Israel: Cyber-Terrorism Is 'International Crime' By Jay Lyman NewsFactor Network November 13, 2000

A member of the Israeli Parliament demanded that cyber-terrorism be declared an international crime. While American and foreign companies seek to shore up security and improve their readiness to stave off cyber-attacks, a former Israeli Minister of Science has demanded that "cyber-terrorism" be declared an international crime.

Michael Eitan, head of the Knesset's [Israeli parliament] Internet committee, stated that the online world should not be a "potential battleground," according to press reports.

While most nations have laws against cybercrime, the only existing international agreement is the Draft Convention on Cybercrime, issued by the Council of Europe with U.S. cooperation. The proposal reiterates the necessity to "deter actions directed against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer systems, networks and computer data, as well as the misuse of such systems, networks and data." The draft is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

Cyber-Terrorism Hits U.S. Companies

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has been pulled into the Middle East hacking war as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians play out online. Michael Assante, chief operating officer of security company LogiKeep, said anti-Israel messages -- which have defaced pro-Israel Web sites in recent weeks -- suggest the company has become a target.

Assante told Newsfactor that threats by a group called "Gforce Pakistan" against AT&T and Quest are a consequence of those companies providing additional servers for Israel in the ongoing cyber-war.

"Once [Gforce] turned their focus from Pakistan to the Middle East conflict, they began to deface many sites with pro-Palestinian messages, including direct threats against U.S. corporations," Assante said.

"As the crisis evolves, people find ways to act out," Assante said, describing the perpetrators as "hacktivists." He explained that cybercrime typically escalates from disturbing messages to infrastructure attacks.

Increasing Internet Combat

News outlets worldwide have carried numerous warnings in recent weeks, saying that the continuing hacks and counter-hacks in the region could spill over into the rest of the Web world. The threats to AT&T and a failed attempt to hack Lucent Technologies last week followed a series of attacks originating in the unsettled region.

Recent e-mail attacks on Israeli government Web sites partially disrupted the services of NetVision, one of Israel's largest Internet providers. Attributing the hack attacks to Hizballah, an anti-Israel terrorist group, NetVision published a statement saying that the overload was caused by hostile elements trying to shut down Israel's government and IDF (Israel Defense Force) Web sites hosted on NetVision's servers.

The virtual assault was carried out by means of mass e-mailings, some of which contained anti-Semitic messages, sent to government offices. A large amount of simultaneous e-mail slows down access to sites and can cause temporary server crashes.

"We are taking measures to prevent similar attacks, which for obvious reasons, we would rather not reveal. We have not, to date, come across any case in which access to the Internet through us was shut down for even a moment," said NetVision General Manager Gilad Rabinovich.

Assante said that while he hopes international efforts will be effective, he has some doubts. "There are some big barriers and challenges," he said. "It's going to be a very slow road to get any effect out of it."

http://newsfactor.com/news/articles2000/001113-nf2.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), November 14, 2000