Word: hackers
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Netscape Communications Corporation, known for its popular World Wide Web browser, went public in August; shares started trading on the secondary market at a 300 percent premium. The company later suffered the public humiliation of having its transaction security protocol cracked twice--first by a French hacker who cracked the international version, then by a pair of computer science students at the University of California at Berkeley who cracked the (supposedly more secure) domestic version...
...agencies are also dabbling in hacker warfare. The National Security Agency, along with top-secret intelligence units in the Army, Navy and Air Force, has been researching ways to infect enemy computer systems with particularly virulent strains of software viruses that already plague home and office computers. Another type of virus, the logic bomb, would remain dormant in an enemy system until a predetermined time, when it would come to life and begin eating data. Such bombs could attack, for example, computers that run a nation's air-defense system or central bank. The CIA has a clandestine program that...
...Pentagon's technological 911 force, dedicated to responding to attacks on the military's computational ganglia. In the 18 months ending July 1, the support team received 28,000 calls for help from operators of the U.S. military's worldwide computer network. The team isolates thousands of hacker programs, known as "critters," and then securely cages them for research. Such programs are increasingly powerful and easy to use. No longer do intruders need to know complicated codes and have an intimate knowledge of computer science. "All they need to do," says Pentagon computer-security expert Kenneth Van Wyk, "is point...
...military's microsensors and omniscient rows of video monitors may be expensive, but much of the technology needed to attack information systems is low-cost (a computer, a modem), widely available (a willing hacker) and just as efficient (one phone call). "It's the great equalizer," says futurist Alvin Toffler. "You don't have to be big and rich to apply the kind of judo you need in information warfare. That's why poor countries are going to go for this faster than technologically advanced countries." An infowarrior could be anyone in the checkout line at the local computer store...
Last October a Pentagon's Defense Science Board panel warned of an info-attack threat well beyond that posed by the hackers who have been irritating the Pentagon for years. "This threat arises from terrorist groups or nation-states, and is far more subtle and difficult to counter than the more unstructured but growing problem caused by hackers," the high-level board said. "A large, structured attack with strategic intent against the U.S. could be prepared and exercised under the guise of unstructured 'hacker' activities." The U.S., it added, might not even know it is under attack. "There...