Re: Terrorism Hysteria on the Net

[Dale Drew <ddrew@mci.net>]

I think we are in violent agreement....

The item of issue, between physical and virtual terrorism attacks 
is the  fact the government either is, or wants to give the distinct 
perception that they are, ill-prepared to counter for the types of 
potentials wide-spread Internet-based virtual attacks.  And that the  
intelligence channels they have in place to detect possible movement 
of physical attacks may not fit the "Internet" model.

In addition, the US legal system is ill-prepared to deal with the
prosecutory issues surrounding this type of "terrorism".

===============================================================
Dale Drew                                MCI Telecommunications
Manager                                    internetMCI Security
                                                    Engineering
Voice:  703/715-7058                    Internet: ddrew@mci.net
Fax:    703/715-7066                MCIMAIL: Dale_Drew/644-3335


At 11:02 PM 6/10/96 -0500, snow wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Dale Drew wrote:
>> At 07:21 PM 6/10/96 -0500, snow wrote:
>> >On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, John Young wrote:
>> >> "You bring me a select group of hackers and within 90 days I'll bring this
>> >> country to its knees, " says Jim Settle, retired director of the FBI's
>> >> computer crime squad. 
>> >	Give me 15 well trained soldiers(near special forces level) and I
>> >can do it in less than 60 days. Without touching a computer. 
>> To understand where "They" think they are coming from, you have to compare
>> Apples-to-Apples.  The concern is the medium of choice; the Internet and it's
>> high availability of anonymity, coupled with its access to large amounts of
>> computer systems available via one virtual channel.
>
>	Preaching to the choir, but once again it is a case of nothing
>new. The potential for economic terrorism is not significantly larger
>given the existance of the internet than it was before. This is what needs
>to constantly be drummed into the technically dis-inclined, that the same
>problems exists off the net that exist ON the net.
> 
>> A well orchestrated and well researched attack by the right folk, as the
thought
>> process goes, could in-fact, potentially affect large amounts of critical
>> computer systems within a short period of time. And while the government
>> has inroads available to identify potential physical terrorists threats,
>> they do not feel as prepared for the virtual ones.
>
>	I would think that shutting down power to New York City for more
>than a couple of days would pretty much throw the economy into a fit. 
>
>	I would go so far as to say that you can cause MORE havoc in the
>physical arena than the virtual. 
>
>
>Petro, Christopher C.
>petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
>snow@crash.suba.com
>
>
>