FBI cyber cop says 'very existence' of US under threat

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Cyber attacks threaten the "very existence" of the US, according to a top FBI official charged with worrying about such things.

"The cyber threat can be an existential threat - meaning it can challenge our country's very existence, or significantly alter our nation's potential," Steven Chabinsky was quoted by Computerworld as telling a gathering of government IT types at the Federal Office Systems Exposition, better known as FOSE, in Washington DC on Tuesday.


"How we rise to the cybersecurity challenge will determine whether our nation's best days are ahead of us or behind us," he added.

Chabinsky wears a trio of hats in the cyber-wars. He's the assistant deputy director of National Intelligence for Cyber, the chair of the National Cyber Study Group, and the director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force.

Whether you think he is merely fear-mongering in an attempt to bolster his budget's bottom line or instead calling attention to genuine - and heinous - vulnerabilities, Chabinsky was certainly emphatic in his warnings. "I am convinced that given enough time, motivation and funding," he said, "a determined adversary will always - always - be able to penetrate a targeted system."

Although cyber-terrorism is his top priority, Chabinsky is also worried about cyber-snooping. His concerns include foreign agents and criminals who "seek every day to steal our state secrets and private sector intellectual property, sometimes for the purpose of undermining the stability of our government by weakening our economic or military supremacy".

And then there's cyber-crime. Chabinsky believes that some progress is being made in this area - he averred that although many cyber-criminals believe that they'll never be caught and convicted, "increasingly, they are wrong".

The FBI isn't the only US agency actively pursuing cyber-security. As InformationWeek pointed out on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is teaming up with the National Security Agency (NSA) to test the latest iteration of the government's "Einstein" intrusion-detection system (IDS).

The new system, Einstein 3 (pdf), will ratchet-up the previous IDS efforts, using NSA-developed and commercial technology to add intrusion-protection system (IPS) capabilities. As part of Einstein 3, real-time full-packet inspection and what the agencies call "threat-based decision-making" will monitor and protect traffic moving in and out of civilian executive-branch agency networks.

The cyber-threats to be detected and prevented include, according to the DHS, phishing, IP spoofing, botnets, denials of service, distributed denials of service, man-in-the-middle attacks, and "the insertion of other types of malware".

As the Wall Street Journal noted when details of Einstein 3 testing were released earlier this month, the IDS and IPS powers of the effort understandably give rise to privacy concerns - especially in light of the hot water that the previous US administration found itself in when details of its secret snooping came to light.

As the WSJ reported, when the Obama administration's cyber-security chief Howard Schmidt spoke to the RSA conference a few weeks back he said that allaying privacy concerns was one of his top priorities: "We're really paying attention, and we get it," he told that gathering.

Details of the efforts being made to ensure privacy of the Average American Joe can be found in the DHS's 19-page Privacy Impact Assessment (pdf) for the Einstein 3 testing, which includes assurances that "No agency traffic is collected or retained ... unless it is associated with a cyber threat. Other agency traffic is not stored."

Unfortunately, detailed planning, open assessments and good intentions will only get the FBI, DHS and NSA so far - there's also that little detail called execution. And as the recent delay in the FBI's computer upgrade makes clears, the ability of the federal government to execute its plans in a timely fashion is at best questionable. ®
Bootnote

If you're an IT type who has been made redundant during the economic meltdown, the FBI's Chabinsky wants to talk with you. He told the FOSE crowd that the FBI is looking for agents who can "talk the talk" to join the cyber-wars against cyber-baddies.

src:__http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/us_under_cyber_threat/

 

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Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- Criminal hacker organizations are operating with increasing corporate-like efficiency, specialization and expertise, according to the FBI.

From a business perspective, these criminal enterprises are highly productive and staffed by dedicated people willing to operate worldwide, around the clock "without holidays, weekends or vacations," according to Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director in the FBI's cyber division. "As a result, when an opportunity presents itself these criminals can start planning within hours."

"The cyber underground now consist of subject matter experts that can focus all their time and energy on improving their techniques, their goods and services," Chabinsky told an audience today at the FOSE conference, a government IT trade show, held here.

During the presentation, Chabinsky presented a list of the top 10 positions in cyber crminal organizations. They are:

1. Coders/programmers, who write the exploits and malware used by the criminal enterprise. Contrary to popular belief, Chabinsky noted that coders who knowingly take part in a criminal enterprise are not protected by the First Amendment.

2. Distributors, who trade and sell stolen data and act as vouchers for the goods provided by other specialists.

3. Tech experts, who maintain the criminal enterprise's IT infrastructure, including servers, encryption technologies, databases, and the like.

4. Hackers, who search for and exploit applications, systems and network vulnerabilities.

5. Fraudsters, who create and deploy various social engineering schemes, such as phishing and spam.

6. Hosted systems providers, who offer safe hosting of illicit content servers and sites.

7. Cashiers, who control drop accounts and provide names and accounts to other criminals for a fee.

8. Money mules, who complete wire transfers between bank accounts. The money mules may use student and work visas to travel to the U.S. to open bank accounts.

9. Tellers, who are charged with transferring and laundering illicitly gained proceeds through digital currency services and different world currencies.

10. Organization Leaders, often "people persons" without technical skills. The leaders assemble the team and choose the targets.

src:__http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9173965/FBI_lists_Top_10_posts_in_cybercriminal_operations

And now this !
haha this is laughable ! ----> 1. Coders/programmers

Number one thread , OMG ! that is so ridiculous , those are the guys who invented the internet itself , its looks like they are going after intelligence of the inet , its like book burning and writers/poets killing in WW2 , when germans exterminated a lot of them.