America is in the thick of a protracted war, and it has nothing to do with the Middle East. Call it the War on Cyberterror.
The nation's struggle to secure its electronic borders began with the Marsh Commission, established by President Clinton in 1996 after the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building. Back then the goal was "critical infrastructure protection" - sheltering vital assets from, as former national cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke chillingly put it, an "electronic Pearl Harbor."
Thankfully, there has been no electro-catastrophe. But modern mayhem has two faces: swift sneak attack and slow-gathering chaos. We may have dodged the computer equivalent of 9/11, but we're becoming mired in a digital Mogadishu. The threat isn't only from rogue nations and stateless terrorists bent on storming the citadels of power. A loathsome tide of scammers, spammers, phishers, and
ID thieves is attacking the populace wholesale.
The nation's cyberdefenses need a major rethink. Here's what security experts need to do:
1. Stamp out spam. Just after the Can-Spam Act passed in December, a whopping 3 percent of spammers feigned compliance. That figure is now down to 1 percent, and spam constitutes two-thirds of all email. The Federal Trade Commission worries that a nationaI Do Not Spam list would actually make the problem worse; scofflaws would only use it to harvest pre-validated addresses.
Half of the US population is on the Internet. Every day these citizens see the law flouted and mocked, not just by legally exempt foreigners but also by fellow Americans. Consider Boca Raton, Florida. This town, whose name means "mouth of the rat" in Spanish, hosts 40 of the world's most prolific spam operations, plus countless fraudulent real estate and telemarketing shops. The global capital of electronic fraud is right in our own backyard!
The FBI claims it will get around to arresting spammers sooner or later. The G-men need to start now.
2. Protect ordinary citizens. "Critical infrastructure" isn't the only thing at risk. By now, the government's computers are probably a lot safer than your grandmother's. Brand-new PCs, fresh out of the styro blocks, become worm-infected within minutes of being connected to the Net. The Bobax worm actually tests your bandwidth to see if it's worth the hacker's while to make your machine a slave. Worse yet, having become enslaved, your machine is an ideal tool for hostile forces.
3. Unplug the syndicate. After decades as a playground for antisocial teens, the Net has become a key enabler of organized crime. Syndicates in the former Soviet Union are fusing fraud and identity theft into a new business model, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.
A recent Gartner report estimated that 20 percent of Net users have been scammed online. The average loss due to electronic checking-account fraud, the fastest-growing form of egrift, is $1,200. Meanwhile phishing - the use of legitimate-looking email to snatch private info - has spawned a boom in identity theft. These activities can lubricate most traditional mob activities, like human trafficking and money laundering. And the Net offers a plethora of new rackets, such as shaking down online casinos with denial-of-service attacks.
We're witnessing the birth of an ugly electronic underworld. Only smart, energetic, iron-fisted law enforcement will bring it to heel.
4. Empower the experts. The top defender standing between Americans and cybermayhem is a little-known functionary named Amit Yoran, whose official title is director of the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security. Yoran is a nice guy with some hard-won expertise, but the core of his job is, as he describes it, "to motivate the public and private sectors to partner and act decisively under their responsibilities."
In other words, Yoran himself can't do a damn thing. He has no badge, no gun, no team of prosecutors, no carrot, and no stick. He needs all of those things, and he needs them yesterday. It's time to stop pretending we're at Woodstock and get the hell out of Altamont.
On the Internet, we geeks created a frontier. But it's moving directly from barbarism to decadence without ever encountering civilization. The tide of malice is seeping right into our living rooms, 24/7/365. The longer we avert our eyes, the more dangerous the Net will become.
Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.VIEW
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The Other War on Terror
