:17 February 2000. Thanks to Wayne Madsen.
:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:
:February 17, 2000
:
:HACKERS, MEDIA HYPE, AND DISINFORMATION

>WAYNE MADSEN
:
:For what it is worth, I am a 20-year veteran of the computer security

:community. I have served in the Navy, National Security Agency, State
:Department, Computer Sciences Corporation, RCA, and have consulted on
:computer security with the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
:international banks, telecom companies and even firms that manufacture
:candy.
:
:While working for the FBI and Naval Investigative Service, I put one US
:Navy official in Federal prison for espionage and other crimes, and I was
:involved in U.S. counter-terrorism work in Greece and the Philippines. I
:think I know how the "spook" community operates and, more importantly, how
:it thinks.
:
:The hype associated with the recent Internet flooding is outrageous and
:serves the agendas of the military and intelligence communities regarding
:new vistas for bloated Pentagon and espionage budgets.
:
:On 17 February, National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show had a round table
:discussion featuring James Adams, a former London Sunday Times reporter in
:Washington who is now a drum beater for information warfare, and Jeffrey
:Hunker, the former head of the White House Critical Infrastructure
:Assurance Office. Adams suggested that for critical infrastructure
:protection certain civil liberties must be forfeited. He also stated that
:Internet transactions should not be afforded the same degree of privacy as
:the U.S. mail.
:
:Hunker was uncomfortable that some people think that scare mongering has
:been at the center of the recent packet flooding of the Internet. Adams
:supported the CIA's creation of IN-Q-IT, a CIA Trojan Horse in the Silicon
:Valley. According to Adams, Science Applications International Corporation
:(SAIC), a virtual CIA proprietary firm, is funding, through IN-Q-IT, a
:program called Net Eraser. None of the participants in the Rehm Show were
:willing to talk about Net Eraser and some seemed very nervous about
:discussing it in detail.
:
:This radio program is highly indicative of the current hype surrounding the
:Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks on DOT COM sites on the
:Internet. Even the use of the acronym DDOS is amazing. Here they are,
:twenty-something DOT COM executives, who probably never thought about
:computer security except for watching re-runs of "Hackers" and "Sneakers,"
:using Pentagon-originated terms like "Distributed Denial of Service"
:attacks.
:
:Why? Who told them to use those terms?
:
:Then Clinton manages to take 90 minutes to attend an Internet security
:summit on February 15. Northern Ireland's peace agreement is falling apart,
:the Israeli-Palestine agreement is unraveling, and Russia's new President
:is putting ex-KGB agents in his government, but Clinton has enough time to
:talk with a group of e-commerce barons, computer security geeks, and even
:one hacker. The whole thing appeared to be staged and scheduled way in
:advance.
:
:The whole so-called Internet "hack" smells of a perception management
:campaign by the intelligence community. Perhaps the system flooding was
:coordinated by one group -- however, those types of attacks probably occur
:on a daily basis without being reported by the world's media. It is
:important to note that one of the key components of information warfare --
:according to the Pentagon's own seminal documents -- is perception
:management -- psychological operations to whip up public support for a
:policy or program. The early Defense Science Board reports on Critical
:Infrastructure Protection actually call for a campaign to change the
:public's attitude about information system and network security.
:
:The Pentagon is a master at deception campaigns aimed at the news media.
:They constantly broadcast disinformation to television and radio audiences
:in Haiti, Serbia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere. They are now extending
:this to cyber space. Critical infrastructure protection is a masterful ruse
:aimed at creating the myth of impeding cyber-peril.
:
:The major domo is a weird chap named Richard Clarke, a Dr. Strangelove-type
:character who is Clinton's counter-terrorism czar. He always talks about
:defensive cyber-warfare but clams up when it comes to offensive US
:cyber-operations. That is classified.
:
:However, it is certain that the US Government has already done more to
:disrupt the Internet than any other actor -- state-sponsored or freelance.
:For the past few years, US government hackers have penetrated networks at
:the European Parliament, Australian Stock Exchange, and banks in Athens,
:Nicosia, Moscow, Johannesburg, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Zurich, and Vaduz. The US
:also engaged in network penetrations in Yugoslavia during the NATO war
:against that country.
:
:Why doesn't NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC and the others focus on what the US is doing
:to disrupt the Internet? They are instead falling into a familiar Pentagon
:trap of deception and diversion.
:

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