From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: a2ac904e62a6e2669880bca363b0ed5940207e618f0e63290519e4942d915f82
Message ID: <199606261126.LAA02542@pipe2.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1996-06-26 15:30:43 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 23:30:43 +0800
From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 23:30:43 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: CIA Fears UmpTeen InfoNukes
Message-ID: <199606261126.LAA02542@pipe2.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
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The New York Times, June 26, 1996, p. B7.
Head of C.I.A. Plans Center To Protect Federal Computers
By Tim Weiner
Washington, June 25 -- Alarmed at the growing threat that
computer hackers pose to national security, the Director of
Central Intelligence today announced plans to create a
"cyberwar" center to protect the bits and bytes that weave
the nation together.
The United States cannot be brought to its knees by a
madman with a modem. But the Director, John M. Deutch, said
the nation's intelligence agencies were alert to the threat
of "very, very large" attacks on the computers that run
Defense Department war rooms, power plants, telephone
systems, air traffic control centers and international
financial transfers.
"The electron," Mr. Deutch warned, "is the ultimate
precision-guided weapon."
Mr. Deutch said he was seeking to create a cyberwar center
at the National Security Agency, the giant electronic
eavesdropping branch of American intelligence. He said the
center could focus the Government's previously scattershot
efforts to understand and combat the threats posed by
governments, terrorist groups and mischievous teen-agers.
Mr. Deutch's first public statement about information
warfare came in testimony before Senator Sam Nunn, the
Georgia Democrat who called a hearing of a Senate
Governmental Affairs subcommittee to discuss the
little-understood, highly classified problem.
"There are some who believe we are going to have to have an
electronic Pearl Harbor, so to speak, before we really make
this the kind of priority that many of us believe it
deserves to be made," Mr. Nunn said. "Do you think we're
going to need that kind of real awakening, or are we fully
alerted to this danger now?"
Mr. Deutch replied: "I think that we are fully alerted to
it now. I don't know whether we will face an electronic
Pearl Harbor, but we will have, I'm sure, some very
unpleasant circumstances."
He added, "I'm certainly prepared to predict some very,
very large and uncomfortable incidents."
Mr. Deutch said cyberwar could become a 21st-century
national security threat second only to nuclear, biological
and chemical weapons.
Potential attackers may already possess the sophisticated
techniques they would need to bring off a cataclysmic
crash, many experts believe, but they still lack the deep
knowledge of their targets and direct access to the
computer systems they would seek to disable.
Military and civilian organizations are increasingly
dependent on evermore complicated and interlinked systems.
They run the risk of understanding the threat less and less
as it becomes more and more complex Mr. Nunn and Mr. Deutch
suggested.
Senator Nunn also said intelligence agencies have
communications problems with banks, telecommunications
companies and other business ventures vulnerable to cyber
attacks.
"There's a great reluctance by the private sector to
discuss the threat that they've faced or even the attacks
that have already occurred," he said, "because they fear
that the word would go out they're vulnerable, and
therefore could destroy or damage consumer confidence and
thereby cost them business."
"At some point," the Senator added, "there's got to be
communication here."
[End]
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