Saturday, September 25, 2004

Tech to seek $300,000 for cyber-attack team

Olivier Uyttebrouck The Albuquerque Journal

Special to El Defensor Chieftain

New Mexico Tech researchers say they plan to ask legislators for $300,000 to form a rapid-response team for investigating computer attacks.

State officials have called on New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to investigate several computer-attacks in the past year, including a June 8 incident in which a French hacker broke into a state agency's network.

Computer attacks "can be just as devastating as a physical attack," said Bob Tacker, Tech's director of information services, who is organizing the response team.

"There are those that predict that the next physical attack may be done in conjunction with a cyber attack," he said.

In the June 8 attack, a hacker gained access to a state computer network for about 15 minutes by using hacking tools readily available on the Internet, Tech officials said.

State and Tech officials have declined to identify the agency. Tacker described it as "a small agency with really sensitive data."

Investigators have not identified the person responsible and have no plans to seek criminal prosecution, Tacker said. Investigators found no evidence that the hacker damaged or stole any vital information from the agency.

"The hacker was not really that technical," said Srinivas Mukkamala, a researcher for Tech's Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis.

"He absolutely owned the system for 15 minutes, but he wasn't smart enough to know that he had control of the system," Mukkamala said. "He did not even open files."

The potential for damage from the attack was high, Mukkamala said. Once inside the agency's computer network, the hacker could have gained access to computers at other state agencies, he said.

State officials asked the Tech institute for help in identifying the source of the attack. The institute studies complex networks such as computers, transportation and the electrical power grid with the intent of improving the security of those systems.

The institute, funded largely by the Department of Defense, also provides computer security training for groups around the state.

Tacker said the institute gives Tech the expertise to staff a "strike team" that could respond quickly to reports of computer attacks in the state. The team's purpose would be to halt the attack quickly, preserve evidence that could help prosecutors and correct the system's vulnerability to future attacks, he said.

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version