huridocs-tech State-Sponsored Hackers

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## author     : clore@columbia-center.org
## date       : 27.02.99
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daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk

 New Scientist  www.newscientist.com 27 February 1999 page
 51

 Virtual Warfare

 State-sponsored hackers will be the stormtroopers of the 21
 st century, warns Michelle Knot[ AT LEAST it was bloodless.
 When East Timor was wiped off the Internet last month, no
 one died. It was a relatively minor indignity for a region
 that is paying a terrible price in its struggle for
 independence from Indonesia.

 An estimated 200 000 East Timorese have been killed by the
 Indonesian army since 1975, and the fate of a few computers
 may appear trivial by comparison. However, the recent
 coordinated hacker attack on East Timor's Internet presence
 showed how military struggles can spill over into
 cyberspace and could be a sign of worse to come.

 A quick search of the Web reveals many sites devoted to
 protests against the occupation of East Timor, but the site
 that the hackers targeted is different. Most Internet
 addresses end with a couple of letters that reveal the
 nationality of the site: ".uk" for Britain, for example, or
 ".id" for Indonesia. These letters are part of the "domain"
 name.

 The website in question is physically located in Ireland.
 Rather than using the Irish ".ie", however, the site's
 creators - East Timorese living in Dublin and their
 sympathisers - decided to register a new top-level domain
 name, ".tp" ,as if East Timor were an independent country.
 The new domain was set up at the end of 1997 by Internet
 service provider Connect-Ireland, which also hosts the
 website: www.freedom.tp.

 For its creators to set up such a domain, the international
 standardisation body had to recognise East Timor as a
 country under occupation, rather than part of Indonesia.
 This was a moral victory for East Timor, and the Indonesian
 government was probably not amused.

 According to Connect-ireland, hackers started testing the
 defences of the East Timor server 10 months ago. Then, on
 19 January, a coordinated attack began, apparently
 originating in 18 places as far afield as Australia, the
 Netherlands, Japan and the US. Once the hackers had torn
 down its defences, Connect-ireland had little alternative
 but to pull the plug on its entire system.

 This left the service provider's 3000 customers without a
 service. However, Connect-ireland has been busily
 reconfiguring the www.freedom.tp website, and the company's
 usual home page eventually reappeared online at
 www.connect.ie in the middle of February.

 It is unlikely that the hackers responsible will ever be
 tracked down, but the coordinated nature of the attack
 suggests that there was more to it than casual vandalism.
 "The perpetrators of this attack have not yet been
 identified, but the Indonesian government is known to be
 extremely antagonistic towards this display of virtual
 sovereignty," says a statement from Connect-Ireland. In
 other words, this may have been the first hacker attack
 orchestrated by a government. There has been no direct
 comment from the Indonesian government.

 Of course, many governments around the world have been
 interfering with cyberspace in more or less irritating ways
 for some time. For example, the US persists in trying to
 control the encryption codes that people use to send
 confidential messages, and several governments are busy
 examining ways to tax the use of the Internet. But whatever
 their agenda, these states have always worked within the
 law. The assault on virtual East Timor was the cyberspace
 equivalent of a military invasion. It demonstrates what an
 unscrupulous regime could do.

 As we become increasingly dependent on the Web and e-mail,
 we also become more vulnerable to this new brand of
 information terrorism. Take, for example, Internet
 commerce. It is still in its infancy, yet if someone could
 seriously disrupt online businesses, the economic
 repercussions would be substantial.

 The fate of virtual East Timor is a warning to us all.
 There's a new kind of warfare emerging. Bloodless, yes, but
 potentially devastating.

 Michelle Knott is a freelance technology writer


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