NATO Summit and EU Conference address the global reaches of illict cyber activity

On the Internet -- crime, espionage and some say, terrorism can cross a border with the click of a mouse. Because of this, it probably shouldn't be surprising that this is a hot topic at the NATO summit, as well as, a seperate conference conducted by the EU.

The AP is reporting:

At a two-day conference starting Tuesday in Strasbourg, France, the Council of Europe will to review implementation of the international Convention on Cybercrime and discuss ways to improve international cooperation.

Cyber defense also will be on the agenda when heads of state from NATO's 26 member nations gather in Bucharest Wednesday for three days. The leaders are expected to debate new guidelines for coordinating cyber defense.

Cyber defense is increasingly becoming a concern. For instance, there is increasing evidence that the Chinese have been hacking into other government's systems and have a cyber war doctrine being developed.

Last year, there was the much written about attack on the government of Estonia, also.

The EU conference will also address more financially motivated criminal activity on the Internet, also.

The AP article quotes a German University Professor, Marco Gercke, who specializes in computer law as saying:

Compared to regular terror attacks, it is much easier for the offenders to hide their identity. There are at least 10 unique challenges that make it very difficult to fight computer-related crime," said Gercke, one of the conference participants. "The success rate of cybercrime is very high."

While it is unknown, whether or not, these meetings of the minds will yield any results -- the fact is that unless there is greater cooperation and collusion between the good guys -- the problems of undesirable activity being spread with the click of a mouse is likely to continue growing at an alarming rate.

A little more teamwork and forward thinking might go a long way towards solving the problem. Of course, taking some of the players out from the opposition (bad guys) would go a long way, also!

To close this brief post, I would like to point to matters a little closer at home. An American computer law expert recently wrote a forward thinking article on the Hannaford data breach, where hackers stole 4.2 million payment (credit/debit) card numbers and the recent settlement between TJX and the FTC.

In his well thought out article, Ben Wright of SANS writes:

The FTC is well-meaning here, but it is misdirected. By singling out TJX and chastising it with the “unfairness” “bad guy” rhetoric, the FTC distracts the necessary public conversation. It implies that if we can just punish these lazy merchants enough (and force them to comply with the PCI and similar controls), then credit cards will be safe. That’s wrong.

The criminal warfare directed at the credit card system is more powerful than the theory behind PCI. The whole credit card system needs to change. As a society we need to focus on beating the criminals, and stop flogging victims like TJX as unfair privacy infringers.

To me, this means that instead of spending all our resources on inadequate security and filing litigation against the "unlucky targets" of organized cyber crime, we need to start addressing the root of the problem. I'll give anyone reading this one guess, who that might be?

London e-crime conference suggests that hackers are becoming more organized and politically motivated

In the past several years, we've seen a lot of corporate and government systems compromised by hackers. With corporate systems, we assume the intent is financial, however more and more, we hear the term, "corporate espionage" being used. In the global economy, information is often worth more than money.

With regards to government systems being hacked, it's hard to speculate that the attack was financially motivated.

Mandy Clark of Voice of America wrote an interesting article on this subject, while covering an International e-crime congress in London:

British opposition lawmaker David Davis warned an e-crime conference in London that the danger of cyber terrorism is real.

"In America, hackers have already broken into the Pentagon's computer systems; in India, into government ministers' files; in Germany, into the chancellor's," Davis said. "Such attacks could be designed to compromise safety systems, critical national infrastructure, to overwhelm communication systems, or even to cause a run on the bank."

Included in the VOA article is a video containing a lot of commentary from experts from both the government and private sectors:

Cyber Threat report / Broadband - Download (WM)

Cyber Threat report / Broadband - Watch (WM)

Unfortunately, many consider this type of activity open to speculation, or point out that it might be mere propoganda. In the end -- IF this activity is caused by organized crime or those with more political intentions -- it's going to be hard to get the people behind it to comment.

Political misfits, criminals, spies and hackers normally want to keep their activity confidential because transparency often compromises whatever goal they are trying to achieve.

Nonetheless, a lot of experts and lay people agree that we are seeing more of this type of activity and that it is becoming a lot more sophisticated than it used to be.

VOA article by Mandy Clark, here.

United Press International covered this story from a NATO cyber warfare perspective, here.