A recent distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack that briefly crippled the Web sites of some U.S. and South Korean government agencies and businesses calls attention to the difficulty of tracing such attacks to their originators. Cyberwarfare experts have warned that the Internet is, in effect, a “wilderness of mirrors,” and that tracking down the source of cyberattacks and other kinds of hacks is sometimes impossible. “There are no geographic borders for the Internet,” says Bigfix chief technology officer Amrit Williams. “I can reach out and touch people everywhere.” “We may never know the true origin of the attack unless the attacker made some colossal blunder,” says consultant Joe Stewart. Researchers say the botnet behind the assault was smaller than the similar malware programs that the hacker community routinely employs, while independent researchers have demonstrated that the DDOS was very amateurish. This suggests that the attackers, which concealed their actions behind a global chain of Internet-connected computers, may have left a residual trail that will eventually lead to their apprehension. “There is a U.S. political debate [about cybersecurity] going on right now with high stakes and big payoffs,” says Ronald J. Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Center for International Studies. “With the [Obama] administration cyberreview there are many government agencies orbiting around the policy debate that have an interest in pointing to [the recent DDOS] incident as evidence with obvious implications.”

View Full Article

For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com