritrea, Theiopia, Liberia, Russia(Chechnya), Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka (northand north east) and Sudan.

US Department of DefensePrepares Cybercrime DatabaseThe Defense Department is on the verge of completing a common database to aid the defence and intelligence communities in battling cyber-crime, according to the new commander of the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force for ComputerNetwork Defense. The database will enable thoseinvolved in computer emergency response acrossDOD, the intelligence agencies and the FBI to shareinformation critical to protecting their networksagainst intruders.

The database is in the final stages of development andlikely will be “an operational reality” in early 2001,said Maj. Gen. James Bryan, who commands the JTF-CND. “Having the ability to create a commondatabase and to share that database allows us to take

advantage of modern Web techniques in regard tomanagement, reporting and alerting”, said Bryan, whoalso serves as the vice director of the DefenseInformation Systems Agency.

One of the main benefits, according to Bryan, is thatthe department will be able to collect data on cyber-attacks or attempted attacks, categorize them and bet-ter understand them.“Storing them in a database thatcan be shared means we can profile the threats so thatwe can see patterns of activity that will allow us to doa much better job of understanding and describingwhat’s going on and taking the proper actions tocounter it”, Bryan said.“Also, I think a shared databaseallows people to do what humans do best, and that isto share ideas”, he said.“The really qualified people inthis computer network warfare business are a fairlysmall community of experts, and this database willprovide them a forum and opportunity not only toshare data but to share ideas as well.”

The database is only one of several initiatives the taskforce is undertaking to build its arsenal of cyberwar-fare weaponry. Others include developing automat-ed technologies for monitoring the network, report-ing intrusion events and improving response time.“We’ve got to develop more real-time intrusiondetection and ways of reporting without becomingintrusive ourselves”, Bryan said. “We’re developingtechnology that will allow us to automatically sensewhether our firewalls have the right configurationwithin them or whether the anti-virus updates are infact up to date.”

CIA Chat Room Causes GriefThe CIA is investigating 160 employees and contrac-tors for exchanging “inappropriate” E-mail and off-colour jokes in a secret chat room created within theagency’s classified computer network and hidden frommanagement. CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said thewillful “misuse of computers” did not “involve thecompromise of any classified information.” But theprobe, nearing completion, involves employees at alllevels of the agency, including some senior managers,and most likely will result in at least a few firings,agency officials said.

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Security Views/Dr. Bill Hancock