http://www.nypost.com/commentary/18462.htm

WHEN GOTHAM GOES DARK By BOB McMANUS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DELTA Flight 1765, the 6:30 shuttle from La Guardia, lifted off directly over Rikers Island Monday evening. Full darkness had fallen; the Halogen-bright rows of street lamps below were at crisp right angles to one another, appropriate for a prison, and even from 1,200 feet it was clear that all was calm and orderly.

Presently the entire New York Metro area was twinkling peacefully in the night an enchanting, but otherwise unremarkable, vista. Civilization, such as it is, rests on the ability to light up the night, reliably and cheaply and Gotham got it right a long time ago.

So, Tuesday morning, it was startling to discover just how easily the lights could be put out all of them, and for long enough to test the social contract sorely.

The venue was the sparkling Ronald Reagan International Trade Center and the premise was this: America has jumped headfirst into the Information Age, and now it is hugely vulnerable to a new form of warfare cyberterrorism.

What is cyberterrorism? Tuesday's hosts (Jane's Information Group, the folks who publish the fighting-ships book) define it as the coupling of information systems to the threat of violence to generate fear in support of a political agenda in particular, by targeting advanced technologies deployed by potential targets.

Tomorrow's terrorists will use electrons perhaps, for example, to compromise the computer networks that control electrical distribution across North America.

The operative term is SCADA: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. This is geek-speak for the nerve systems that animate our high-tech society. Regarding electricity, it's a SCADA that recognizes a sudden demand for power in New York and gins up dormant generating capacity in Canada, or Ohio, to fill it.

When SCADA goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. In 1996, a tree branch fell and knocked out a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. transmission line in Northern California. The computers took over and sent power surging from one utility to another the term is "cascading" and when the overload switches finally stopped flipping, seven states and much of Canada were in darkness.

For two days.

If a tree branch can do that, imagine what determined, mature computer hackers could do. Especially since much of the critical data they'd need is by law! free for the taking on the Internet.

These wouldn't be kids teenaged malcontents out to impress friends but the real deal: highly trained, well-financed, probably state-sponsored techies exploiting an embittered, perhaps debt-ridden, power company employee recruited expressly to kill the electric grids.

"Somebody with 25 years of real experience, and a team behind [him]," terrorism expert Fred Cohen said Tuesday. "These are the fellows you need to worry about."

And not just them.

Good news, bad news: The United States pretty much has its Y2K problem under control, says Cohen. But the nation is painfully short of homegrown technicians so to fix Y2K "we had to hire thousands from the former Soviet Union, from China, from India. It's a good bet that there are all sorts of Trojan horses" latent computer viruses "embedded in critical infrastructure all over the place.

"What if [an embedded virus] took down a part of the power grid in the northern United States in the winter? That would kill a lot of people. What if [one] took down a nuclear power plant? And the media found out about it?"

What if the terrorists then presented demands?

"This would bring fear into play to achieve political goals," says Cohen, somewhat understating his point.

That, of course, is classic terrorism the clandestine application of violence to win concessions that can't be achieved openly but with a 21st-century twist.

If the world took one overriding lesson from the Gulf War (and the Kosovo aerial campaign) it's this: Nobody is going to prevail against the United States in a conventional military matchup. Not anytime soon.

But going to war against America's information infrastructure is an entirely different matter.

SCADA, you see, isn't only about electrical grids. Centralized data-control systems run the nation's natural-gas and fresh-water distribution networks, its air-traffic-control system, its railroads even New York's subways.

The nation's banking web is automated (think ATMs, but only as a start.) And then there's Wall Street in thrall to computerized trading programs, and thus rendered frighteningly vulnerable to computer-driven malevolence.

But is America a pushover? Far from it. Cohen said Tuesday that critical computer systems are constantly being probed who knows from where. So far, he added, security has been pretty good. So far.

Over the long run, though, security must be perfect; the terrorists only have to be lucky.

And have you noticed how early it gets dark these days?

E-mail: mcmanus@nypost.com

-- Brooklyn (MSIS@cyberdude.com), November 18, 1999

Answers

Not OT

-- nuggets (of@truth.there), November 18, 1999.

Bullshit.

Pure unadulterated Bullshit.

If Gotham's lights go out, it's because they didn't get the code fixed.

Look, folks...there is NO NEED to be hooked to the Internet by Con Edison...unless the utility workers are downloading Porn on their lunch breaks. If you are NOT on the Internet, BY DEFINITION you are NOT vulnerable to Cyberterrorists!

Once again...pure Bullshit. I expect that from the Mort Suckerman (Zuckerman, aka Clinton suckup) Daily News. That it is in the New York Post is deeply disturbing!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 18, 1999.

Mr. Stevens, no need to get so upset.

http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html

When NYPost, Wahington Times, and Worldnetdaily write about it -- it should be serious.

Internet warfare concerns admiral ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- he Pentagon's top intelligence official said yesterday that China's announced plans to conduct "Internet warfare" poses a future threat to U.S. military dominance on the battlefield. "We are clearly interested and concerned about this whole idea of information attack," Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, the new director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said in an interview. The three-star admiral was commenting on a report in China's official military newspaper, first disclosed in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times, that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is gearing up for wartime computer attacks on networks and the Internet that facilitate everything from finance to military activities.

"It's a big part of this asymmetric threat, and it's probably bigger than all of outdoors in terms of trying to get your arms around it," the admiral said in his first interview with reporters since taking over DIA last summer.

The United States and the Pentagon are very "information dependent," he said.

"We recognize that information dominance is going to be important to the future and that has to do with acquiring better information about your adversary, and protecting your own," Adm. Wilson said. "So when the Chinese discuss [information warfare] in the PLA daily . . . we ought to take note and we have."

The fact that the Chinese openly are discussing plans to attack computer-run infrastructures in future war is unsettling, he said. "It's a little bit disturbing," Adm. Wilson said. "And it could also be a little bit of psychology involved." To deal with the threat, the Pentagon's Defense Information Systems Agency has set up a special joint task force known as the Computer Defense Network, he said.

The Chinese report appeared Thursday in the Liberation Army Daily, official newspaper of the Communist Party-run political department of the PLA. It coincided with other statements by Chinese military leaders in recent weeks about China's growing offensive military capabilities. It also appeared days before China agreed to joined the World Trade Organization.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy declined to comment. The PLA newspaper article bluntly described China's plans for "Internet warfare" against finance, commerce, communications, elecommunications and military networks. The article said that it is "essential to have an all-conquering offensive technology and to develop software and technology for Net offensives so as to be able to launch attacks and countermeasures on the Net, including information-paralyzing software, information-blocking software, and information-deception software."

The operations would involve Internet attacks that would include "breaking codes, stealing data and taking anti-follow-up measures."

"To ensure that Net warfare can play the maximum role in war, it is essential to integrate it with other combat actions," the newspaper said.

Adm. Wilson also said the Chinese have made building up their military forces a national priority. "They are modernizing," he said. "So they've clearly made that an economic priority." The buildup is "across the front" and includes missiles, aircraft and "some power projection capability for the region that we're watching," he said.

Asked about the possibility that China will attack Taiwan over pro-independence remarks by Taipei's president, Adm. Wilson said both the Chinese and Taiwanese are "relatively patient." Unless there is a "dramatic pronouncement" from Taipei, the prospects for a military attack are low, he said. China likely will await the outcome of future elections in Taiwan to see what Taipei's new leaders do and say, he said. "Our assessment is that they are preparing for a number of contingencies," he said of China's military options toward the island. "They have the capability now to certainly attack Taiwan and to do things against the offshore islands and attack them," Adm. Wilson said. An invasion of Taiwan by Chinese forces, however, is not within China's military capabilities right now because the PLA lacks the capability to move forces by air and sea against the island, he said. Richard Allen, White House national security adviser during the Reagan administration, said the Chinese could inflict strategic damage from military-backed information warfare attacks. Mr. Allen said the recent computer attacks on the Pentagon by an Israeli hacker and two teen-agers in California would pale in comparison to a Chinese military computer strike. "This is something about which we ought to be mightily alarmed," he said. The timing of the threatening article, so close to the conclusion of trade talks with the United States, "shows the supreme confidence the Chinese have," he said. The publication of the story in an official Communist Party-run newspaper shows that the Chinese "obviously were trying to send a message." "They were probably overstating their capabilities, but it indicates a potential adversary's intent," he said. On other issues, Adm. Wilson said: There are no signs of increased activity in North Korea indicating Pyongyang is preparing to flight test its new long-range Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile. North Korea's continuing effort to develop nuclear weapons secretly "is a concern." The DIA is undertaking a major program to improve its intelligence databases, to provide better intelligence and also to avoid the failure that led to NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, May 7.

U.S. intelligence agencies do not know if Saddam Hussein secretly is building chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in violation of United Nations sanctions.

Sorry about formatting, but I did not have much time.

-- Brooklyn (MSIS@cyberdude.com), November 18, 1999.

Brooklyn,

Relax! Some of my fondest memories are of Eastern Parkway, the Ingersoll branch of the Brooklyn Public Library ( the largest LENDING library in the World), the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with that Magnificent Japanese Garden (designed in 1905 when we were ALLIES of Japan), and the Brooklyn Museum back when it was a Museum (i.e. "The Greek Slave" by Hiram Powers) rather than a battering ram for all sorts of cultural saboteurs.

My point is...why is Con Edison on the Internet in the first place?? Look...If you use LEASED LINES, other forms of Security, there is NO WAY a "cyberterrorist" can attack. This sounds as if it is a Y2K excuse in advance!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 18, 1999.

Ok Here we go again.

!) SCADA doesnt control generators. That is the AGC (Automatic Generation Control). So his opening statement is wrong. SCADA also requires a human to initiate an action. And the actions are oners. You can send a command to open a breaker but not a command to open all breakers everywhere at one time.

2) What happened in 1996 had nothing to do with SCADA. Try this link >http://www.wscc.com/distnews.htm< He gets it all wrong. The line sagged into the tree and it was a bad relay that caused a misoperation that lead to the outage. The lines were heavily loaded at the time. SCADA isnt even mentioned in the report.

3) I cant say all SCADA is not connected to the public phone network but most of it isnt. And certain other precautions, which I wont go into are taken.

4) Each company has its own SCADA system. Some are so old as to be hard wired and not have any chips in them. They dont all use the same computers, or programming. Most of it isnt on PCs either. So how is one virus going to take down the grid?

-- (The Engineer@tech.com), November 18, 1999.

K., by what measure is Brooklyn the world's largest lending library?

-- Howzat (curiosity@wonder.why), November 18, 1999.

So, the administration's latest "terrorism expert" is publicizing "terrorism again........" -

Anybody else wonder why they're endlessly pushing this issue?

Do they (the new anti-terrorist parts of the Justice Department/Defense Dept/treasury Department/Commerce Department/etc/etc. need to justify their budgets?

Do they (the Clintons' administration) intend to use this massive campaign to "prevent unrest" near the year's end?

Do they (the Clintons' administration) intend to use this massive public relations campaign to "justify any means necessary" after troubles begin early next year?

Do they (the Clintons' administration) intend to use this massive campaign to "appear to be the country's mother and father" figure by "saving everybody" (or at least enough to fit the TV screen when/if problems hit?

Or.....

---

It's not accidental - there have been dozens of "conferences" stories like this, hundreds of TV news shots, hundreds of press releases just like this one.....all on the terroism aspect of y2k.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 18, 1999.

I think it's called: "Trying to drum up some business." Some "consultant finds a gullible and ignorant reporter and tells him/her a story. Since the reporter doesn't know anything; doesn't do any basic checking, it gets printed as "the truth".

Sound a lot like Y2K to me.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), November 18, 1999.

Howzit,

The Ingersoll branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which faces Grand Army Plaza and runs between Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway, is truly huge. Unlike the larger New York Public Library at 42nd Street (the second largest in the world) virtually ALL of its volumes are for lending. The 42nd Street Library has a smaller lending section than most ordinary branch libraries.

The difference in approach dates back to when The City of Brooklyn was a city in its own right.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 18, 1999.

The Engineer is a POLLY TROLL!!!

-- Polly Hater (liarliar@pantsonfire.com), November 18, 1999.