FBI Faces Fresh Cyber Threats

[RAVI BHASIN]

 

FBI Faces Fresh Cyber Threats

 

JANUARY 29, 2007 | NEW YORK -- From dirty bombs and high-tech spies to teenagers planning DOS attacks with Sony PlayStations, the F.B.I. has its hands full with a growing number of cyber-threats, according to David Thomas, deputy assistant director of the agency's science and technology branch.

Senior officials have already highlighted the cyber-threat posed by groups such as Al-Qaida.

A new breed of hackers use brokerage accounts to manipulate stocks now. If you have a brokerage account, you have to watch it like a hawk.

For some time now, Eastern Europe has been the cyber-equivalent of the Wild West, with governments struggling to clamp down on hackers and organized crime.

Businesses should start rethinking their storage and VOIP security strategies. Companies need to look at the way they store their data, they can make a hacker's life more difficult by storing customer names, dates of birth, and social security numbers on separate servers.

VOIP also presents big challenges. There was a case out of Newark [where] a guy had set up his own private network where he was stealing bandwidth from the private telephone companies. The fraudster, apparently, was making $1.5 million a year simply by hacking into telecom firms' VOIP switches. Hackers targeting VOIP switches can cost a telecom around $70,000 a month in lost revenues.

Then there is the ongoing threat posed by geeky, yet technically gifted, adolescents. FBI raided the home of 15-year-old American hacker, who was suspected of causing a major Denial of Service (DOS) attack in Cyprus. Despite confiscating all the kid's computers, he somehow used the Linux operating system on his Sony playstation to get back online and buy replacement gear. That night, he wrote a DOS attack that knocked the FBI.gov Website off for three days.

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