YIKES!
It
had been a good day hit-wise, but it was early yet and as
I logged on to the hit report my eyes practically bugged out
of my head: say what? The big red bar between nine
and ten o'clock was way over 1,500 accesses, and I knew something
was up. Either we had just gotten onto a hot Yahoo
"Full Coverage" site, or else it was just another robot
– drones in cyberspace that troll sites picking up information
for later storage on search engines, like cyber-bees storing
up pollen and carrying it back to the hive. I scrolled waaaay
down, past the country-by-country breakdown and finally getting
to the section that lists accesses by number and web-address,
starting with the highest number. There it was: nearly 2,000
accesses attributed to a single computer. I copied the address
and then went there: this
is what I found. . . .Yikes!
ACCESS
DENIED!
The
type flashed on and off, like the revolving light at the top
of a police car: ACCESS DENIED! ACCESS DENIED! ACCESS DENIED!
Along with the following explanation:
"You
have attempted to access the Army Computer Emergency Response
Team (ACERT) web site. This site can only be accessed from
sites within the .mil domain. Either your site is outside
of this domain, or your host's IP address does not exist in
the DNS reverse lookup tables for your site. If you are not
affiliated with the US military and would like information
on commercial Computer Emergency Response or C2 protect resources,
follow this link to Carnegie-Mellon
CERT. Semi-Technical Explanation: Our site's firewall
uses DNS reverse lookup to validate the hostnames that are
trying to get in. You have been redirected to this site because
the reverse lookup process either failed to return a hostname,
or returned a host name which is not in the Mil top level
domain (TLD)."
CERT-IFIED
CYBER-WARRIORS
The
Computer
Emergency Response Team (CERT) is a Pentagon-funded operation
housed at Carnegie-Mellon University dedicated not only to
researching and tracking the generation of computer
viruses but also in tracking threats
to US national security on the Internet. A whole sub-discipline
of the military arts has grown up under the rubric of "information
warfare," and a whole new category of enemies has been defined:
perpetrators of what is called "information terrorism." This
intriguing concept was fleshed out in a highly imaginative
(and perhaps prophetic) 1996 paper, a version of which was
published by the National Defense University Press. The authors
– Matthew G. Devost,
of the Information Systems and Technology Group, and Brian
K. Houghton and Neal A. Pollard, of the Science Applications
International Corporation's Strategic Assessment Center –
created a complete scenario, a war story with the Internet
as its landscape, peopled not only with evil "information
terrorists" but also heroic cyber-warriors in the service
of Uncle Sam:
"Offensive
information warfare techniques developed for military use
at a state level could also be utilized to respond to information
terrorism. Law enforcement agencies, in general, do not have
similar offensive information warfare capabilities. For this
reason a specialized and integrated counter information terrorism
group is required. These highly trained information warriors
would be the national security equivalent of Carnegie-Mellon
University's Computer Emergency Response Team, but with an
offensive capability. These Digital Integrated Response Teams
(DIRTs) would work from remote computer systems and use information
warfare tactics to detect, locate and counter the information
terrorists. In the American case, the DIRTs would be in networked
remote cells diffused throughout the continental United States.
The DIRTs would exploit law enforcement IT-oriented assets,
investigative capabilities, and intelligence bases. The DIRTs,
created by Executive Order, would operate as a cell of the
National Security Council and take its directives from the
information terrorism counterpart to the White House 'Drug
Czar.'"
OFFENSIVE
CAPABILITY
Gee,
it looks like somebody got their government grant approved
and the DIRTs are already on the prowl: perhaps we are just
beginning to get a taste of their "offensive capability."
It is striking, really, how the bureaucratic-police mentality
operates: using jargon words like "integration" and "counter-information"
to describe what we used to call a "black propaganda" operation,
the whole fantasy has a cinematic quality to it: the elite
vanguard of goodness and light, our "information warriors,"
surf the Internet, doing their DIRTy work and having a grand
old time on the taxpayers' dime. What is truly Orwellian,
however, is not the rather old-fashioned idea of "dirty tricks,"
transplanted to cyberspace, but the authors' rationale for
such a government operation – the ominously vague definition
of "information terrorism":
"Terrorism
is a political crime: an attack on the legitimacy of a specific
government, ideology, or policy. Hacking into a system to
erase files out of sheer ego, or stealing information with
the sole intent to blackmail, is nothing more than simple
theft, fraud, or extortion, and certainly is not an attack
upon the general legitimacy of the government. Policy and
methodology to counter crime depends a great deal upon criminal
motivations; thus, clearer and more concise definitions of
"information terrorism" are needed if it is to be addressed
by national security policy."
POLITICAL
CRIMES
A
"political crime"? We don't have those in this country –
or do we? I guess what Dan Ellsberg did in the case of the
Ellsberg papers would fit this definition of a "political
crime" – an inside whistleblower lowering the boom on
high-level shenanigans and letting the American people know
what crimes are committed in their name and with their tax
dollars. By this definition, any good journalist is a potential
"information terrorist" – who needs to be subjected to
the "counter-terrorism" engaged in by DIRT/CERT.
AN
UNLIKELY SCENARIO
In
any case, what does challenging the legitimacy of governments,
ideologies, or policies have to do with hacking? The juxtaposition
of these two concepts is key to understanding the rationale
behind the "national security" aspect of proposals to police
and regulate the Internet. The authors make the connection
in their ludicrous introduction to this scholarly paper, published
in 1996, which asks us to imagine the following pulp-fictional
scenario: It is September 1998, and "tensions in the Balkans
have grown geometrically." Clinton "has increased the US military
presence in the region," and NATO has intervened. In response,
a group known as the Serbian Council for the Liberation of
Bosnia (SCLiB) has "coalesced once members began to meet and
communicate via the Internet, using PGP encryption to hide
their interests and intentions." Those dastardly Serbs have
got to be up to no good, if not by definition then
by dint of their insistence on "hiding" from the prying eyes
of NATO. Why would these ingrates insist on encrypting their
communications – after all, our glorious President only
wants to "counter tensions and support peace initiatives"!
Not only that, but "their primary objective is revenge, to
redress grievances from Croatian land usurpation and its support
by their American patrons, and to rid the area of the NATO
presence by dramatizing their cause to the people of the world,
influencing them, and thus their governments, to demand NATO
leave the area."
LIGHTS!
CAMERAS! ACTION!
Could
anything more evil be imagined? Oh, those nasty stubborn Serbs,
instead of being grateful for the invasion of their country
by the World's Only Superpower, they have the nerve –
the nerve! – to resent it. Worse yet, these Slavic misfits
have a plan of resistance, and their chosen avenue of attack
is the soft underbelly of the American Empire – the Internet
. . .
"Having
garnered enough financial and operational support through
usual terrorist means, the Council formulates an attack, beginning
with the CNN Web Page. By accessing the CNN Weather forecast,
the Council times their attack for a night of intense storms
in the Brcko area. Paramilitary members of the Council intrude
on the frequencies of the approach and tower radios at the
Brcko airfield: an airfield recently set up, and thus lacking
ideal security measures, procedural experience, and full integration
of NATO countries' respective military communications systems.
In the storm, flying into the airfield with its navigation
lights off due to reported ground fire, a full C-130 troop
transport is cleared to land by the approach intrusion. Another
C-130, laden with fuel and also with its lights off, is cleared
for take-off on the active runway, by the tower intrusion.
The landing C-130 crashes into the second C-130. The resulting
crash kills all aboard both planes."
COMING
ATTRACTIONS
I
can hardly wait for the movie. Cyber-Warriors, starring
Tom Cruise as a military nerd from an underprivileged background,
the product of a broken home made whole by a stint as a "peacekeeper"
(cyber-warrior division) – and a really multicultural
cast including not only the requisite black, Hispanic, and
Asian, but also for the first time a Bosnian Muslim, a survivor
of Milosevic's nonexistent "concentration camps." But the
above action sequence is an entertaining prelude, meant to
soften you up for the political point – and that is the
concept of the Internet as an arena in a battle of ideas,
in which US forces are engaged in a military action that takes
place, not on a conventional battlefield, but in cyberspace.
No blood is spilled – but yet the battle is still a matter
of life and death.
PUBLIC
RELATIONS –
THE HARD SELL
Now,
believe it or not, according to the authors of this rather
implausible tale, the whole idea of the attack on the planes
is merely a ruse to get people to come to their website!
I kid you not.
"After
hearing the explosion from their vantage point on a nearby
hill, the intruders send a cellular signal to awaiting Council
hackers in Slovenia. Upon receipt of the signal, the hackers
immediately issue an "e-communiqué," taking responsibility
for the crash, explaining how it was done, and giving the
location of the intrusion equipment used, on which is engraved
"SCLiB." The remainder of the message is their manifesto and
claim for redress of grievances against life, property, and
national identity. The end of the message is an invitation
and address to access their Web site, which is actually run
from a computer in Amsterdam by Slovenian foreign exchange
students, via an anonymous web service account in Finland.
This message is sent to and received by every major print
and electronic news organization in the industrialized world,
before the debris from the C-130 crash had settled. The resultant
publicity is astounding: CNN, Reuters, ITAR-TASS, and AP immediately
broadcast the message, with the Web address. In addition,
the e-communiqué itself was sent out to over 30,000
e-mail addresses in the first hour after the crash. Six minutes
after the e-communiqué had been received, the Council
Web page received its first hit."
WEB
OF EVIL
What
a crock! Notice how the Internet itself is implicitly
condemned as inherently an instrument of subversion and, therefore,
evil. First of all, the idea of encryption drives governments
everywhere mad, because it means that their power is limited
by technology, which is supposed to be their tool.
Secondly, the idea that someone would commit a terrorist act
to call attention to their website is so singularly deluded
that it almost seems plausible – at least to the kind
of otherwise unemployable hacker who might be recruited into
the ranks of the DIRT squad, as imagined by the authors of
this learned paper.
DEFINITIONS
The
real definition of what "information terrorism" amounts to
is contained in the author's description of the contents of
the SCLiB website:
"The
Web page was dramatic and rife with propaganda and claims
against American, NATO, and Croatian imperialism and atrocities
in the Balkan region, and included questionable allegations
of illegal arms transfers between NATO governments and Bosnian
Muslims and Croats. Several references were included to the
former U.S. presence in Lebanon, and how that presence was
resolved."
DEJA
VU
Gee,
it sounds just like a website we all know and love
– as seen from the perspective of the War Party, that
is – especially the "dramatic" part. Oh yes, the Web
is a wild and inherently subversive terrain, and there's no
telling what you'll find on it. Why, the authors complain,
without the "proper treaties" with Finland, and due to the
inherent anonymity of the Web, these "information terrorists"
are able to "hide" from their pursuers – and not only
that, they are empowered to unleash a terrible retribution
. . .
"Twenty-four
hours after the C-130 crash, the Council Web had received
over 1 million hits. Twenty-four hours after the first hit,
the first accessing system crashed, with all files irretrievably
deleted, as a result of a Trojan horse the Council hackers
had embedded in the Web page, exploiting a flaw in the programming
language similar to one discovered by Princeton computer scientists
in February 1996. The flaw allowed a webmaster access to the
hard drive and files of the machine that had unwittingly accessed
the tainted Web page. Exploiting this flaw, the Council embedded
a program that activated 24 hours (according to the system
internal clock or any other time-keeping mechanism the machine
could access) after the page was hit, destroying the functions
and files of the system it infected. Although this created
a sensational climate of fear throughout the computerized
civilian world, the most damage done was to investigative
and defense organizations, who immediately and naturally accessed
the Web page before most of the news organizations had disseminated
its address. This included the American Department of Defense,
the Defense Ministries of all NATO countries, the American
Department of Justice and Treasury, and the Central Intelligence
Agency. Final damage to unclassified systems was incalculable,
but the dramatization of the Council's cause was greatly effective.
Since the Trojan horse was set to activate 24 hours after
the Web site had been hit, computer failure rates tended to
cascade, and were slow in tapering off, despite warnings to
avoid the terrorists' Web page."
SATURDAY
NIGHT AT THE MOVIES
In
this grade-B movie, with its crude Hollywood-ish stereotypes,
the Serbs are inherently malicious, Slavicized Fu Manchu types
who can only do evil: their tactics are insidious, utilizing
a subversive medium to achieve their devilish aims. How dare
these monsters retaliate against the very agencies that planned
and coordinated the invasion of their homeland! And what about
this mysterious "taint" that infects the cyber-bureaucratic
structure and causes it to come tumbling down? I'm no super-geek,
but it sure sounds like a lot of hooey to me. For why would
the Serbs want to create "a sensational climate of fear throughout
the computerized civilian world" – is this supposed to
create sympathy for their cause? Well, uh, yes,
according to the authors of this paper, who have no doubt
gone on to achieve high positions in some government-connected
"national security" institute or other:
"The
actual reports of the carnage of the crash reached the public:
these reports, on top of the fear created by the computer
disasters, and the general frustration with American efforts
in the Balkans, put enormous pressure on Congress and the
President. Because of a lack of treaty conventions, American
investigative agencies were not allowed to violate protocols
of Finland's cyber-community; thus, investigators were unable
to ascertain the identity of the anonymous server's customer,
or the location of the Web site in Amsterdam. The Council's
information terrorists remained secure in anonymity, and their
success in hiding prompted many copy-cat web pages, a spate
of "Internet liberators," and re-circulation of the Council's
original manifesto and web page detail. With Congressional
elections just over a month away, the Balkan mess became a
rallying point of congressmen to pressure the President. Finally,
the President had little choice but to accede to the public's
and Congressional demands to bring the troops back home. Without
American logistical and operational support, NATO's presence
and power in the region was significantly reduced."
THOUGHTCRIME
This
is the real "political crime" of the "information terrorists"
– political incorrectness. God forbid they should get
their manifesto out – and we certainly can't have any
of those troublesome "Internet liberators" running around
loose, fer cryin' out loud! Why, they're nothing but a bunch
of terrorists, information terrorists to be exact,
and they can't be allowed to have any influence over
the electoral process – or else what's this country coming
to? We certainly can't let our heroic President be unduly
"pressured" by those (few) meddlers in Congress who take the
Constitution seriously, and as for the public – they
certainly have no business interfering in foreign policy,
which is strictly the monopoly of self-appointed experts and
our self-interested elites. The real crime of the Serbian
cyber-"terrorists" is in the dissemination of their message
via the Web. The plane crashes, the hacking, the unleashing
of a computer contagion were all really beside the point:
As the authors put it, "as with most conventional attacks,
the strategic objective was publicity, drama, and leverage
to influence public and policy." By this definition of "information
terrorism," domestic opponents of Clinton's Balkan war(s)
could conceivably fall in the same category as the sinister
SCLiB, and surely would be among the first targets of the
Pentagon's "cyberwarfare" division. . . .
DISHING
THE DIRT
The
Digital Integrated Response Team (DIRT) – the
authors of "Information Terrorism: Can You Trust Your Toaster?"
imagined the perfect government program in the information
age. Think of it: you get to sit around all day, surfing
the net, gathering information for future use, finding your
enemies and then tracking them down in the streets of Amsterdam,
or somewhere in Finland: compiling information and "countering"
the "dramatic" websites of various "Internet liberators" with
drama of your own – including flame-wars in chat rooms
and posting boards throughout cyberspace, spouting the government
line – all in the name of "fighting terrorism." What
fun.
CONSPIRACY
THEORIES
If
it were somehow discovered that the Clintonistas ran a combination
spying operation and propaganda mill known as DIRT, would
anyone go into shock? The acronym is particularly fitting,
and who can doubt that this paper received high praise –
if not actual implementation – in an administration whose
chief defender and symbol is James Carville. (The man is a
living dramatization of Orwell's remark that by the age of
forty "everyone has the face they deserve.") I don't want
to weave any elaborate conspiracy theories that make Antiwar.com
the center of a vast web of cyber-intrigue, but don't you
just know that somewhere, hidden deep in the bowels
of the bureaucracy, some nerdy little "cyber-warrior" is sitting
at a terminal, tapping furiously away in a rat-a-tat-tat battle
against the make-believe "crime" of "information terrorism"?
And don't you just know he or she is getting paid handsomely
to do it? What I want to know is: what else are they paid
to do other than spy on their potential targets? What other
kind of weapons do these information warriors have in their
arsenal?
WHAT'S
UP WITH THAT?
The
invasion of CERT recurred at about the same time the next
day: again, our hit-counter crashed. I sent an email to the
CERT, in which I asked them to please stop crashing my hit
report and by the way do you really get paid to copy the files
of each and every one of our columnists? Is this part of the
CERT's public mission of tracking computer viruses? Or has
its mission suddenly expanded? I received no reply. I don't
expect those who do the dirty work of our rulers to voluntarily
crawl out from under their rocks: what is really needed is
a congressional inquiry to tip some of those boulders over
and expose the real extent and nature of government surveillance
of the Internet. Does someone really get paid to sit around
all day, surfing for cool sites (like this one), at taxpayer's
expense – and to what end? Inquiring minds want to know.
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