Rising Threat

As war looms, the risk of cyberattacks from hackers and terrorists grows. Are you ready? Just two days after the Department of Homeland Security officially opened its doors, government-and business-security managers scored a victory of sorts with a successful public-private effort to combat a potential threat to more than 1.5 million E-mail systems around the world. The work served as a dress rehearsal for the kind of cyberattacks the government expects will increase as geopolitical tensions rise and a war with Iraq looms. When the Sendmail vulnerability and the patches for it were simultaneously made public last week, key commercial organizations such as banks and utilities, as well as government agencies, were prepared to deal with the problem, having been alerted to it in late February by officials at the government’s Critical Information Sharing and Analysis Centers. Issuing the patches was the culmination of work that began in December, when security software vendor Internet Security Systems Inc. warned the National Infrastructure Protection Center, now a part of Homeland Security, of the vulnerability in the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent, which handles half to three-quarters of all Internet E-mail traffic. If exploited, the vulnerability could disrupt E-mail systems, emergency services, telecom networks, and other online systems worldwide, ISS warned. Full Story