By Nigel Thorpe
Chief of the English Copy Desk - Albawaba.com
In the most unlikely of alliances, Microsoft and archive rival Oracle have teamed up to fight the twin cyber threats of hackers and viruses.
Microsoft, Oracle and 17 other high-tech computer giants including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Nortel Networks, have teamed up to form the “Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center” (IT-ISAC). Anti-Hacking Inc., as the computer industry has nicknamed the new consortium, will be based at the Atlanta offices of Internet Security Systems and allow its members, governments, and individuals to share state-of-the-art security software and also issue warnings about real and potential Internet security threats.
The virtual glue that will hold these real-world rival Goliaths together will be the common interest of defeating hackers and computer viruses.
As Jess Bernst commented on January 16 on his Internet AnchorDesk site, “the real challenge will be to get these rivals to share what they know without worrying that they’re disclosing valuable information their competitors will use against them.
This will be a critical protocol for the IT-SAC governing body to work out.”
News agencies quoted federal agents in Los Angeles as saying Friday that “a group of teenage and young adult computer hackers allegedly planned an international Internet conspiracy. The original “tip-off” to the “Feds” came in October after Dalnet, an internet provider of Internet chat rooms, “eavesdropped” on a series of clandestine communications. Lynnwood, a 16-year-old alleged hacker from Washington, boasted on a personal Web site that a plot to sabotage communications hardware would “take down the Internet on New Year’s Eve 2001.” The teenager’s denial of criminal intent, published in Friday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, claimed that “the case is overblown and based on his misguided efforts to impress his friends in cyberspace.” The FBI, however, took the case seriously and obtained a federal warrant to search Lynnwood’s mother home where they seized computer equipment, floppy disks and CD-ROMS. FBI Special Agent Matt McLaughlin was quoted in the LA Times as saying “the severity of the threat was such that it required a preemptive search. It’s just not worth allowing something like this to happen where there is probable cause to believe it will.” McLaughlin also highlighted the international dimensions of the alleged plot by saying that “youths from California, Michigan, and Israel were also found to have discussed cyber-terrorism in some chat rooms and are suspected of trying to inject malicious computer code into the Web servers that form the communications backbone of the Internet.” According to the same LA Times report, four Israeli youths were arrested in their country on suspicion of involvement in the conspiracy.
McLaughlin explained that, if they had been successful, the hackers could have shut down chat rooms and other Internet realms and, most sinister of all, they might “possibly have gained access to some people’s personal computers.” Once it slips into your PC, like the Trojan horse of Greek legends, the hacker’s programs can “open the gates” to personal information which could then be used for criminal or political purposes.
Not too long ago, computer viruses and the hackers that launched them, like inter-computer missiles into cyberspace, were viewed as clever pranksters but the data accumulated in 2000 shows that they must now be regarded as real threats. Yahoo.com, one of the Net most visited sites, for example, went 'down' for three hours in February 2000, after hackers compromised the portal defenses, denying access to millions of users.
According to a survey conducted by Information Week Research, viruses and hackers cost global business more than $1.5 trillion in the first year of the millenium. This damage was wrought by an expanding virus menagerie of bugs, caterpillars, worms, goldfish, sharks, Amoebae and numerous Trojan horses. The survey concluded that together, viruses and hackers cost US businesses $266 billion, or more than 2.5 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). John DiStefano, principal researcher Reality Research & Consulting commented that “whenever any activity amounts to 2.7 percent of the total US GDP, Wall Street takes notice. Information technology now runs businesses around the globe. Whatever stops computer systems stops business. So what would have won you fame and quite possibly a job offer a decade ago, is now a sure ticket to legal action and criminal penalties.” A study to which DiStefano contributed showed that in the year 2000, the total years of lost productivity caused by hackers and viruses were 6,882 for North America, and 39,363 worldwide.
The twin cyber threats are clearly a growing global problem and no Middle East organization can consider itself safe anymore. DIT.net reported that the year 2000 saw many attacks by hackers on Middle East Web sites, where the conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was their favorite target. The Web site of the leading engineering consulting firm MBCE based in Riyadh was, for example, attacked three times in the early part of 2000 by one or more groups of hackers based in Brazil. The cryptic message “Who has knowledge to be able! Who has power has its domain,” appeared in Portuguese on the company’s defaced site. The hackers also mocked site administrators for being unable to protect their servers. As the Brazilian authorities began to close in on the hackers, however, the message on MBCE’s site changed to a bitter attack “against the Laws of Digital Crime in Brazil.”
The sites of Kuwait’s International Airport, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, and the Sharjah Public Library in the United Arab Emirates were also hit by the hackers with deadly efficiency. In the closing months of 2000, the Al Aqsa Intifada mushroomed into a cyber-war as Israel hackers attacked Arabic sites including Al-Bawaba.com, and Arab hackers retaliated very effectively against official Israeli sites.
Microsoft and Oracle, the two princes of the global software empire clearly have reason, in the best traditions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to be gloomy. If their new unlikely alliance is not successful, companies and individual computer users will certainly continue “to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous viruses and hackers.”
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
