Friday, January 07, 2000
Clinton fights cyber-terrorism
Attack via computers called top threat
The Associated Press and USA Today
WASHINGTON — Stepping up vigilance against cyber-terrorism, President Clinton plans to announce an initiative today to protect federal computers from infiltrators — including spending $2 billion to make the government's computer systems less vulnerable to attack.
The plan would significantly boost government funding for research and development and create an ROTC-type corps of information technology specialists.
“We've created this global village without a police department,” said Frank Cilluffo of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “I've been a critic that the government has been long on nouns and short on verbs — a lot of talk, not a lot of action. Here we're finally getting to the point of seeing some implementation and execution.”
Mr. Clinton has frequently expressed concern about the emerging threat that hackers, thieves and other governments pose to the nation's high-tech infrastructure. A top adviser Thursday included cyber-terrorism near the top of a list of threats facing America in the next century.
“I think there's a whole new realm of threat we're going to be dealing with,” National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said in response to a questions after a National Press Club speech. “The ability to take weapons of mass destruction across national borders with relative ease; the ability to attack our computers that run our infrastructure through cyber-terrorism.”
The initiative builds on steps the administration announced last year. It would seek to develop technologies, increase public and private cooperation against computer sabotage, improve training for government agents and boost protection of computer systems.
“It's creating a number of programs to train, detect and strengthen our ability to deal with cyber-terrorists,” the official said.
Last July, the administration announced it was creating a government-wide security network to protect against hackers. The plan included an elaborate network of electronic obstacles, monitors and analyzers to watch for suspicious activity.
The first 500 intrusion monitors were to be installed on non-military government computers early this year, with the full system in place by May 2003.
Also Thursday, a senior FBI official said the number of investigations the FBI opened into computer crimes and physical threats or violence over the New Year's weekend was not unusual.
The FBI opened six investigations of computer crimes and 12 investigations into physical threats or violence nationwide from Dec. 29 through Wednesday, said Mike Vatis, head of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.
Mr. Vatis said some new computer viruses were found.
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