Ghost hackers infiltrating the computers of Tibetan exiles and the U.S. electric grid have pulled the curtain back on 21st-century espionage as nefarious as anything from the Cold War — and far more difficult to stop.
Nowadays, a hacker with a high-speed Internet connection, knowledge of computer security and some luck can pilfer information thought to be safely ensconced in a digital locker. And the threat is growing, with countries — including the U.S. — pointing fingers at each other even as they ramp up their own cyber espionage.
The Pentagon this week said it spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems. And the White House is wrapping up a 60-day review of how the government can better use technology to protect everything ranging from the nation's electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems and nuclear launch codes.
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In 2008, there were 5,499 known breaches of U.S. government computers with malicious software, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That's up from 3,928 the previous year, and 2,172 in 2006.
Serious breaches by what are described as "unknown foreign entities" have occurred in recent years in computers at the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce, as well as NASA, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan organization in Washington.
It's not just the U.S. In 2007, Russian hackers crippled computer networks in Estonia for nearly three weeks. In response, NATO set up an Estonia-based cyber defense center, and announced in April that cyber defense will now be incorporated into NATO training exercises.
"NATO takes this threat very seriously," Carmen Romero, a NATO representative in Brussels, told the Associated Press. "NATO has to be ready for the new security challenges, and cyber attacks are one of them."
In Germany, experts have been monitoring Chinese cyber espionage since the 1990s. A counterespionage official with Germany's domestic intelligence agency said the country has verified "many hundreds of attacks per year," and that others had likely gone undetected.
Governments are not the only targets.
David Livingstone, author of a report on cyber threats, a report by the London-based Chatham House think tank, said cyber espionage is a problem in all sectors — businesses, government and individuals.
"Anywhere there is attractive intellectual property and anything that is valuable and useful to someone else will be a target," he said.
In fact, the ubiquity of computers and the need to spread information electronically leaves us all vulnerable.
Joel Brenner, head of the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, has warned that skilled cyber attackers can remotely turn on the camera on your home computer, convert your cell phone into a listening device, and even convert the earphones of your iPod into microphones.
Gone are the days when spies like American Whittaker Chambers hid microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin or Christopher Boyce spirited classified documents away inside a potted plant.
"Now, you can walk into many corporate and government offices, slip a thumb drive into an open USB port and download in seconds more information than all these traitors stole together," Brenner said in a recent speech on cyber espionage.
You don't even need a thumb drive. By infiltrating the Dalai Lama group's e-mail system with malware, cyber invaders saw nearly everything his monks did, from discussions of protest plans to documents that could have put activists at risk. And the Chinese hackers went even further, infiltrating 1,295 computers in 103 countries.
"Anywhere there is attractive intellectual property and anything that is valuable and useful to someone else will be a target."
David Livingstone,
author of a report on cyber threats, by the London-based Chatham House think tank
