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                       U.S. SEEN AS OPEN TO CYBER ATTACK
                                       
     Cyber Warfare graphic October 8, 1997
     Web posted at: 3:46 p.m. EDT (1946 GMT)
     
     BALTIMORE (AP) -- Suddenly, electric power goes off. Or telephones
     go dead. There's chaos in the electronic banking system. Are the
     incidents electronic accidents, or deliberate attacks?
     
     Computer security experts from government and private industry
     voiced agreement Tuesday that as the most technologically advanced
     society in the world, the United States is uniquely vulnerable to
     electronic attack.
     
     How soon the threat would be real and what could be done to block it
     were principal topics of discussion on the opening day of the
     National Information Systems Security Conference.
     
     "Our profound vulnerability is growing on a daily basis," said
     Charles Abzug of the Institute for Computer and Information
     Sciences. "Since our society is the most technologically advanced in
     the world, we are more vulnerable than anyone else."
     
     Robert Marsh, a retired Air Force general who is chairman of the
     President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, told
     the conference that "while a catastrophic cyber attack has not
     occurred, we have enough isolated incidents to know that the
     potential for disaster is real and the time to act is now."
     
     The commission is expected to send its report to the White House
     next week. Marsh said the panel would recommend far greater
     cooperation and sharing of information between government and
     private industry, accelerated research and a nationwide program to
     educate people on the scope of the problem.
     
     But questions were quickly raised as to how much information the
     government could share from a report that is classified.
     
     "We have to solve this dilemma because if we don't, we have no
     sharing of information," said Thomas J. Falvey, a commission member
     who is a security expert at the Transportation Department.
     
     Marsh conceded in an interview that there will be a need to break
     down reluctance within industry and government to share sensitive
     information.
     
     He said there is a need to "devise the means by which the private
     sector can in fact be willing to share its information and not fear
     that it will leak."
     
     At the same time, the government "is going to have to recognize that
     in this new era, it's the private sector that needs some of this
     threat information and this warning information."
     
     As examples of cyber attacks already experienced, Marsh cited
     incidents at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Griffis Air
     Force Base in Rome, New York.
     
     "A flood of e-mail messages originating in Australia and Estonia,
     and routed through the White House computer system, virtually shut
     down Langley air base's e-mail for hours," he said.
     
     Someone in England routing messages through Latvia, Colombia and
     Chile and commercial Internet service providers gained access to
     computers at Rome Laboratory at Griffis and "launched attacks
     against a wide array of defense and government computer systems,"
     Marsh said.
     
     One of the difficulties in such cases is determining whether it is
     the work of a mischievous hacker or an attack by a hostile
     government.
     
     "If Iran attacked AT&T, how does AT&T know that's an act of war
     rather than some kid fooling around?" asked John Pescatore, a senior
     consultant at Trusted Information Systems, a developer of computer
     security software.
     
     Copyright 1997   The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
     material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
     redistributed.
     
    
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  Related sites:
  
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     * Air Force Information Warfare Center World-Wide Web - develops,
       maintains and deploys Information Warfare/Command and Control
       Warfare (IW/C2W) capabilities in support of operations, campaign
       planning, acquisition and testing
     * Air Force Computer Emergency Response Team - the single point of
       contact in the Air Force for reporting and handling computer
       security incidents and vulnerabilities
       
     
     
     External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
     
   
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