Interview: Richard Power -How difficult is it to quantify the effects of cyber criminal activity?
Date: October 15, 2003Source: Computer Crime Research Center
... threat. We may never see a cyber attack, but it would be irresponsible for those who are entrusted with national security to not consider the consequences. For example, if someone had said before it happened that a small New Age cult would launch a Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system to spur some Armageddon that would somehow leave their cult leader in charge of the world, you would think it was implausible. But it happened.
And the Aum cult was not only was preparing for chemical warfare and other kinds of warfare. They were actively engaging in hacking into Japanese corporations and other entities around the world to gain technology they wanted--laser technology, for instance--because they wanted to build their own laser guns. And they, in fact, targeted and were recruiting software engineers and scientists and bright young people who had skills that they wanted. And they did drive up to the gates of Mitsubishi in the middle of the night, break in, get into the main computers, and hack into those computers to get trade secrets, proprietary information.
It's not difficult to surmise that they involved themselves in other hacking capers. But even this year, years after the Sarin gas attack . . . it turns out that a front organization that is controlled by the Aum cult was the contractor that developed software for 90 Japanese government agencies, including the Japanese police and elements of the Japanese Defense Department. And literally a day before this software was to be deployed, somebody put two and two together, and blew the whistle, and said, "Wait a minute. Look who developed this software." Now, was there anything funny in the code? We'll probably never know. But the danger of it is astounding, and the plausibility. You wouldn't believe it if I had told you, "A cult could be writing software that could be downloaded into the police department or the military wing of your government." People wouldn't believe it. But it almost happened, literally. It was within 24 hours of being deployed in Japan.
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| 2005-08-25 20:19:58 - Your blog is realy very interesting.... Ivailo |
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