Chapter 12: Fighting Against Macro Threats: Defensive Strategies for Governments and Industry Groups | Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation (With CD-ROM) (Networking Series)

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OVERVIEW

Information warfare, or sneak electronic assaults, could easily crash power grids, financial networks, transportation systems, and telecommunications, among other vital services. The National Security Agency (NSA) traces the macro threat to hostile or potentially hostile governments as well as drug lords, criminal cartels, and increasingly computer-savvy guerrilla groups. Some of these rogue organizations are doing reconnaissance today on U.S. networks, mapping them, and looking for vulnerabilities.

Cyberblitzes like those that briefly knocked out major Web sites in February 2000 (including Yahoo! Inc.’s Internet gateway, eBay Inc.’s auction service, and Amazon.com Inc.’s retail site could easily be copied on a larger scale. Criminals, crackers, foreign governments—when President Bush reads that intelligence briefing, he had better move pretty fast!

Such warnings are not new for the agents at NSA, who have frequently conjured up a “digital Pearl Harbor”—a reference to the Japanese surprise attack that threw the United States into the Second World War. But the NSA and other U.S. officials seem to be stepping up a public awareness campaign, spurred by the spread of information technology, growing knowledge of malicious computer code, and ever-greater U.S. reliance on networked systems.

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