Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Agencies Face High-Tech Hackers

The White House still lacks a cyber czar but that's not stopping high-tech hackers. The Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime. Officials told the AP that the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and the Transportation Department's sites were all down at varying points over the weekend and into this week. Some were still experiencing problems or delays Tuesday evening.

The fact that the government sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack, officials told the AP on the condition of anonymity. The weapon of choice was a denial of service attack, which commonly involves saturating the victim machine with a flood of external communications requests that prevent it from responding to legitimate traffic. President Obama in May said he would handpick a cybersecurity enforcement coordinator who would report to the National Economic Council and National Security Council but that position remains vacant despite murmurs about potential candidates.

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told Tech Daily Dose that her agency was aware of the attacks on federal and private sector public-facing Web sites and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued a notice to agencies as well as other partner organizations, on this activity and advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks. "We see attacks on federal networks every day, and measures in place have minimized the impact to federal Web sites," she said. "US-CERT will continue to work with its federal partners and the private sector to address this activity."