[Senate Hearing 106-858]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-858
CRITICAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION: THE THREAT IS REAL
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM,
AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
on
EXAMINING THE PROTECTION EFFORTS BEING MADE AGAINST FOREIGN-BASED
THREATS TO UNITED STATES CRITICAL COMPUTER INFRASTRUCTURE
__________
OCTOBER 6, 1999
__________
Serial No. J-106-53
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
68-563 WASHINGTON : 2001
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman
STROM THURMOND, South Carolina PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
JON KYL, Arizona HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
BOB SMITH, New Hampshire
Manus Cooney, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Bruce A. Cohen, Minority Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information
JON KYL, Arizona, Chairman
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
Stephen Higgins, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Neil Quinter, Minority Chief Counsel and Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Kyl, Hon. Jon, U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona............ 1
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, U.S. Senator from the State of California 4
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
Statement of Hon. Robert F. Bennett, a U.S. Senator From the
State of Utah.................................................. 5
Panel consisting of John S. Tritak, director, Critical
Infrastructure Assurance, Office, Washington, DC; and Michael
A. Vatis, director, National Infrastructure Protection Center,
Washington, DC................................................. 6
Statement of Jack L. Brock, Jr., director, Government-Wide and
Defense Information Systems, Accounting and Information
Management Division, U.S. General Accounting Office,
Washington, DC; accompanied by Jean L. Boltz................... 35
Prepared statement of Richard C. Schaeffer, Jr., director,
Infrastructure and Information Assurance Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense................................. 56
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Bennett, Hon. Robert F.: Testimony............................... 5
Brock, Jack L., Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Schaeffer, Richard C., Jr.: Prepared statement................... 56
Tritak, John S.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Vatis, Michael A.:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 18
CRITICAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION: THE THREAT IS REAL
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism,
and Government Information,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jon Kyl
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Also present: Senators Feinstein, and Bennett (ex officio).
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF ARIZONA
Senator Kyl. The hearing before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and
Government Information will please come to order.
Today's hearing is on the subject of the critical
information infrastructure and protection of the infrastructure
and the threat thereto. Our panelists this morning, we will
have two panels, and on the first panel, we have Mr. John S.
Tritak, who is Director of the Critical Information Assurance
Office in Washington, and Mr. Michael Vatis, the Director of
the National Infrastructure Protection Center here. The second
panel will be Mr. Jack Brock, Director of Information
Management Issues at the General Accounting Office. I
appreciate the attendance of the witnesses here.
I am informed that other members of the subcommittee will
be arriving, but in view of the schedules of everyone
concerned, I am going to begin the hearing right on time and we
will move forward from there.
Let me first of all make a brief opening statement and then
call upon our two witnesses to make an opening statement, after
which we will have a series of questions.
At our hearing today, we are going to examine a growing
public policy concern, the threat of hostile attack on our
Nation's critical information infrastructure and the adequacy
of the Federal Government's response to this threat. This is
the fourth public hearing that our subcommittee has held on the
topic in the last 2 years, and given the importance of the
subject, it will not be our last.
The President's top advisors recently issued a report on
preserving America's privacy and security in cyberspace. As the
report points out, the enormous success the United States has
enjoyed over the past century was due in part to the ability of
our Nation and its leaders to deal with the latest
technological trends in a way that enhanced the security and
prosperity of successive generations of Americans. At critical
junctures in our history, wise government policies with regard
to innovative technology have resulted in unprecedented
success.
During the industrial age, the arrival of World War II
signaled an urgent need for increased production and scientific
advances. The success of America's war effort in defeating
fascism rested largely on the strength of our industrial might
and the successful collaboration between our government and
industry. We not only protected America's security, but also
vaulted the U.S. economy to unprecedented heights in the post-
war period.
Today, the industrial age has become the information age
and computers facilitate the instant exchange of vast amounts
of data and ideas. Who would have predicted just a few decades
ago that a small Defense Department research effort would
result in the creation of the Internet and revolutionize our
society.
As we approach the dawn of the new millennium, America
again faces a time of pivotal change. Information technology
presents both an opportunity and a threat to our society, which
is increasingly dependent upon computers and communications
equipment, what we call our critical information
infrastructure. As most Americans have learned recently, with
the preparations for Y2K to make sure there are no major
disruptions in services, virtually every key service is
dependent upon computers, from electric power grids, to phone
systems, to air traffic control, water and sewer service,
medical devices, banking, and the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, very few of these critical computer networks
were designed with good security measures.
The changes in our society also must be viewed in context
with America's changing geopolitical role in the post-Cold War
world. The United States is the world's only superpower and our
armed forces enjoy technological superiority on the
battlefield. Nations and terrorist groups that are hostile to
our interests are increasingly choosing not to confront our
strengths directly, that is, by trying to field fleets of
advanced fighter planes or ships on par with ours, but rather
are seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities, looking hard for an
Achilles heel.
According to the National Security Agency, over 100
countries are working on information warfare techniques. One
recent case illustrates the danger of this threat. According to
Newsweek magazine, computer systems at the Defense and Energy
Departments have been the subject of a sustained computer
hacking effort from Russia. These attacks have resulted in the
loss of vast quantities of data, possibly including classified
naval codes and information on missile guidance systems.
These computer attacks have reportedly been very subtle.
For example, the London Sunday Times interviewed an engineer at
the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego, CA,
who described being alerted to a problem when a computer print
job took an unusually long time. According to the Times, ``To
his amazement, monitoring tools showed that the file had been
removed from the printing queue and transmitted to an Internet
server in Moscow before being sent back to San Diego.''
And there are other troubling examples of computer attacks
by U.S. citizens that demonstrate our weaknesses in this area.
For example, one group dubbed the ``Phonemasters'' by the FBI
manipulated computers that route telephone calls. These hackers
reportedly gained access to telephone networks of companies
like AT&T, British Telecom, GTE, Sprint, MCI WorldCom, and
Southwestern Bell.
At times, these hackers were able to eavesdrop on phone
calls, compromise databases, and redirect communications at
will, according to press accounts. In addition, they apparently
had access to portions of the nation's power grid and air
traffic control systems and hacked their way into a digital
cache of unpublished phone numbers at the White House. In one
prank, this group even succeeded in forwarding FBI phone lines
to sex-chat lines in Germany, Moldavia, and Hong Kong,
resulting in the FBI being billed $200,000 for these calls.
These calls would be amusing if the stakes were not so
high. Given a more malicious intent, hackers in our country, or
those working for terrorist groups of the military services of
nations hostile to the United States, could do far greater
damage to our critical information infrastructure, resulting in
what some have termed ``an electronic Pearl Harbor.'' We have
been fortunate that the United States has escaped serious harm
thus far, but our luck is likely to run out unless we take
aggressive steps to tighten these gaps. As Winston Churchill
once observed, in history, ``the terrible `ifs' accumulate.''
At today's hearing, we will explore how our government has
approached this problem as well as how its efforts might be
improved. We will also discuss whether new legislation is
required and we will explore the impact of the government's
cyber-protection efforts on the privacy of American citizens.
Our witnesses are ideally suited to address these issues.
Mr. John Tritak, Director of the Critical Information Assurance
Office, is responsible for the development of an integrated
national plan to address the threats to our critical
infrastructure. He will be followed by Michael Vatis, the
Director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, an
interagency organization that is charged with leading the
Federal Government's efforts to detect, prevent, investigate,
and respond to cyber attacks on U.S. critical infrastructures.
And on our second and final panel, Mr. Jack Brock, Director
of Government Information Systems at the GAO, will testify
about the type of vulnerabilities to cyber attacks that exist
in computer networks operated by Federal agencies that the GAO
has identified during annual audits and the status and
effectiveness of the government's effort to reduce these
vulnerabilities.
It is my great pleasure to turn first to Senator Dianne
Feinstein of California and then to Robert Bennett of Utah, two
of the real experts in the U.S. Senate on this subject. Senator
Feinstein is the ranking member of this subcommittee. She and I
have been working for a long time, concerned about the
protection, the necessity of protecting our Nation's critical
infrastructure.
Senator Bennett, not even a member of this committee, has
such an interest in this subject that as chairman of the
special Y2K Committee here in the Senate, he has taken an
interest in what we are doing and what others in the Congress
are doing to deal with this issue. It is largely to his credit,
through the Y2K Committee chairmanship, that a lot of this
information has been brought to light to the American public at
large. So I am really pleased that Senator Bennett is here with
us, as well.
Senator Feinstein.
STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I think
you know how much I enjoy working with you and I want to thank
you for your leadership on this subject. I think I probably do
not qualify as an expert. I think my colleague, Senator
Bennett, probably does. But I think I do qualify as someone
that believes that this area is one of the most critical and
crucial areas we now face, how to address the serious and
increasing threats to our national infrastructure.
The advent of a new technology age in which we now live has
brought America certainly great prosperity. California, my
State, has benefitted immensely from these developments.
Powerful computers now control our electricity, our phone
service, our plane traffic, our national defense, and they have
moved us forward much more quickly than anyone ever could have
imagined. We can plan our physical infrastructure more
efficiently. We can test prototype aircraft on a computer
screen without ever spending a dime on construction. We can
allocate resources more efficiently and at a lower cost than
ever before.
And the power of a new global communication network has
taken people from the ends of the earth and brought them
together, almost as if they were next-door neighbors. Amazing.
Ten years ago, sending a message through the mail from Cairo to
California would take weeks. Now, that simple message can be
sent with a simple stroke of a key and accomplished in the
blink of an eye. That power, the power of instant, inexpensive
communication across mountains, oceans, and international
boundaries has opened up vast potential for global cooperation
and a truly borderless economy.
But, and here is the but, with that power, also comes
extraordinary danger. Just like an e-mail from friend to friend
can travel over the ocean and across national boundaries in a
split second, so can a computer virus or a casual hacker attack
or a foreign cyber terrorist. As a result, this Nation faces
serious challenges in the coming months and years. We must
learn to balance the benefits of global interconnectivity with
the need to protect our vital information, our defense, our
infrastructure.
About a dozen countries have information warfare programs.
They include Libya, Iraq, and Iran. Foreign intelligence
services routinely break into American public and private
sector computers, mapping power grids to find weak links and
leaving trap doors at virtually every U.S. military base.
Last year, two California high school sophomores were among
a group suspected of penetrating and compromising at least 11
sensitive computer systems and military installations and
dozens of systems at other government facilities, including
Federal laboratories that perform nuclear weapons research.
These children were just looking for some excitement, and guess
what, they found it. But imagine if they had been out to do
real damage. Imagine if they had been employed by a hostile
foreign government.
Because of the interrelated nature of our critical
infrastructure systems, today's terrorist has the potential to
do with a keyboard what in the last world war might have taken
a squadron of bombers to accomplish. At stake are not only the
information systems upon which we rely, but the electric power
grid, the public switch communications network, the air traffic
control system, the banking system, rail transport, oil and gas
distribution networks, and a host of other networks on which
our national security and our way of life today depend.
We have begun to address this threat. Presidential Decision
Directive 63, issued last year, identifies critical
infrastructure protection as a national security priority and
commits us to effectively protect our critical infrastructures
within 5 years. But the time table established by Public
Directive 63 is already slipping. A national report was due to
Congress last December. As of today, we have still not seen it.
I look forward to examining today what our government has
done to protect our critical infrastructure and what more can
be done. This Congress and this subcommittee has a clear
responsibility to do what it takes to protect this Nation from
the threat of cyber terrorism and from the enormous risks that
come hand in hand with the advances in technology that have
given us so much over the last few years.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership and for
scheduling this hearing and your very serious attention to this
issue.
Senator Kyl. Thank you for a fine statement, Senator
Feinstein.
Now, I would like to turn to Senator Robert Bennett for any
comments he may have.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT F. BENNETT, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF UTAH
Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
courtesy in allowing me to come where non-lawyers usually do
not appear. I understand Senator Feinstein is not a lawyer, and
that----
Senator Feinstein. I am not a lawyer.
Senator Kyl. Now, you guys quit bragging. [Laughter.]
Senator Bennett. That demonstrates how open-minded you are
on this committee.
I think you are having the first of what will be a long
series of hearings. This is an issue which we are only barely
beginning to understand, but I think, ultimately, the next
President, whomever he or she may be, will find that the
challenge of information warfare will be the number one
national security issue of the next administration.
I recently went to an office where they had drawn a map of
the new world. Whenever you think of military threats, you
start out with the geography and you draw the map and the
various sides. This was a map of the Internet and it did not
look like any map you or I have ever seen before. It looked
like an abstract painting. I wanted to take it down and put it
in my office.
The world geologically is billions of years old. The world
electronically is 10 years old or less. And the one thing that
was striking about this map is that there were no oceans on it.
When we talk about the U.S. militarily, we talk about the
sanctuary of North America between two oceans, and on this new
map of the new world, there were no oceans and no sanctuary.
Mr. Chairman, you and Senator Feinstein have summarized this
very well in your statements.
The reason I think this hearing is important is because we
do not have in our present governmental structure a neat pigeon
hole in which to put this particular threat. For example, if
somebody does the kinds of things that Senator Feinstein was
describing, is that a military attack on our national security
and, therefore, the responsibility of the Defense Department,
or is that a violation of private property rights and,
therefore, an issue for law enforcement, or does it become
both? And where do the responsibilities lie for the Defense
Department to protect us from foreign attack and from the
Justice Department to protect us from intrusions?
Inevitably, in this new world, those intrusions will merge.
Foreign efforts to destroy us, cripple us, do us harm, will
very clearly merge with domestic capabilities to break in. We
have already seen the example of a foreign agent who hired some
American teenage hackers, and as Senator Feinstein said, they
were out for the thrills and experience, but their mentor had a
much more malicious purpose in mind.
I think the Judiciary Committee is the logical place to be
holding these kinds of hearings. I have talked with Senator
Roberts, who plans to be holding hearings in the Armed Services
Committee, and we, of course, have held some hearings on this
in the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000. Some of your
witnesses here today have already testified before that
committee.
So, as I say, I think this is the first of what will be a
series of hearings. Ultimately, I think the issue must come
before the Senate leadership and the House leadership to say
where appropriately within the legislative structure does the
responsibility lie for oversight and coordination of this very,
very important challenge.
So I congratulate you on your hearings and I am very
grateful for your willingness to allow me to participate.
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much, Senator Bennett.
Now to our panel. Mr. John Tritak, you will lead off, and
then Michael Vatis.
PANEL CONSISTING OF JOHN S. TRITAK, DIRECTOR, CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE ASSURANCE OFFICE, WASHINGTON, DC; AND MICHAEL A.
VATIS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION CENTER,
WASHINGTON, DC
STATEMENT OF JOHN S. TRITAK
Mr. Tritak. Thank you, Senator Kyl, Senator Feinstein,
Senator Bennett. It is truly an honor to be here today to
discuss the challenges facing our Nation in the area of
critical infrastructure protection and the efforts being
undertaken by the administration to address those challenges. I
intend to keep my opening remarks very brief and ask that my
written statement be entered into the record.
Senator Kyl. All of the statements will be admitted,
without objection.
Mr. Tritak. Thank you, sir. America has long relied on
complex systems or critical infrastructures to assure the
delivery of services vital to its national security, economic
prosperity, and social well-being. These infrastructures
include telecommunications, electric power, oil and gas
delivery and storage, banking and finance, transportation, and
vital human services and government services. The information
age has fundamentally altered the nature and extent of our
reliance on these infrastructures.
Our government, our economy, our society, indeed, our
individual lives are becoming increasingly dependent on an
ever-expanding system of networks of computers and information
systems. The increasing dependence on computer control
networks, combined with the growing interdependence of our
Nation's critical infrastructures, together present a new kind
of vulnerability, especially to deliberate attack.
The threats posed to our critical infrastructures are real
and growing. The nature of these threats and the potential
risks they pose to the Nation's infrastructures will be
addressed by Mr. Vatis of the National Infrastructure
Protection Center.
PDD 63 was issued in May 1998 to take up the unique
challenges posed by these threats. I say unique because the
risks posed to our critical infrastructures present a challenge
that is really unique in our history, as this may very well be
the first time a national security challenge cannot be solved
by the government alone. Indeed, 90 percent of the
infrastructures that we are concerned about are privately owned
and operated.
This is why PDD 63 stresses the importance of establishing
public-private partnerships and why the President has
designated lead agencies in the Federal Government to work as
liaisons with the respective sectors to build those
partnerships. PDD 63 also recognizes the traditional areas of
national defense, foreign affairs, intelligence, and law
enforcement and that they are fundamental to protection of our
infrastructures, inherent in the domain of government, and
stipulates that sector coordinators be designated for these
areas from the associated government agencies.
Shortly, the administration will publish the first version
of a plan to implement PDD 63. The draft is in the final stages
of interagency clearance, so I cannot go into a great deal of
detail on its content. However, I can highlight the themes that
are captured in the plan as well as what is contained in PDD
63.
First is a continuing commitment to protecting those
infrastructures that are necessary in order to perform national
defense and intelligence missions. I believe you have submitted
for the record the statement by Mr. Richard Schaeffer of the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, who lays out in great
detail what efforts are being undertaken in that regard to
protect those infrastructures.
Second is a need for the U.S. Government to serve as a
model in critical infrastructure protection. Recognizing that
maybe most of the critical infrastructures of our country are
privately owned, it is very difficult for the government to
call upon private industry to take up the challenge posed by
PDD 63 unless it has its own house in order. With that in mind,
the President charges the Federal Government to do what it
needs to do to ensure that its critical infrastructures are
protected against intentional attack.
Third and finally, there is a need to establish the
partnerships between private industry and the government on the
one hand and to encourage information sharing arrangements
first and foremost within industries themselves and ultimately
between industry and government. Those partnerships at various
levels, we believe, will secure our Nation's infrastructures
over the long term and that a collaborative effort will ensure
that creative solutions are developed to meeting the challenges
of the future.
I would like to conclude my remarks very briefly by
highlighting some of the key programs that are likely to appear
in a national plan, as they are deemed sufficiently important
by the administration to request accelerated funding in the
fiscal year 1999 budget amendment, which is before you at the
moment.
The first of these supports an aggressive government-wide
implementation of a Federal computer security requirements
program. The proposal requests $5 million to establish a
permanent 15-member expert review team that would assist
government agencies in identifying vulnerabilities, plan secure
systems, and to implement critical infrastructure protection
plans. The Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office under PDD
63 is to assist agencies in identifying critical systems and
their own dependencies, and we will be working and supporting
the expert review team in that effort.
Second, the administration requests $8.4 million to
establish a Federal intrusion detection monitoring system to
secure Federal Government computer systems. A couple of key
points I would like to make about that briefly, given the
amount of coverage that has been given to this issue in the
press.
First, this is meant to cover civilian government agencies
only. This is not meant to be wired into the private sector or
to include private industries in some fraud monitoring system.
It provides a centralized capability to analyze anomalous
activities that agencies may detect through the use of their
monitoring systems.
Fourth, any Federal intrusion detection monitoring system
that is developed will be fully consistent with existing
privacy laws. No additional authorization has been given to the
government in order to implement this program.
Finally, in cases where activity suggests criminal intent
and criminal activity, those and only those pieces of
information will be going to law enforcement, as appropriate
under existing laws.
The third request is for approximately $17 million for the
recruitment, training, and retention of Federal information
technology managers and officers. The purpose of this program
is to ensure that the Federal Government, if it is to act as a
model, has the capabilities to protect its information
infrastructures against malicious intent and activity.
Four, $7 million are requested for ongoing efforts to
secure government-to-government communications through the
establishment of public key infrastructures.
Fifth and finally, $2 million is being requested to support
two pilot programs to foster information sharing arrangements
between State and local governments and private industry.
I would like to thank you for having me here today and I
welcome any questions you may have.
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tritak follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN S. TRITAK
Mr. Chairman, Madame Ranking Member, members of the Subcommittee,
ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to appear before you here today to
discuss the challenges facing our Nation in the area of critical
infrastructure protection. This Subcommittee has shown exceptional
leadership on these issues, and I am grateful for the opportunity to
work closely with you and the Congress to find ways to advance
infrastructure assurance for all Americans. We all recognize that no
viable solutions will be discovered or implemented without the
executive and legislative branches working together for our national
good.
I. INTRODUCTION
America has long depended on a complex of systems--or critical
infrastructures--to assure the delivery of services vital to its
national defense, economic prosperity, and social well-being. These
infrastructures include telecommunications, electric power, oil and gas
delivery and storage, banking and finance, transportation, and vital
human and government services.
The information age has fundamentally altered the nature and extent
of our dependency on these infrastructures. Increasingly, our
government, economy and society are being connected together into an
ever expanding and interdependent digital nervous system of computers
and information systems. With this interdependence comes new
vulnerabilities. One person with a computer, a modem, and a telephone
line anywhere in. the world can potentially break into sensitive
government files, shut down an airport's air traffic control system, or
cause a power outage in an entire region.
The threats posed to our critical infrastructures by hackers,
terrorists, criminal organizations and foreign governments are real and
growing. The nature of these threats will be addressed by Mr. Vatis of
the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC).
Before I discuss the initiatives the Administration is undertaking
to secure our nation's critical infrastructures, I would like to
discuss the historical context within which PDD-63 arose.
In the early 1990's, events such as the 1995 bombing of the Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City demonstrated that the federal
government needed to address new types of threats and vulnerabilities--
many of which the nation was unprepared to defend against.
In response to this tragedy, and other events, the Administration
formed an inter-agency working group to examine the nature of the
threat, our vulnerabilities, and possible long-term solutions for this
aspect of our national security. The Critical Infrastructure Working
Group (CIWG), chaired by then Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick,
and including representatives from the Defense, Intelligence, and
national security communities, identified both physical and cyber
threats and recommended formation of a Presidential Commission to
address more thoroughly many of these growing concerns.
In July 1996, in response to the CIWG recommendation, President
Clinton signed Executive Order 13010 establishing the President's
Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP or, the
Commission). After examining infrastructure issues for over a year, the
Commission issued its report, Critical Foundations, Protecting
America's Infrastructures, drawing at least four significant
conclusions:
First, critical infrastructure protection is central to our
national defense, including national security and national
economic power;
Second, growing complexity and interdependence between
critical infrastructures may create increased possibility that
rather minor and routine disturbances can cascade into national
security emergencies;
Third, vulnerabilities are increasing steadily and the means
to exploit weaknesses are readily available; practical measures
and mechanisms, the commission argued, must be urgently
undertaken before we are confronted with a national crisis; and
Fourth, laying a foundation for security will depend on new
forms of cooperation with the private sector, which owns and
operates many of these critical infrastructure facilities.
II. PDD-63--OVERVIEW
After releasing the PCCIP report, the Administration worked to
incorporate these and other recommendations into Presidential Decision
Directive 63, which was issued in May 1998. Most importantly, PDD-63
recognizes the need for a Public-Private Partnership to face these
critical issues. The directive specifies sectors of the national
infrastructure, primarily in the private sector, that provide critical
services or functions. It designates lead agencies in the Federal
Government to work as liaisons with their respective sectors to build
partnerships. PDD-63 additionally recognizes that the traditional areas
of national defense, foreign affairs, intelligence, and law enforcement
are fundamental to infrastructure protection, are inherently the domain
of the government, and stipulates that sector coordinators be
designated for these areas from the associated government agencies.
PDD-63 established the position of National Coordinator for
Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter Terrorism to
orchestrate these efforts. The PDD lays out specific tasks that must be
accomplished, time lines for doing so, and organizations for carrying
out these missions. Key amongst them are the National Infrastructure
Protection Center (NIPC), Directed by Mr. Vatis, and the National Plan
Coordination Staff--now called the Critical Infrastructure Assurance
Office (CIAO)--which I have the honor of directing.
PDD-63 focuses the nation's efforts on aspects of critical and
immediate importance--and I emphasize that these must be the efforts of
the whole nation, for success will come only from the efforts of the
private sector, state and local governments, and the Federal Government
working together in an integrated and cooperative manner. Our efforts
fall in three broad categories.
A. Defense and intelligence components
The first is the Federal Government agencies involved in defense
and intelligence efforts. The armed forces and intelligence agencies
have requirements and systems that are unique to their special role.
This has long been recognized in law, in the way we structure these
organizations, and in our national philosophy. Their efforts are, as
would be expected from the sensitive and well established nature of
their mission, much further along in achieving critical infrastructure
protection than those of the other parts of the Federal Government. In
many ways they have set the example for other agencies' efforts, and
they currently share their experiences and advise on how the rest of
the government might proceed. Their contribution has been very
important in shaping the policy and programmatic reality the rest of
the government is currently trying to establish. Mr. Richard Schaeffer,
Director of the Information and Infrastructure Assurance Office for the
Defense Department, has submitted a statement for the record on this
and other matters, so, in cause of brevity, I will refer you to it and
cover their efforts no further.
B. Government as model
The second category of effort can be called ``Government as a
Model.'' We often say that more than 90 percent of our critical
infrastructures are neither owned nor operated by the Federal
Government. Partnerships with the private sector and State and Local
Governments are therefore not just needed, but are the fundamental
aspect of critical infrastructure protection. Yet, the President
rightly challenged the Federal Government in PDD-63 to serve as a model
for critical infrastructure protection--to put our own house in order
first. As such, the Administration has focused what might appear to be
a disproportionate amount of our effort early in the process on doing
this by establishing a coordinated and integrated approach across the
Federal Government.
Federal Computer Security Requirements and Government
Infrastructure Dependencies
One component of this effort supports aggressive, government-wide
implementation of federal computer security requirements. Thus, in
support of PDD-63, the President forwarded to Congress a request for a
fiscal year 2000 budget amendment that would enhance computer security
and critical infrastructure protection in the Federal Government. This
proposal would fund a permanent 15-member team at the Department of
Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
responsible for helping Agencies identify vulnerabilities, plan secure
systems, and implement Critical Infrastructure Protection Plans. The
budget amendment would also establish an operational fund at NIST for
computer security projects among Federal Agencies, including
independent vulnerability assessments, computer intrusion drills, and
emergency funds to cover security fixes for systems identified to have
unacceptable security risks. Among others, the Director of the team
would consult with the Office of Management and Budget and the National
Security Council on the team's plan to protect and enhance computer
security for Federal Agencies.
Under PDD-63, the President directed the CIAO to coordinate
analyses of the U.S. Government's own dependencies on critical
infrastructures. Many of the critical infrastructures that support our
nation's defense and security are shared by multiple agencies. Even
within government, then, critical infrastructure outages may cascade
and unduly impair delivery of critical services. The CIAO is
coordinating an interagency effort to develop a more sophisticated
identification of critical nodes and systems and their impact on
national security government-wide. These efforts will support the work
of the ERT in identifying vulnerabilities of the government's computer
infrastructures, planning secure computer systems, and implementing
computer security plans.
This research, when complete, will provide important information to
maximize national security research and development, budgeting, and for
implementing Federal computer security requirements and critical
infrastructure planning within each agency.
Federal Intrusion Detection Network (FIDNET)
PDD-63 marshals resources to improve interagency cooperation in
detecting, and in responding to computer intrusions into civilian
government critical infrastructure nodes. To support this effort, the
Administration recently sent to Congress a fiscal year 2000 Budget
Amendment to create a centralized intrusion detection and response
capability in the General Services Administration (GSA). Through the
use of additional staff and enhanced technology, Federal Agencies will
improve upon their abilities to:
detect computer attacks and unauthorized intrusions;
share attack warnings and related information across
agencies; and
respond to attacks.
This amendment would provide GSA funds to pay for additional
technology and personnel dedicated to intrusion detection and response.
The additional personnel would improve Federal Agencies' ability to
detect attacks, analyze data, and communicate attack information more
swiftly, building on the existing Federal Computer Incident Response
Capability (FedCIRC). The additional technology, in the form of state-
of-the-art intrusion detection systems, would ensure a consistent
capability in Agencies to protect critical systems.
The program--much like a centralized burglar alarm system--would
operate within legal requirements and Government policy concerning
privacy, civil liberties, and promoting confidence in users of Federal
civilian computer systems. Attack and intrusion information would be
gathered and analyzed by Agency experts. Only data on system anomalies
would be forward to GSA for further analysis.
Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation nor other law
enforcement entities would receive information about the computer
attacks and intrusions--except under long-standing legal rules and
where an Agency determines there is sufficient indication of illegal
conduct. Also, private entities will not be wired to the FIDNet--no
private sector entity is part of this civilian government program.
In short, FIDNet will be run by the GSA, not the FBI; will not
monitor any private networks or email traffic; will confer no new
authorities on any government agency; and will be fully consistent with
privacy law and practice.
Education and Training
One of the nation's important shortcomings in our efforts to
protect our critical infrastructures is a shortage of skilled
information technology (IT) personnel. Within the subset of information
systems security personnel, the shortage is acute. Within the Federal
Government, the lack of skilled information systems security personnel
amounts to a crisis. This shortfall of workers reflects a scarcity of
university graduate and undergraduate information security programs. In
attacking this problem, we will leverage the initial efforts made by
the Defense Department, National Security Agency, and some Federal
Agencies.
The Federal Cyber Services (FCS) training and education initiative
introduces five programs to help solve the Federal IT security
personnel problem.
The Completion of an Office of Personnel Management IT
occupational study. This study will help identify the number of
IT security positions in the Federal Government, and the
training and certification requirements for these positions.
The development of Center(s) for Information Technology
Excellence (CITE). These Centers will train and certify current
Federal IT security personnel and maintain their skill levels
throughout their careers. It will leverage the significant
progress made by the Defense Department and other federal
agencies on this issue.
The creation of a Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to
recruit and educate the next generation of Federal IT security
workers and managers. This program will fund up to 300 students
per year in their pursuit of undergraduate or graduate degrees
in the IT security field. In return, the students will serve in
the Federal IT workforce for a fixed period following
graduation. The program will also have a meaningful summer work
and internship element. An important part of the SFS program is
the need to identify universities for participation in the
program and assist in the development of IT security faculty
and laboratories at these universities.
The development of a high school recruitment and training
initiative. This program would identify promising high school
students for participation in summer work and internship
programs that would lead to certification to Federal IT
workforce standards and possible future employment. This effort
will also examine possible programs to promote computer
security awareness in secondary and high school classrooms.
The development and implementation of a Federal INFOSEC
awareness curriculum. This awareness effort is aimed at
ensuring the entire Federal workforce is developing computer
security literacy. It will leverage several outstanding
existing federal agency awareness programs.
Research and Development
A key component to our ability to protect our critical
infrastructures now and in the future is a robust research and
development plan. The interagency Critical Infrastructure Coordination
Group (CICG) has created a process to identify technology requirements
in support of the Plan. Chaired by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP), the Research and Development Sub-Group works with
Agencies and the private sector to:
gain agreement on requirements and priorities for
information security research and development;
coordinate among Federal Departments and Agencies to ensure
the requirements are met within departmental research budgets
and to prevent waste or duplication among departmental efforts;
communicate with private sector and academic researchers to
prevent Federally funded R&D from duplicating prior, ongoing,
or planned programs in the private sector or academia; and
identify areas where market forces are not creating
sufficient or adequate research efforts in information security
technology.
That process, begun in 1998, led to the Administration budget
request for fiscal year 2000 of $500 million for critical
infrastructure protection research. Among the priorities identified by
the process are:
technology to support large-scale networks of intrusion
detection monitors;
artificial intelligence and other methods to identify
malicious code (trap doors) in operating system code;
methodologies to contain, stop, or eject intruders, and to
mitigate damage or restore information-processing services in
the event of an attack or disaster;
technologies to increase network reliability, system
survivability, and the robustness of critical infrastructure
components and systems, as well as the critical infrastructures
themselves; and
technologies to model infrastructure responses to attacks or
failures; identify interdependencies and their implications;
and locate key vulnerable nodes, components, or systems.
C. Public-private partnership
Thirdly, and as discussed above, one of the most important
components of PDD-63 implementation is the development of collaborative
partnerships among and between the private sector, state and local
governments, and the Federal Government. The importance of this effort
cannot be overstated and is made clear by considering just a few
scenarios. If the natural gas delivery system you rely on for heat and
cooking fails in January due to an attack on the computer systems that
direct its operations, you will take small comfort in fact that the
Federal Government has a critical infrastructure protection plan in
place. In fact, all our efforts to put the Federal Government's house
in order and to serve as a model for industry will be of little service
if our government information systems are impossible to break into, but
the electrical power that they operate on is shut down by malicious
actions of a foreign government. The list of examples goes on and on,
and none of these systems is owned or operated by the Federal
Government.
These vignettes put the situation in perspective--we are faced with
a fascinating and challenging problem. This is the first time I am
aware of in our national history that by creating policy and expending
resources, the Federal Government cannot alone solve a national
security problem. So what are we doing about it? If by ``we'' you
understand ``the government'' then the answer must necessarily be
unsatisfactory--because the government alone cannot protect the
nation's infrastructures. But if by ``we'' you understand ``the
nation''--the Federal Government in a coordinated and integrated effort
with state and local government, industry, academia and other concerned
groups--then I am happy to report that we have made a good beginning,
and are developing a strong future.
Just last Friday, Treasury Secretary Summers announced the
formation of the Financial Sector Information Sharing and Analysis
Center--``ISAC'' for short. ISAC's are private sector owned and
operated entities that serve as focal points for their associated
sector of the economy. Because they are defined individually by their
member organizations, they will not all be identical. They are,
however, all to be the coordinating and analyzing body for cyber
attacks on their specific sector. I want to emphasize that these ISAC's
are neither set up, nor supervised by the Federal Government, although
the Federal Government will assist these critical sectors in setting up
their ISAC, through the Sector Liaisons, if asked. The government will
share what information we can on cyber attacks with the ISAC's to help
them protect their sector, and we will encourage them to share
appropriately sanitized information with us to help us protect
government agencies and functions. But this sharing from ISAC's to
government will be on an entirely voluntary basis, both in amount of
information and the level of detail. No requirement exists or will
exist that mandates information sharing.
While these ISAC's, would work within the sectors of the economy
that own and operate critical infrastructure, as stipulated in PDD-63,
this is not intended to be limiting. Other sectors or groupings within
industry could establish ISAC's, and we would assist them in this.
Furthermore, practically every aspect of our nation relies on critical
infrastructures. This makes CIP a fundamentally important issue for not
just those companies that own and operate critical infrastructure, but
also for those that rely on it to do business. They can and must have a
voice in this public/private partnership.
Recently, the President issued an Executive Order establishing a
National Infrastructure Assurance Council (NIAC). This Presidential
advisory body will be comprised of leaders from the Private Sector,
State and Local governments, and the Federal Government. It will
examine key aspects of critical infrastructure assurance, and report to
the President.
The final indispensable members of this partnership are state and
local governments. They have the fundamentally important roles of
providing and regulating many if not most essential services. They are
the front line forces in the event of disasters or attacks on
infrastructures. Some have moved quite far in their critical
infrastructure protection efforts--New Mexico, for example, under the
direction of Dr. Dan O'Neil, has a very strong and growing critical
infrastructure protection partnership with key private sector entities.
Furthermore, we have long had strong relationships with state and local
governments on specific issues related to critical infrastructure
protection, such as state and local emergency management organizations
with FEMA, and state and local law enforcement agencies through the FBI
and other national law enforcement agencies. This area is one in which
much work remains to be done, and I look forward to working with each
Congressional Delegation as we define the issues and solutions.
III. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, much has been done since PDD-63 was issued in 1998.
My staff and I are committed to building on this promising beginning,
coordinating the government's efforts into an integrated holistic
program for critical infrastructure protection under the direction of
the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and
Counter-Terrorism. We have much work left to do, and I look forward to
with the members of this committee, indeed with the Congress as a
whole, as we wrestle with this developing field and implement
solutions. I look forward to your questions.
Senator Kyl. Mr. Vatis.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL A. VATIS
Mr. Vatis. Mr. Chairman, Senator Feinstein and Senator
Bennett, thank you very much for inviting me here this morning
to speak with you about critical infrastructure protection. You
three have really been leaders in the Congress in recognizing
the importance of these issues and the urgency of dealing with
the new cyber threat that we face now in the information age,
and so it is a privilege to share our perspective with you all,
coming from the NIPC.
I think your statements, your three statements, have really
laid out the issue quite nicely in terms of the threats that we
face and why our vulnerabilities are so great in this area, so
I think I would like to focus my brief oral remarks on our
perspective on the threats and how we are approaching them and
attempting to deal with them.
Much of the news media accounts on this issue focus on
hacks into government websites and some private sector
websites, and while those are criminal acts and they are not
unimportant, they are not really where the main threat lies.
The main threat lies in the potential for foreign nation
states, foreign actors, and also domestic actors to hack into
the critical computer networks that control our Nation's vital
infrastructures, the services that are essential to the basic
functioning of our economy and are essential to our national
security, such as the telecommunications network, the
electrical power grid, government operations, other energy
systems, banking and finance, et cetera. Those are what we
refer to as our critical infrastructures and those are the
things that we are focused on protecting from attack.
Mr. Chairman, you mentioned recent media accounts of a
significant series of intrusions into Department of Defense and
other government agency networks. This is a matter that we have
been looking into for over a year now and it points up for
those who needed yet another wake-up call the serious
vulnerabilities that we are trying to deal with and the serious
threats that we are facing, not 5 or 10 years in the future,
but today. These are threats to our national security that we
must confront now because it is already happening.
As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the greatest potential
threat comes from foreign state actors who might choose to
engage in information warfare against the United States because
they realize that they cannot take us on in conventional
military terms and would seek to go after what they perceive as
our Achilles heel, as you put it, which is our reliance on
information technology, more than any other country, to control
our critical operations.
Information warfare is not the only threat. There is also a
threat from foreign nation states engaged in cyber espionage,
using remote access that is afforded by the interconnectivity
of the Internet and our telecommunications systems, to access
sensitive government information or sensitive private sector
information, essentially engaged in industrial or economic
espionage, to steal secrets to advantage their own indigenous
industries at the expense of our own American private sector.
These are threats, again, that are not just future threats, but
they are threats that we must deal with right now.
On the non-state side, there are a variety of bad actors
who can engage in similar types of intrusions for different
purposes, but essentially using very similar, if not the same,
techniques. We have seen terrorist groups beginning to acquire
both the equipment and the expertise to use information
technology as a weapon. For some time now, we have seen
terrorist groups using the Internet and other forms of
information technology to raise funds, to spread propaganda,
and to communicate securely using encryption.
More recently, we have begun to see terrorists now focusing
on using those same set of technologies as a weapon. We have
seen the Internet Black Tigers associated with the Tamil
Tigers, engage in a denial of service attack on e-mail servers
of Sri Lankan government embassies. We also have concerns that
Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese terrorist group that launched the
deadly sarin gas attack in Tokyo, beginning to think about
using its expertise in computers and in networks as a possible
weapon to direct against Japanese or U.S. interests. And there
are reports that traditional terrorist groups such as the IRA
have thought about using these same sorts of tools as weapons
against their intended targets.
All of these factors really portend the possibility and
likelihood of a serious cyber terrorist attack directed against
U.S. interests, but right now, we are already seeing criminal
groups using these tools, not necessarily to disrupt systems,
but to steal money, which is what criminal groups are basically
all about.
We have had the example that is now 5 years old of a
Russian organized crime group headquartered in St. Petersburg
using the same types of techniques to break into the Citibank
cash management system and start transferring over $10 million
to their own accounts. Fortunately, Citibank contacted the FBI
early on and Citibank was able to stem its losses at
approximately $400,000. All of the members of the group were
apprehended and eventually prosecuted.
But we still face that similar problem from criminal
groups. The Phonemasters case that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman,
is just another example of a group that does not fit our common
definition of an organized crime group, but it was a group, it
was organized, and it engaged in serious criminal activity. So
I think we need to open our minds to some new paradigms out
there of organized crime, people who are perhaps younger than
our typical vision of organized crime groups but are taking
advantage of these new technologies to engage in serious fraud
schemes, serious theft schemes, and other types of criminal
conspiracies.
But we have also seen individuals posing a serious threat.
In the last year alone, we have seen at least three very
serious viruses or worms, the Melissa virus, the Explore.zip
worm, the Chernobyl virus, wreak serious havoc on the private
sector, some estimates going into the hundreds of millions of
dollars of damage caused to private companies from the
disruption caused by these viruses.
We have also seen what we call recreational hackers cause
serious harm, individuals who may be engaged in hacking just
for the thrill of it, as Senator Feinstein said, or for
bragging rights in the hacker community because they are a
competitive bunch who like to show that they are better than
the other guy. But they can have very serious consequences in
their hacks. It is not just benign fun, as it is sometimes
portrayed to be.
We had an example a couple of years ago of a teenager in
Massachusetts who hacked into the then-NYNEX, now Bell Atlantic
telephone system, and shut down telecommunications in the
Worcester, MA, area for several thousand users. What he did not
intend was that he also disrupted communications to the local
airport and prevented incoming airplanes from communicating
with the tower and from turning on the runway lights. That
could have obviously had very serious impacts on the safety of
people using that airport. He also had the effect of shutting
down communications of local police and rescue services. So
even things that might seem relatively benign can have very
serious impacts on our public safety.
The final category of individuals is probably the most
common, and that is the disgruntled insider, an employee or
former employee at a company who abuses his knowledge and
access to a system to cause disruption, by causing the system
to crash because he is angry at his employer, by stealing
sensitive information and giving it to a competitor, or
altering information. We have countless examples of these types
of instances and that is probably the category that the private
sector is most concerned about. Fifty-five percent of
respondents in a recent poll by the Computer Security Institute
and the FBI said that they had insider problems, insiders
accessing their systems and doing bad things.
So there is an incredibly broad array of threats in the
cyber area that we have to deal with, and one of the
difficulties in this area that distinguishes it qualitatively
from the physical world is that when you first notice that you
have an intrusion, you do not know what you are dealing with.
You do not know if it is a disgruntled insider, if it is an
organized crime group, if it is a terrorist, a foreign
intelligence agency, or a nation state planting the seeds for
future destructive attacks.
And as a result, because you do not know how to deal with
it, in the government, it is not clear who should have
responsibility, as Senator Bennett said, because it is not
clear what you are dealing with. If we knew it were a nation
state engaged in preparing the battlefield for an information
warfare attack, then clearly a military response might be
called for. But if we do not know that going in, it is hard to
assign responsibility.
In the Solar Sunrise case that I think all three of you
alluded to from February 1998, it looked at first blush like it
might be an instance of information warfare attack by the Iraqi
government because we were deploying troops to the Gulf at the
time and some of the attacks seemed to be coming through
Internet service providers in the Gulf region. Upon
investigation, however, we determined that the intrusions were
carried out by several teenagers, two in California and several
more in Israel. So what looked like a possible information
warfare attack ended up being recreational hackers who were
hacking for the thrill of it.
As a result of that difficulty of knowing what you are
dealing with, who is doing it, how are they getting in, why are
they doing it, what systems are they affecting, and where are
they coming from, the response that the Federal Government took
in PDD 63 was to create an interagency center at the NIPC,
located at the FBI, but with representatives from all of the
agencies who have a role to play, depending on what we
determine we are confronting. So we have representatives at
senior levels, at analytical levels, and on the investigative
side, as well, from the Department of Defense, from the
intelligence community, from other Federal law enforcement
agencies, until recently, from State and local law enforcement,
and eventually, we hope to have representatives from the
private sector brought in, as well.
So as we investigate a case and can make determinations
about who is doing what to us, we can have quick hand-off to
the appropriate agencies that have responsibility. But the
reason for putting the NIPC under the auspices of the FBI is
because to make those determinations, we need to gather
information from the victim sites, from some of the
intermediate sites that might have been attacked on the way to
the ultimate victim, and the only way legally we can gather
that information is pursuant to law enforcement investigative
authorities, or in some more narrow circumstances,
counterintelligence authorities, if we know going in that this
is a nation state-sponsored attack.
But once we gather that information using those legal
authorities, the ultimate response and the ultimate
responsibility for dealing with it will depend on the facts,
and at that point, other agencies would have a more direct role
to play, be it a military response, a diplomatic response, an
intelligence response, or a law enforcement response.
Let me just say, finally, since I have used up all my time
and more, that we are looking at Y2K as yet another example of
how we need to coordinate, particularly on the information
sharing side. Our responsibility at the NIPC is not to deal
with service outages caused by the millennium bug and the
inability of computers to recognize the date change. Our focus
is, just as it is every day, is on dealing with malicious
criminal attacks, intrusions or viruses that people use to
attack systems. We do not have any concrete information
indicating that any foreign group or domestic group is planning
on engaging in these sorts of attacks specifically around Y2K,
but we are preparing for that eventuality because of the
distinct possibility that people might see as an opportunity to
engage in those sorts of attacks.
So in our field offices across the country and here at FBI
headquarters, the NIPC is preparing a contingency plan to deal
with those sorts of attacks, and we have been communicating
very closely with the rest of the Federal community, with State
and local governments, and with the new Information
Coordination Center at the White House, which is dealing with
the Y2K problem overall and focusing on sharing information
about the state of critical systems during the rollover period.
That concludes my somewhat lengthier remarks that I had
intended, but I hope that gave you some insight into how we
approach the problem.
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much, Mr. Vatis.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Vatis follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL A. VATIS
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman, Senator Feinstein, and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss critical infrastructure
protection issues. Mr. Chairman, you and this committee have been
leaders in recognizing the importance of these issues and the urgency
of addressing the new threats to our national security in the
Information Age, and I welcome this opportunity to share our
perspectives with you today. As you know, the Federal Government is
developing its capabilities for dealing with threats to our nation's
infrastructures. Presidential Decision Directive-63 set in motion an
unprecedented effort to protect our nation's critical infrastructures,
which the PDD defined as ``those physical and cyber-based systems
essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government.''
Critical infrastructures include telecommunications, energy, banking
and finance, transportation, water systems, and emergency services,
both public and private. The PDD formally designated the National
Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) to have a central operational
role in the government's effort. The Center works closely with the
National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and
Counter-terrorism; the Department of Defense (DOD); the U.S.
Intelligence Community (USIC); other federal agencies; and the private
sector to protect our critical infrastructures. My statement will cover
the spectrum of threats we are facing and the status of the NIPC and
its activities.
SPECTRUM OF THREATS
The news media is filled with examples of intrusions into
government and private sector computer networks. Politically motivated
hackers have been attacking numerous U.S. Government websites,
including the Senate's. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre reported
in February that DOD is ``detecting 80 to 100 [potential hacking]
events daily.'' We have had several damaging computer viruses this
year, including the Melissa Macro Virus, the Explore.Zip Worm, and the
CIH (Chernobyl) Virus. Computer Economics, Inc., a California firm,
estimates that damage in the first two quarters of 1999 from viruses
has topped $7 billion. The FBI's case load for computer hacking and
network intrusion cases has doubled each of the last two years.
Currently we have over 800 pending investigations. In its 1999 survey,
the Computer Security Institute estimated the total financial losses by
the 163 businesses it surveyed from computer security breaches at
$123.7 million. This includes everything from theft of proprietary data
to denial of service on networks. E-commerce has become so important
that firms, including Sedgwick Group PLC (in cooperation with IBM),
Lloyds of London, and Network Risk Management Services, are now
offering ``hacker insurance.''
Sensitive intrusions
In the past few years we have seen a series of intrusions into
numerous Department of Defense computer networks as well as networks of
other federal agencies, universities, and private sector entities.
Intruders have successfully accessed U.S. Government networks and took
large amounts of unclassified but sensitive information. In
investigating, these cases, the NIPC has been coordinating with FBI
Field Offices, the Department of Defense, and other government
agencies, as circumstances require. But it is important that the
Congress and the American public understand the very real threat that
we are facing in the cyber realm, not just in the future, but now.
Information warfare
Perhaps the greatest potential threat to our national security is
the prospect of ``information warfare'' by foreign militaries against
our critical infrastructures. We know that several foreign nations are
already developing information warfare doctrine, programs, and
capabilities for use against each other and the United States or other
nations. Foreign nations are developing information warfare programs
because they see that they cannot defeat the United States in a head-
to-head military encounter and they believe that information operations
are a way to strike at what they perceive as America's Achilles Heel--
our reliance on information technology to control critical government
and private sector systems. For example, two Chinese military officers
recently published a book that called for the use of unconventional
measures, including the propagation of computer viruses, to
counterbalance the military power of the United States. In addition,
during the recent conflict in Yugoslavia, hackers sympathetic to Serbia
electronically ``ping'' attacked NATO web servers. And Russian as well
as other individuals supporting the Serbs attacked websites in NATO
countries, including the United States, using virus-infected e-mail and
hacking attempts. Over 100 entities in the United States received these
e-mails. Several British organizations lost files and databases. These
attacks did not cause any disruption of the military effort, and the
attacked entities quickly recovered. But such attacks are portents of
much more serious attacks that we can expect foreign adversaries to
attempt in future conflicts.
Foreign intelligence services
Foreign intelligence services have adapted to using cyber tools as
part of their information gathering and espionage tradecraft. In a case
dubbed ``the Cuckoo's Egg,'' between 1986 and 1989 a ring of West
German hackers penetrated numerous military, scientific, and industry
computers in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, stealing
passwords, programs, and other information which they sold to the
Soviet KGB. Significantly, this was over a decade ago--ancient history
in Internet years. While I cannot go into specifics about the situation
today in an open hearing, it is clear that foreign intelligence
services increasingly view computer intrusions as a useful tool for
acquiring sensitive U.S. government and private sector information.
Terrorists
Terrorists are known to use information technology and the Internet
to formulate plans, raise funds, spread propaganda, and to communicate
securely. For example, convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind
of the World Trade Center bombing, stored detailed plans to destroy
United States airliners on encrypted files on his laptop computer.
Moreover, some groups have already used cyber attacks to inflict damage
on their enemies' information systems. For example, a group calling
itself the Internet Black Tigers conducted a successful ``denial of
service'' attack on servers of Sri Lankan government embassies. Italian
sympathizers of the Mexican Zapatista, rebels attacked web pages of
Mexican financial institutions. And a Canadian government report
indicates that the Irish Republican Army has considered the use of
information operations against British interests. We are also concerned
that Aum Shinrikyo, which launched the deadly Sarin gas attack in the
Tokyo subway system, could use its growing expertise in computer
manufacturing and Internet technology to develop ``cyber terrorism''
weapons for use against Japanese and U.S. interests. Thus while we have
yet to see a significant instance of ``cyber terrorism'' with
widespread disruption of critical infrastructures, all of these facts
portend the use of cyber attacks by terrorists to cause pain to
targeted governments or civilian populations by disrupting critical
systems.
Criminal groups
We are also beginning to see the increased use of cyber intrusions
by criminal groups who attack systems for purposes of monetary gain.
For example, in 1994 the U.S. Secret Service uncovered a $50 million
phone card scam that abused the accounts of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint
customers. In addition, in 1994-95 an organized crime group
headquartered in St. Petersburg, Russia, transferred $10.4 million from
Citibank into accounts all over the world. After surveillance and
investigation by the FBI's New York field office, all but $400,000 of
the funds were recovered. In another case, Carlos Felipe Salgado, Jr.
gained unauthorized access to several Internet Service Providers in
California and stole 100,000 credit card numbers with a combined limit
of over $1 billion. The FBI arrested him in the San Francisco
International Airport when he tried to sell the credit card numbers to
a cooperating witness for $260,000. With the expansion of electronic
commerce, we expect to see an increase in hacking by organized crime as
the new frontier for large-scale theft.
Just two weeks ago, two members of a group dubbed the
``Phonemasters'' were sentenced after their conviction for theft and
possession of unauthorized access devices (18 USC Sec. 1029) and
unauthorized access to a federal interest computer (18 USC Sec. 1030).
The ``Phonemasters'' are an international group of criminals who
penetrated the computer systems of MCI, Sprint, AT&T, Equifax, and even
the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC). Under judicially
approved electronic surveillance orders, the FBI's Dallas Field Office
made use of new data intercept technology to monitor the calling
activity and modem pulses of one of the suspects, Calvin Cantrell. Mr.
Cantrell downloaded thousands of Sprint calling card numbers, which he
sold to a Canadian individual, who passed them on to someone in Ohio.
These numbers made their way to an individual in Switzerland and
eventually ended up in the hands of organized crime groups in Italy.
Mr. Cantrell was sentenced to two years as a result of his guilty plea,
while one of his associates, Cory Lindsay, was sentenced to 41 months.
The ``Phonemasters'' activities should serve as a wake up call for
corporate security. Their methods included ``dumpster diving'' to
gather old phone books and technical manuals for systems. They then
used this information to trick employees into giving up their logon and
password information. The group then used this information to break
into victim systems. It is important to remember that often ``cyber
crimes'' are facilitated by old fashioned guile, such as calling
employees and tricking them into giving up passwords. Good ``cyber
security'' practices must therefore address personnel security and
``social engineering'' in addition to instituting electronic security
measures.
Virus writers
Virus writers are posing an increasingly serious threat to networks
and systems worldwide. As noted above, we have had several damaging
computer viruses this year, including the Melissa Macro Virus, the
Explore.Zip worm, and the CIH (Chernobyl) Virus. The NIPC frequently
sends out warnings regarding particularly dangerous viruses.
Earlier this year, we reacted quickly to the spread of the Melissa
Macro Virus. While there are dozens of viruses released every day, the
speedy propagation of Melissa and its effects on networks caused us
great concern. Within hours of learning about the virus on Friday,
March 26, 1999, we had coordinated with key cyber response components
of DOD and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at Carnegie-
Mellon University. Our Watch operation went into 24-hour posture and
sent out warning messages to federal agencies, state and local law
enforcement, FBI Field Offices, and the private sector. Because the
virus affected systems throughout the public, we also took the unusual
step of issuing a public warning through the FBI's Public Affairs
Office and on our website. These steps helped mitigate the damage by
alerting computer users of the virus and of protective steps they could
take.
On the investigative side, the NIPC acted as a central point of
contact for the Field Offices who worked leads on the case. A tip
received by the New Jersey State Police from America Online, and their
follow-up investigation with the FBI's Newark Field Office, led to the
April 1, 1999 arrest of David L. Smith. Search warrants were executed
in New Jersey by the New Jersey State Police and FBI Special Agents
from the Newark Field Office.
Just in the last few weeks we have seen reports on the Suppl Word
Macro virus, the toadie.exe virus, and the W97M/Thurs.A (or Thursday)
virus., This last virus has already infected over 5,000 machines,
according to news reports, and deletes files on victim's hard drives.
The payload of the virus is triggered on 12-13 and disables the macro
virus protection in Word 97. We are also concerned with the propagation
of a Trojan Horse called Back Orifice 2000, which allows malicious
actors to monitor or tamper with computers undetected by the users.
Virus writers are not often broken out as a threat category, and
yet they often do more damage to networks than hackers do. The
prevalence of computer viruses reminds us that we all have to be very
careful about the attachments we open and we all must be sure to keep
our anti-virus software up-to-date.
Hactivism
Recently we have seen a rise in what has been dubbed
``hacktivism''--politically motivated attacks on publicly accessible
web pages or e-mail servers. These groups and individuals overload e-
mail servers and hack into web sites to send a political message. While
these attacks generally have not altered operating systems or networks,
they still damage services and deny the public access to websites
containing valuable information and infringe on others' right to
communicate. One such group is called the ``Electronic Disturbance
Theater,'' which promotes civil disobedience on-line in support of its
political agenda regarding the Zapatista movement in Mexico and other
issues. This past spring they called for worldwide electronic civil
disobedience and have taken what they term ``protest actions'' against
White House and Department of Defense servers. Supporters of Kevin
Mitnick, recently convicted of numerous computer security offenses,
hacked into the Senate webpage and defaced it in May and June of this
past year. The Internet has enabled new forms of political gathering
and information sharing for those who want to advance social causes;
that is good for our democracy. But illegal activities that disrupt e-
mail servers, deface web-sites, and prevent the public from accessing
information on U.S. government and private sector web sites should be
regarded as criminal acts that deny others their First Amendment rights
to communicate rather than as an acceptable form of protest.
``Recreational'' hackers
Virtually every day we see a report about ``recreational hackers,''
or ``crackers,'' who crack into networks for the thrill of the
challenge or for bragging rights in the hacker community. While remote
cracking once required a fair amount of skill or computer knowledge,
the recreational hacker can now download attack scripts and protocols
from the World Wide Web and launch them against victim sites. Thus
while attack tools have become more sophisticated, they have also
become easier to use.
These types of hacks are very numerous and may appear on their face
to be benign. But they can have serious consequences. A well-known
example of this involved a juvenile who hacked into the NYNEX (now Bell
Atlantic) telephone system that serviced the Worcester, Massachusetts
area using his personal computer and modem. The hacker shut down
telephone service to 600 customers in the local community. The
resulting disruption affected all local police and fire 911 services as
well as the ability of incoming aircraft to activate the runway lights
at the Worcester airport. Telephone service was out at the airport
tower for six hours. The U.S. Secret Service investigation of this case
also brought to light a vulnerability in 22,000 telephone switches
nationwide that could be taken down with four keystrokes. Because he
was a juvenile, however, the hacker was sentenced to only two years
probation and 250 hours of community service, and was forced to forfeit
the computer equipment used to hack into the phone system and reimburse
the phone company for $5,000. This case demonstrated that an attack
against our critical communications hubs can have cascading effects on
several infrastructures. In this case, transportation, emergency,
services, and telecommunications were disrupted. It also showed that
widespread disruption could be caused by a single person from his or
her home computer.
Insider threat
The disgruntled insider is a principal source of computer crimes.
Insiders do not need a great deal of knowledge about computer
intrusions, because their knowledge of victim systems often allows them
to gain unrestricted access to cause damage to the system or to steal
system data. The 1999 Computer Security Institute/FBI report notes that
55 percent of respondents reported malicious activity by insiders.
There are many cases in the public domain involving disgruntled
insiders. For example, Shakuntla Devi Singla used her insider knowledge
and another employee's password and logon identification to delete data
from a U.S. Coast Guard personnel database system. It took 115 agency
employees over 1,800 hours to recover and reenter the lost data. Ms.
Singla was convicted and sentenced to five months in prison, five
months home detention, and ordered to pay $35,000 in restitution.
In another case, a former Forbes employee named George Parente
hacked got into Forbes systems using another employee's password and
login identification and crashed over half of Forbes' computer network
servers and erased all of the data on each of the crashed services. The
data could not be restored. The losses to Forbes were reportedly over
$100,000.
Identifying the intruder
One major difficulty that distinguishes cyber threats from physical
threats is determining who is attacking your system, why, how, and from
where. This difficulty stems from the ease with which individuals can
hide or disguise their tracks by manipulating logs and directing their
attacks through networks in many countries before hitting their
ultimate target. The now well known ``Solar Sunrise'' case illustrates
this point. Solar Sunrise was a multi-agency investigation (which
occurred while the NIPC was being established) of intrusions into more
than 500 military, civilian government, and private sector computer
systems in the United States, during February and March 1998. The
intrusions occurred during the build-up of United States military
personnel in the Persian Gulf in response to tension with Iraq over
United Nations weapons inspections. The intruders penetrated at least
200 unclassified U.S. military computer systems, including seven Air
Force bases and four Navy installations, Department of Energy National
Laboratories, NASA sites, and university sites. Agencies involved in
the investigation included the FBI, DOD, NASA, Defense Information
Systems Agency, AFOSI, and the Department of Justice.
The timing of the intrusions and links to some Internet Service
Providers in the Gulf region caused many to believe that Iraq was
behind the intrusions. The investigation, however, revealed that two
juveniles in Cloverdale, California and several individuals in Israel
were the culprits. Solar Sunrise thus demonstrated to the interagency
community how difficult it is to identify an intruder until facts are
gathered in an investigation, and why assumptions cannot be made until
sufficient facts are available. It also vividly demonstrated the
vulnerabilities that exist in our networks; if these individuals were
able to assume ``root access'' to DOD systems, it is not difficult to
imagine what hostile adversaries with greater skills and resources
would be able to do. Finally, Solar Sunrise demonstrated the need for
interagency coordination by the NIPC.
Special threat: Y2K malicious activity
The main concern with the Y2K rollover is, of course, the
possibility of widespread service outages caused by the millennium date
problem in older computer systems. The President's Y2K Council has done
an excellent job in helping the nation prepare for the rollover event.
Given our overall mission under PDD 63, the NIPC's role with regard to
Y2K will be to maintain real-time awareness of intentional cyber
threats or incidents that might take place around the transition to
2000, disseminate warnings to the appropriate government and private
sector parties, and coordinate the government's response to such
incidents. We are not responsible for dealing with system outages
caused by the millennium bug. Because of the possibility that there
might be an increase in malicious activity around January 1, 2000, we
have formulated contingency plans both for NIPC Headquarters and the
FBI Field Offices.
We are presently augmenting our existing relationships and
information-sharing mechanisms with relevant entities in the federal
government, such as the Information Coordination Center (ICC), state
and local governments, private industry, and the CERT/FIRST community.
Information will come to us from a variety of places, including FBI
field offices and Legal Attaches overseas, as well as the ICC. FBI
field offices are also tasked to establish Y2K plans for their regions
of responsibility. In essence, all of the activities that we will
undertake during the rollover period are ones we perform everyday. The
difference is that we will be prepared to conduct them at an increased
tempo to deal with any incidents occurring during the Y2K rollover.
There is one potential problem associated with Y2K that causes us
special concern--the possibility that malicious actors, foreign or
domestic, could use the Y2K remediation process to install malicious
code in the ``remediated'' software. Thousands of companies across the
United States and around the world are busy having their source code
reviewed to ensure that they are ``Y2K compliant.'' Those who are doing
the Y2K remediation are almost always contractors who are given the
status of a trusted insider with broad authority to review and make
changes to the source code that runs information systems. These
contractors could, undetected, do any of the following to compromise
systems:
Install Trap Doors: By installing trap doors, intruders can
later gain access to a system through an opening that they have
created and then exploit or attack the system;
Obtain ``Root Access'': Given their level of access,
remediation companies can gain the same extensive privileges as
the system administrator, allowing them to steal or alter
information or engage in a ``denial of service'' attack on the
system.
Implant Malicious Code: By implanting malicious code,
someone could place a logic bomb or a time-delayed virus in a
system that will later disrupt it. A malicious actor could also
implant a program to compromise passwords or other aspects of
system security.
Map Systems: By mapping systems as a trusted insider, a
contractor can gain valuable information to sell to economic
competitors or even foreign intelligence agencies.
Systems can be compromised for any number of purposes, including
foreign intelligence activities, information warfare, industrial
espionage, terrorism, or organized crime. And since any vulnerabilities
that are implanted will persist as long as the software is in place,
this is a problem that will last well beyond January 1, 2000. Companies
and government agencies therefore need to determine how they will deal
with this potential ``Post-Y2K problem'' on their critical systems.
We have little concrete evidence so far of vendors' planting
malicious code during remediation. But the threat is such that
companies should take every precaution possible. Of course, checking
the remediation work to make sure that no malicious code was implanted
in a system is no easy matter. If reviewing the millions of lines of
code at issue were simple, there would be little need for Y2K
contractors in the first place. Nevertheless, given the vulnerabilities
that could be implanted in critical systems, it is imperative that the
client companies do as much as possible to check the background of the
companies doing their remediation work, oversee the remediation process
closely, and review new code as closely as possible and remove any
extraneous code. Further, companies should test for trap doors and
other known vulnerabilities to cracking. Companies can also use ``red
teams'' to try to crack the software and further determine if trap
doors exist.
STATUS OF THE NIPC
The NIPC is an interagency Center located at the FBI. Created in
1998, the NIPC serves as the focal point for the government's efforts
to warn of and respond to cyber intrusions. In PDD-63, the President
directed that the NIPC ``serve as a national critical infrastructure
threat assessment, warning, vulnerability, and law enforcement
investigation and response entity.'' The PDD further states that the
mission of the NIPC ``will include providing timely warnings of
intentional threats, comprehensive analyses and law enforcement
investigation and response.''
Thus, the PDD places the NIPC at the core of the government's
warning, investigation, and response system for threats to, or attacks
on, the nation's critical infrastructures. The NIPC is the focal point
for gathering information on threats to the infrastructures as well as
``facilitating and coordinating the Federal Government's response to an
incident.'' The PDD further specifies that the NIPC should include
``elements responsible for warning, analysis, computer investigation,
coordinating emergency response, training, outreach, and development
and application of technical tools.''
The NIPC has a vital role in collecting and disseminating
information from all relevant sources. The PDD directs the NIPC to
``sanitize law enforcement and intelligence information for inclusion
into analyses and reports that it will provide, in appropriate form, to
relevant federal, state, and local agencies; the relevant owners and
operators of critical infrastructures; and to any private sector
information sharing and analysis entity.'' The NIPC is also charged
with issuing ``attack warnings or alerts to increases in threat
condition to any private sector information sharing and analysis entity
and to the owners and operators.''
In order to perform its role, the NIPC is continuing to establish a
network of relationships with a wide range of entities in both the
government and the private sector. The PDD provides for this in several
ways. First, it states that the Center will ``include representatives
from the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, and other investigators experienced
in computer crimes and infrastructure protection, as well as
representatives detailed from the Department of Defense, Intelligence
Community and Lead Agencies.'' \1\ Second, pursuant to the PDD, the
NIPC has electronic links to the rest of the government in order to
facilitate the sharing of information and the timely issuance of
warnings. Third, the PDD directs all executive departments and agencies
to ``share with the NIPC information about threats and warning of
attacks and actual attacks on critical government and private sector
infrastructures, to the extent permitted by law.'' By bringing other
agencies directly into the Center and building direct communication
linkages, the Center provides a means of coordinating the government's
cyber expertise and ensuring full sharing of information, consistent
with applicable laws and regulations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Lead Agencies are: Commerce for information and
communications; Treasury for banking and finance; EPA for water supply;
Transportation for aviation, highways, mass transit, pipelines, rail,
and waterborne commerce; Justice/FBI for emergency law enforcement
services; Federal Emergency Management Agency for emergency fire
service and continuity of government; Health and Human Services for
public health services. The Lead Agencies for special functions are:
State for foreign affairs, CIA for intelligence, Defense for national
defense, and Justice/FBI for law enforcement and internal security. The
NIPC is performing the lead agency and special functions roles
specified for ``Justice/FBI'' in the PDD.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To accomplish its goals under the PDD, the NIPC is organized into
three sections:
The Computer Investigations and Operations Section (CIOS) is
the operational and response arm of the Center. It program
manages computer intrusion investigations conducted by FBI
Field Offices throughout the country; provides subject matter
experts, equipment, and technical support to cyber
investigators in federal, state, and local government agencies
involved in critical infrastructure protection; and provides a
cyber emergency response capability to help resolve a cyber
incident.
The Analysis and Warning Section (AWS) serves as the
``indications and warning'' arm of the NIPC. The AWS reviews
numerous government and private sector databases, media, and
other sources daily to disseminate information that is relevant
to any aspect of NIPC's mission, including the gathering of
indications of a possible attack. It provides analytical
support during computer intrusion investigations, performs
analyses of infrastructure risks and threat trends, and
produces current analytic products for the national security
and law enforcement communities, the owners-operators of the
critical infrastructures, and the computer network managers who
protect their systems. It also distributes tactical warnings,
alerts, and advisories to all the relevant partners, informing
them of exploited vulnerabilities and threats.
The Training, Outreach and Strategy Section (TOSS)
coordinates the training and continuing education of cyber
investigators within the FBI Field Offices and other federal,
state and local law enforcement agencies. It also coordinates
our liaison with private sector companies, state and local
governments, other government agencies, and the FBI's Field
Offices. In addition, this section manages our collection and
cataloguing of information concerning ``key assets''--i.e.,
critical individual components within each infrastructure
sector, such as specific power grids, telecommunications switch
nodes, or financial systems--across the country.
To facilitate our ability to investigate and respond to attacks,
the FBI has created the National Infrastructure Protection and Computer
Intrusion (NIPCI) Program in the 56 FBI Field Offices across the
country. Under this program, managed by the NIPC at FBIHQ, ``NIPCI''
squads consisting of at least seven agents have been created in 10
Field Offices: Washington D.C., New York, San Francisco, Chicago,
Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Charlotte, Boston, and Seattle. For
fiscal year 2000, we intend to reallocate our existing field agent
compliment to create six additional squads in Baltimore, Houston,
Miami, Newark, New Orleans, and San Diego. Because of resource
constraints, the other field offices have only 1-5 agents dedicated to
working NIPCIP matters.
The NIPC's mission clearly requires the involvement and expertise
of many agencies other than the FBI. This is why the NIPC, though
housed at the FBI, is an interagency center that brings together
personnel from all the relevant agencies. In addition to our 79 FBI
employees, the NIPC currently has 28 representatives from: DOD
(including the military services and component agencies), the CIA, DOE,
NASA, the State Department as well as federal law enforcement,
including the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Service and, until
recently, the Oregon State Police. The NIPC is in the process of
seeking additional representatives from State and local law
enforcement.
But clearly we cannot rely on government personnel alone. Much of
the technical expertise needed for our mission resides in the private
sector. Accordingly, we rely on contractors to provide technical and
other assistance. We are also in the process of arranging for private
sector representatives to serve in the Center full time. In particular,
the Attorney General and the Information Technology Association of
America (ITAA) announced in April that the ITAA would detail personnel
to the NIPC as part of a ``Cybercitizens Partnership'' between the
government and the information technology (IT) industry. Information
technology industry representatives serving in the NIPC would enhance
our technical expertise and our understanding of the information and
communications infrastructure.
NIPC activities
The NIPC's operations can be divided into three categories:
protection, detection, and response.
Protection
Our role in protecting infrastructures against cyber intrusions is
not to advise the private sector on what hardware or software to use or
to act as their systems administrator. Rather, our role is to provide
information about threats, ongoing incidents, and exploited
vulnerabilities so that government and private sector system
administrators can take the appropriate protective measures. The NIPC
is developing a variety of products to inform the private sector and
other government agencies of threats, including: warnings, alerts, and
advisories; the Infrastructure Protection Digest; Critical
Infrastructure Developments; CyberNotes; and topical electronic
reports. These products are designed for tiered distribution to both
government and private sector entities consistent with applicable law
and the need to protect intelligence sources and methods, and law
enforcement investigations. For example, the Infrastructure Protection
Digest is a quarterly publication providing analyses and information on
critical infrastructure issues. The Digest provides analytical insights
into major trends and events affecting the nation's critical
infrastructures. It is usually published in both classified and
unclassified formats and reaches national security and civilian
government agency officials as well as infrastructure owners. Critical
Infrastructure Developments is distributed bi-weekly to private sector
entities. It contains analyses of recent trends, incidents, or events
concerning critical infrastructure protection. CyberNotes is another
NIPC publication designed to provide security and information system
professionals with timely information on cyber vulnerabilities, hacker
exploit scripts, hacker trends, virus information, and critical
infrastructure-related best practices. It is published twice a month on
our website and disseminated in hard copy to government and private
sector audiences.
The NIPC, in conjunction with the private sector, has also
developed an initiative called ``InfraGard'' to expand direct contacts
with the private sector infrastructure owners and operators and to
share information about cyber intrusions and exploited vulnerabilities,
with the goal of increasing protection of critical infrastructures. The
initiative encourages the exchange of information by government and
private sector members through the formation of local InfraGard
chapters within the jurisdiction of each of the 56 FBI Field Offices.
The initiative includes an intrusion alert network using encrypted e-
mail, a secure website and local chapter activities. A critical
component of InfraGard is the ability of industry to provide
information on intrusions to the NIPC and the local FBI Field Office
using secure communications in both a detailed and a ``sanitized''
format. The local FBI Field Offices can, if appropriate, use the
detailed version to initiate an investigation, while the NIPC can
analyze that information in conjunction with law enforcement,
intelligence, open source, or other industry information to determine
if the intrusion is part of a broader attack on numerous sites. The
NIPC can simultaneously use the sanitized version to inform other
members of the intrusion without compromising the confidentiality of
the reporting company. InfraGard also provides us with a regular,
secure method of providing additional security related to information
to the private sector based on information we obtained from law
enforcement investigations and other sources. InfraGard has recently
been expanded to a total of 21 FBI Field Offices. The program will be
expanded to the rest of the country later this year.
Under PDD-63, the NIPC also serves as the U.S. governments ``Lead
Agency'' for the Emergency Law Enforcement Services Sector. As Sector
Liaison for law enforcement, the NIPC and a ``Sector Coordinator''
committee representing state and local law enforcement are formulating
a plan to reduce the vulnerabilities of state and local law enforcement
to cyber attack and are developing methods and procedures to share
information within the sector. The NIPC and the FBI Field Offices are
also working with the State and local law enforcement agencies to raise
awareness with regard to vulnerabilities in this sector.
Detection
Given the ubiquitous vulnerabilities in existing Commercial Off-
the-Shelf (COTS) software, intrusions into critical systems are
inevitable for the foreseeable future. Thus, detection of these
intrusions is critical if the U.S. Government and critical
infrastructure owners and operators are going to be able to respond. To
improve our detection capabilities, we first need to ensure that we are
fully collecting, sharing, and analyzing all extant information from
all relevant sources. It is often the case that intrusions can be
discerned simply by collecting bits of information from various
sources; conversely, if we don't collate these pieces of information
for analysis, we might not detect the intrusions at all. Thus the
NIPC's role in collecting information from all sources and performing
analysis in itself aids the role of detection.
The NIPC is currently concentrating on developing and implementing
reliable mechanisms for receiving, processing, analyzing and storing
information provided by government and private sector entities. This
information is being used by NIPC analysts to develop tactical and
strategic warning indicators of cyber threats and attacks. The NIPC and
North American Energy Reliability Council (NERC) have established an
industry-based Electric Power Working Group to develop tactical warning
indicators and information sharing procedures for the electric power
sector. The NIPC also has developed mechanisms to share cyber incident
information with both government agencies and private companies in the
telecommunications sector. In the long-term, our indications and
warning efforts will require participation by the Intelligence
Community, DOD, the sector lead agencies, other government agencies,
federal, State and local law enforcement, and the private sector owners
and operators of the infrastructures.
Another initiative that will aid in the detection of network
intrusions is the ``Federal Intrusion Detection Network'' (``FIDNet''),
a National Security Council initiative that would be managed by the
General Services Administration. Many agencies already have their own
intrusion detection systems. FIDNet will enhance agencies' cyber
security by linking their intrusion detection systems together so that
suspicious patterns of activity can be detected and alerts issued
across agencies. The goal of FIDNet is to detect intrusions in the
federal civilian agencies' critical computer systems. (Contrary to
recent press reports, FIDNet will not extend to private sector
systems.) To do this, critical network event data will be captured and
analyzed so that patterns can be established and, in the event of an
attack, warnings issued. FIDNet will be the civilian agency counterpart
for the automated detection system currently deployed across Department
of Defense systems. FIDNet, under current plans, will consist of the
following: sensors at key network nodes; a centrally managed GSA
facility, the Federal Intrusion Detection Analysis Center (FIDAC), to
analyze the technical data from the nodes; and secure storage and
dissemination of collected information. The NIPC will receive reports
from the FIDAC when there is evidence of a possible federal crime (such
as a violation of 18 U.S.C Sec. 1030). Using all-source information,
the Center would then analyze intrusions and other significant
incidents to implement response efforts and support and inform national
security decision-makers. FIDNet-derived information would also be
combined with all-source reporting available to the NIPC to produce
analysis and warning products which will be distributed to government,
private sector companies, and the public, as appropriate.
Response
The NIPC's and the FBI's role in response principally consists of
investigating intrusions to identify the responsible party and issuing
warnings to affected entities so that they can take appropriate
protective steps. As discussed earlier, in the cyber world, determining
what is happening during a suspected intrusion is difficult,
particularly in the early stages. An incident could be a system probe
to find vulnerabilities or entry points, an intrusion to steal or alter
data or plant sniffers or malicious code, or an attack to disrupt or
deny service. The cyber crime scene is totally different from a crime
scene in the physical world in that it is dynamic--it grows, contracts,
and can change shape. Determining whether an intrusion is even
occurring can often be difficult in the cyber world, and usually a
determination cannot be made until after an investigation is initiated.
In the physical world, by contrast, one can see instantly if a building
has been bombed or an airliner brought down.
Further, the tools used to perpetrate a cyber terrorist attack can
be the same ones used for other cyber intrusions (simple hacking,
foreign intelligence gathering, organized crime activity to steal data,
etc.), making identification and attribution more difficult. The
perpetrators could be teenagers, criminal hackers, electronic
protestors, terrorists, foreign intelligence services, or foreign
military. In order to attribute an attack, FBI Field Offices can gather
information from within the United States using either criminal
investigative or foreign counter-intelligence authorities, depending on
the circumstances. This information is necessary not only to identify
the perpetrator but also to determine the size and nature of the
intrusion: how many systems are affected, what techniques are being
used, and what the purpose of the intrusions is--disruption, espionage,
theft of money, etc.
Relevant information also could come from the U.S. Intelligence
Community (if the attack is from a foreign source), other U.S.
government agency information, state and local law enforcement, private
sector contacts, the media, other open sources, or foreign law
enforcement contacts. The NIPC's role is to coordinate and collect this
information.
On the warning side, if we determine an intrusion is imminent or
underway, the Watch and Warning Unit is responsible for formulating
warnings, alerts, or advisories and quickly disseminating them to all
appropriate parties. If we determine an attack is underway, we can
issue warnings using an array of mechanisms, and send out sanitized and
unsanitized warnings to the appropriate parties in the government and
the private sector so they can take immediate protective steps. The
Center has issued 22 warnings, alerts, or advisories between January 4
and September 22, 1999.
Two other NIPC initiatives are directed to improving our response
capabilities. First, to respond appropriately, our field investigators
need the proper training. Training FBI and other agencies'
investigators is critical if we hope to keep pace with the rapidly
changing technology and be able to respond quickly and effectively to
computer intrusions. The NIPC has been very active in training. These
training efforts will help keep us at the cutting edge of law
enforcement and national security in the 21st Century. The Center
provided training to 314 attendees in fiscal year 1998. In fiscal year
1999, over 383 FBI Agents, state and local law enforcement
representatives, and representatives from other government agencies
have taken FBI-sponsored courses on computer intrusions and network
analysis, the workings of the energy and telecommunications key assets,
and other relevant topics.
Second, our Key Asset Initiative (KAI) facilitates response to
threats and intrusion incidents by building liaison and communication
links with the owners and operators of individual companies in the
critical infrastructure sectors and enabling contingency planning. The
KAI began in the 1980's and focused on physical vulnerabilities to
terrorism. Under the NIPC, the KAI has been reinvigorated and expanded
to focus on cyber vulnerabilities as well. The KAI initially will
involve determining which assets are key within the jurisdiction of
each FBI Field Office and obtaining 24-hour points of contact at each
asset in cases of emergency. Eventually, if future resources permit,
the initiative will include the development of contingency plans to
respond to attacks on each asset, exercises to test response plans, and
modeling to determine the effects of an attack on particular assets.
FBI Field Offices will be responsible for developing a list of the
assets within their respective jurisdictions, while the NIPC will
maintain the national database. The KAI is being developed in
coordination with DOD and other agencies.
CONCLUSION
While the NIPC has accomplished much over the last year in building
the first national-level operational capability to respond to cyber
intrusions, much work remains. We have learned from cases that
successful network investigation is highly dependent on expert
investigators and analysts, with state of the art equipment and
training. We have begun to build that capability both in the FBI Field
Offices and at NIPC Headquarters, but we have much work ahead if we are
to build our resources and capability to keep pace with the changing
technology and growing threat environment and be capable of responding
to several major incidents at once.
We have also demonstrated how much can be accomplished when
agencies work together, share information, and coordinate their
activities as much as legally permissible. But on this score, too, more
can be done to achieve the interagency and public-private partnerships
called for by PDD-63. We need to ensure that all relevant agencies are
sharing information about threats and incidents with the NIPC and
devoting personnel and other resources to the Center so that we can
continue to build a truly interagency, ``national'' center. Finally, we
must work with Congress to make sure that policy makers understand the
threats we face in the Information Age and what measures are necessary
to secure our Nation against them. I look forward to working with the
Members and Staff of this Committee to address these vitally important
issues. Thank you.
Senator Kyl. It is my understanding that, with the
exception of one paragraph, the draft statement that had not
previously been cleared is the statement that you have
submitted for the record today, is that right?
Mr. Vatis. What we brought this morning is the final
statement, yes, sir.
Senator Kyl. And that statement, since Mr. Vatis did not
recount in detail all of the examples of things that had been
dealt with or are being dealt with, I might just reiterate,
just to highlight a couple, one estimate of damage from the 80
to 100 events daily detected is, in the first two quarters of
1999, a loss or damage from these viruses over $7 billion. This
is not a minor matter.
Then the other examples of foreign sources interfering with
the Kosovo operation, the foreign intelligence services with
information sold to the Soviet KGB, terrorist activity, the
criminal groups which you have mentioned, the Phonemasters
case, which I mentioned, and a variety of other situations, but
there was one item that I referred to from open source
material, I believe it was Newsweek magazine. Can you say
anything on the record about that particular ongoing event and
can you identify it by its code name?
Mr. Vatis. The article called it Moonlight Maze, and that
is, in fact, our name for an investigation that we have been
conducting for over a year into a series of widespread
intrusions into Department of Defense, other Federal Government
agency, and private sector computer networks. About the
furthest I can go is to say that the intrusions appear to
originate in Russia. We have been coordinating an investigation
that has involved numerous Federal agencies, as well as
international counterparts, but the intrusions have resulted in
the taking of or the theft of unclassified, and it is important
to stress that it is unclassified, but still sensitive
information about essentially defense technical research
matters.
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much. I think none of us
underestimates the seriousness of the issue, but I think it is
important that hearings like this convey to the public as much
information as can possibly be conveyed about the threat so
that the public will be supportive of the efforts of the
government and the private sector to deal with it, and also so
that they will appreciate the law enforcement tension that you
identified, and I am going to get more into that in a minute,
to try to put everybody's mind at ease with respect to how the
investigations are proceeding and how privacy is being
protected.
Mr. Tritak, let me ask you, the PDD was issued back in May
1998 and I think the 180-day time frame which mandated that the
plans be developed was probably unrealistic at the time. But it
has now been over a year and we still do not--well, let me ask
you. A, have plans been completed, and B, if not, why not, and
C, when we might expect that the initial operating capability,
which was supposed to be by November 2000, will, in fact, be
achieved?
Mr. Tritak. Yes, Senator. Let me say that the plan is in
its final stages of interagency review and clearance. It is our
strong hope that it will be issued later this month or early
next month. So I think, recognizing that, as you have
indicated, I think when the initial goal of 180 days was made,
the complexity of the task at hand perhaps was not quite as
well appreciated as it became in the course of developing it.
But let me say a couple of words about that, because I
think it is important to understand that we are talking about
rather an unprecedented process of engaging some 24 agencies in
addressing an issue that everyone recognizes is important. How
one goes about it, especially given budgetary realities, is
something that is open to serious consideration and debate,
sometimes very spirited debate. I think that is a good thing
because this is a big issue and you want the benefit of very
careful thought given by a wide range of experts within the
government on this matter.
Now, when the plan does come out, it is probably best to
think of it as an invitation to a dialogue rather than a final
product to be embraced and accepted thumbs up/thumbs down. That
is mainly because the main focus of the national plan is on the
Federal Government's efforts. I think the rationale for taking
this approach is if we are going to engage the private sector
and ask them to support the efforts that are needed to protect
our critical infrastructures, the government has to show a
level of seriousness in getting its own house in order.
So what you are going to see, for the most part, in the
first version is the Federal Government's initial attempt at
developing a plan that it will implement and pursue in the ends
and goals of PDD 63. It is hoped that once this is issued, it
will be very quickly followed by a broader dialogue with
private sector interest groups, particularly in the privacy
area, but also members of Congress and their staffs because we
cannot consider something to be a national plan without
engaging the Nation in this dialogue. It affects everyone
importantly.
So in answer to your question, it is coming out very soon
and we are hoping that it will be, again, the later part of
this month, the early part of next month.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. This is not the time to be
critical. I really was simply focusing on the questions that
Senator Feinstein raised at the end of her statement, and I
think we all want to work constructively toward the result. I
can remember former Senator Sam Nunn and I testifying about
this, and I have forgotten now when that was, but clearly, he
has not been around for a while. This has been going on for a
long time and we have had to prod some people within the
administration for quite a while to get going here.
Again, I am not being critical of you or the people who are
working hard on this. As you point out, it is a hard job. But
in view of the kind of threats that have been mentioned here, I
do not think we can say too often that we have got to get on
with this and put these plans in place.
Just very quickly, because I do not want to take any more
time here, you testified that this program would operate within
legal requirements and government policy concerning privacy,
civil liberties, and promoting confidence in users of the
Federal/civilian computer systems, that neither the FBI nor
other law enforcement entities would receive information about
computer attacks and intrusions except under longstanding legal
rules and where an agency determines there is sufficient
indication of illegal conduct, that private entities will not
be wired to the FIDNet, no private sector entity is a part of
the civilian government program, and that it will be run by
GSA, not the FBI. It will not monitor any private networks or
e-mail traffic and confer no new authorities on any government
agencies and will be fully consistent with privacy law and
practice, right?
Mr. Tritak. Right.
Senator Kyl. I think that is an important point to get
across to folks, that we are dealing with a very significant
national security issue here, and as Senator Bennett pointed
out, there will be times when it may be unclear to us but it
moves into a law enforcement requirement, but that in no event
will any policies or rules be changed, which obviously that is
a concern of this committee, because we understand that the
U.S. Constitution would prevent any inhibitions on privacy
rights in any event. I just want to try to help put people's
mind at ease that everyone is very cognizant of that, the
people in charge of putting the plan together, some of the
people in charge of oversight here, and we will continue to
keep our eye on that.
Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Vatis, in your testimony, you mentioned, and Senator
Kyl, I think, referred to it, that the DOD has reported 80 to
100 hacker attempts every day. Do you know how many of these
attempts succeed?
Mr. Vatis. I do not have exact numbers, Senator, on how
many succeed. There is a whole range of effects of possible
attacks. Sometimes they are just pings that attempt to probe a
system. Sometimes they get in successfully but then do not do
anything. And sometimes they get in and then they do things,
such as remove information or----
Senator Feinstein. Then let me ask you the next question,
which you probably do know the answer to. What kind of damage,
if any, is occurring?
Mr. Vatis. In general?
Senator Feinstein. Yes, or as specific as you feel you can.
Mr. Vatis. It depends on the case. Generally, what we see
is people looking around and sometimes taking information on
the unclassified networks. There have not been many instances
where damage has been done to the systems. The primary concern
in most of these cases is with unauthorized, illegitimate
access to information that, though unclassified, is sensitive
military information.
Senator Feinstein. You said there have not been many
occasions when significant damage has been done, but has some
damage been done?
Mr. Vatis. I am sure there are instances where somebody has
done damage. I do not have any specific recent examples to
bring to you.
Senator Feinstein. You mentioned Operation Moonlight Maze.
In that operation, has there been any penetration of classified
systems?
Mr. Vatis. I should not get into that area in this setting.
Senator Feinstein. I would be interested, perhaps in a
classified setting, if you might be able to indicate that. I
think those are key questions.
Senator Kyl. Excuse me. I might mention, we had a briefing
established yesterday by Dick Clark.
Senator Feinstein. I could not attend.
Senator Kyl. Well, none of us could and, therefore, it was
cancelled, but we will do it. We will reschedule it when
everyone can attend and we will do that.
Senator Feinstein. If we could discuss this in that
briefing, I think that would be----
Senator Bennett. If I may, Senator, we have had a briefing
on that in the Y2K Committee. I agree with the witness, these
are classified matters, but I agree with you in pursuing them
because they are very important.
Senator Feinstein. I was recently told that there are
certain computer software available for free on the Internet
that allows a person to install what amounts to an undetectable
trap door on another person's computer. As long as that
computer remains hooked up to the Internet, the hacker can then
read the target's e-mails, see every password, move the mouse,
erase files from the computer, and even shut it down, all
without detection or recourse. I understand that some of the
software is commercially available and beneficial for internal
company use, but it also seems to me that some people are
clearly trying to teach people how to infiltrate outside
computers and do some real harm. Are you aware of this kind of
software?
Mr. Vatis. Yes, we are. There are several instances of
that. One recent piece of software that fit that description is
something called Back Orifice 2000, which was released at the
recent DeathCom hackers' conference in Las Vegas, which permits
an external user to gain unauthorized access and do things to
another person's system along the lines that you mentioned.
This is something we are aware of. We have actually issued
several advisories to both government agencies and the private
sector about that particular tool. But these types of tools,
hacking tools, pop up daily and there are new tools. I am sure
you will hear from Rich Pathea about more specifics on those
types of things. But the one you mentioned, if I think that is
the one you are referring to, is one we are very well aware of
and have issued warnings on.
Senator Feinstein. Are there any commercial systems
available that can pierce classified systems?
Mr. Vatis. The protection of the classified systems is
mainly a matter of controlling the access. It is not that they
are impenetrable, per se. Beyond that, I really do not want to
get into that area of the classified systems.
Senator Feinstein. If this could be another area, Mr.
Chairman, that we could discuss, because there is--and you and
I have both been involved in the encryption area, and there is
this strong feeling in the industry about protecting privacy,
with which I think we both agree. Now, here we are with systems
commercially being devised to pierce that and to sabotage that
very same privacy and put these on the open market. I think
that raises a very real question that what would be appropriate
regulation by the government, if any, of systems that pierce
the privacy and really can sabotage a system.
Do you have any suggestions as to what can be done to
ensure that teenage hackers or others do not simply leave such
trap doors or computer programs on the computers they
penetrate?
Mr. Vatis. A lot of the security measures that we would
recommend are really rather basic and it is a question of
devoting sufficient resources and attention to those basic
security measures. Careful perimeter security design of a
network, augmented by careful personnel security policies,
because oftentimes the beginning of a successful intrusion is
social engineering and getting passwords or log-in information
by calling up a user and pretending to be someone who forgot
his password, for instance. The use of smart cards and tokens,
one-time passwords, would also be a successful way to implement
security, and updating virus detection software and also
implementing the latest patches that are made available are all
basic security practices that are too often neglected.
Senator Feinstein. Are those protections in place in all, I
will not use the word highly secure systems, but all key
government systems today?
Mr. Vatis. Basic security policies are in place across the
government to effect that sort of security. Where the breakdown
sometimes occurs is in the implementation. The Solar Sunrise
case is another good example of that. The vulnerabilities that
the teenagers took advantage of were ones that were known
throughout the network community, the system administrator
community, and, in fact, patches were available to fix those
vulnerabilities. The problem was that the patches had not been
implemented across the DOD systems. So the policies exist, but
it is the implementation that is the difficult part.
Senator Feinstein. What about the private systems,
airlines, railroads, telephones, power systems?
Mr. Vatis. The difficulty there, as Mr. Tritak referred to,
is that these are privately owned systems over which the
government has very little directive authority or regulatory
authority. Much of the private sector is beginning to pay more
attention to security and the need to have good security
practices, to spend money on effective security, because they
are beginning to see that poor security will have a deleterious
impact on the bottom line. But it is still a problem in the
rest of the private sector of getting the decision makers, the
corporate decision makers, to focus enough attention and
resources on that type of security.
Senator Feinstein. Let me ask this question. Of these kinds
of systems, and I am speaking about the big systems, what would
you say the level today of vulnerability is, low vulnerability,
medium vulnerability, or high vulnerability?
Mr. Vatis. As a general matter, I would have to say it is
high. I think there are significant vulnerabilities in these
critical systems that not only can be taken advantage of but
are being taken advantage of. We have not seen what some people
have referred to as the electronic Pearl Harbor, where somebody
has used those vulnerabilities to engage in a massive
destructive attack. But just the examples that we have
discussed this morning should be sufficient to indicate to
people and to demonstrate that these significant
vulnerabilities do exist. If teenagers can gain the type of
access to the types of systems that we have seen just in the
last couple of years, those instances in themselves should
demonstrate the level of vulnerability.
Senator Feinstein. We had one situation in San Francisco at
a PG&E, it seemed to me, plant where everything got shut down.
So what you are saying is, in the private sector, in terms of
the civilian infrastructure, today, there is a very high
vulnerability and that the private sector has not responded
significantly to use available technology to quell that
vulnerability?
Mr. Vatis. It is a mixed bag, but I think, in general, when
we are talking about those critical infrastructures, there are
significant vulnerabilities that do exist and that is one of
the reasons that we have been trying to engage in information
sharing about the vulnerabilities, about the threats, to make
people aware in the private sector of where the vulnerabilities
lie, what types they are, and also what the threats are that
might take advantage of those vulnerabilities.
But again, we should not act as though the private sector
does not have its act together but the government does, because
I think, as Mr. Tritak said and as the next panel will get
into, there are also significant vulnerabilities in the
government. So I think the Nation as a whole, both the private
sector and the public sector, needs to face up to this and deal
with these vulnerabilities.
Senator Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. I think particularly important is
the fact you brought out that the efforts here are not invasive
of privacy but rather are important in order to protect
people's privacy. That is very important.
Senator Bennett.
Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In July, you both testified before the Y2K Committee and
there were no clear answers as to what cyber reconstitution
was. We talked about that at that time. Can you tell me now, in
the case of either a Y2K failure or an IW event, where there is
an actual attack to try to shut something down, how the United
States would facilitate cyber reconstitution, in other words,
bring a system back up? This is for either one.
Mr. Vatis. I think my answer would still be the same as in
July, which is that reconstitution of private systems, at least
for the first part of the answer, the responsibility resides
first and foremost with the private sector, but the assistance
to the private sector is the responsibility of the lead agency
under PDD 63, to provide the expertise and any assistance that
we can offer. Then the consequence management for disruption,
providing emergency generators, for instance, in the event of
an attack on the electrical power system, would be the
responsibility of FEMA.
Senator Bennett. Yes. Well, the FEMA example is the obvious
one. You have a disaster, whether it is a tornado in Salt Lake
City or an earthquake in California or a hurricane off the
coast of Florida, and here is a government agency that steps in
after the fact to try to help rebuild the essential
infrastructure. I just asked the question in order to keep the
issue alive, recognizing that we do not have those kinds of
answers, but we need to keep focusing on this, because if
somebody does succeed in shutting us down, we ought to have
some sort of electronic FEMA in place that can say, all right,
we were not able to prevent it, but we can reconstitute the
service relatively quickly.
Senator Feinstein talked in terms of success. Just a quick
editorial comment. My concern, and that is shared by a lot of
the folks with whom I have spoken over this particular odyssey,
has to do with people who get in undetected. Success is when
you can stop it at some level. But is there a level where
people have gotten in, gotten the information they want, and
gotten out without our knowing it? Not to sound like a Tom
Clancy novel, but the last one I read that described how a
Russian submarine had tracked an American submarine without the
Americans realizing it. I think there is some indication that
there may be some of that, that not necessarily the teenage
hackers but nation states have gotten into our computers,
gotten the information they were looking for, and left, and
most frighteningly, maybe left behind a trap door that would
allow them to do that undetected wherever they are.
I make that point simply to underscore once again, we are
living in a new world. We are living where there is no
sanctuary. We are not hiding behind our oceans. Our potential
enemies are, indeed, in our bowels, if you will, and it becomes
very important for us to just start thinking that way as we
look for remediation.
It is my experience that when you talk to people in
industry about this issue, you get the same kind of response we
initially got with respect to Y2K. That is, hey, it is not
really a problem and our IT people will handle it and it will
all go away. We will get it under control. It was not until we
got the attention of the CEO as well as the CIO that we got
significant progress in industry.
When I talk to industry leaders, they all say, oh, we have
firewalls. We have spent the money. We have firewalls. My sense
is that these firewalls have never really been tested the way
the firewalls of the Defense Department, for example, have been
tested. The Defense Department is a whole lot harder than a lot
of people realize. I have now spent enough time going around to
Defense Department installations to discover that. But I am not
sure how hard some of the private institutions are.
Do either of you have a sense of how effective the
firewalls are in private industry compared to the government?
Mr. Vatis. I think it varies tremendously, whether they
even have firewalls, first of all, and second of all, how good
the firewalls are, and then third, whether the firewall and
other security measures are actually implemented properly. But
no firewall is impenetrable, and I think sometimes people have
a false sense of security. As you indicated, merely from the
fact that their IT guys assure them that they have a firewall,
they think as a result that they are totally secure, and that
is a false sense of security.
Senator Bennett. I do not want to get across the line into
classified information, but let me posit this as a
hypothetical. Suppose a U.S. Government red team were formed
and offered to make an attempt to get into certain industry
areas, just as an exercise. How do you think industry officials
would react to that?
Mr. Vatis. I think some of them would actually welcome that
kind of assistance in testing their systems and others might be
averse to it because they would not want to know the answer.
Senator Bennett. How about government agencies outside of
the Defense Department? Say, for example, the Department of
Energy, that has responsibility for our nuclear weapons, was
told, OK, that is wonderful that you have all of these
protections. Now we are going to try to penetrate you. Do you
think the Secretary of Energy should cooperate with that
effort?
Mr. Vatis. Absolutely. I think red-teaming is an important
part of any set of security measures because the only way to
know whether your security measures are adequate is to test
them. So I think that is a critical thing.
Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Let me just thank you for being up-front
and forthright with this. I think it is really important and I
appreciate the fact that you speak directly. It is my
understanding that at least 22 of the largest Federal agencies
have significant computer weaknesses, either because they do
not know how to fix the problem or because they do not realize
the problem exists. The GAO report gives some examples.
In May 1999, NASA computer-based controls were successfully
penetrated on several mission-critical systems. In August 1999,
serious weaknesses in DOD's information security continued to
provide both hackers and hundreds of thousands of authorized
users the opportunity to modify, steal, inappropriately
disclose, and destroy sensitive DOD data. I mean, that is a
month ago. In July 1999, GAO reported the Department of
Agriculture's national finance center had serious access
control weaknesses. And in October 1999, which is now, we
report that the Department of Veterans Affairs systems continue
to be vulnerable to unauthorized access, and they point out one
VA insurance center, 265 users who had not been authorized
access had the ability to read, write, and delete information
related to insurance awards.
Have these been remedied? These 22 agencies, have their
weaknesses been remedied?
Mr. Vatis. I do not know the answer to that question.
Senator Feinstein. Mr. Tritak.
Mr. Tritak. I do not know the answer to that question,
either.
Senator Feinstein. Our next panelist does? Good. Perhaps
they can answer it. I look forward to it. Maybe that is a good
segue.
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much.
We would really appreciate your responses, because as we
have mentioned here, this will be just one in a continuum of
hearings. We obviously will want to get a report about the
timing on the completion of the plans and on the operations
capability and time frames. We will want to have you come back
and report that to us.
I am looking forward, Mr. Vatis, to perhaps even getting
into just two or three specific kinds of cases, one attack on
our defense or security infrastructure, one financial attack to
steal money, and then perhaps another one, either an insider
attack or a terrorist kind of attack. I think it would be very
interesting to have you get into detail about--just take two or
three or four case studies and walk through them and talk about
the three or four different kinds of intrusion that can take
place and how it does without getting into too much how-to,
obviously.
I believe that, as Senator Bennett said, this does sound a
little bit like Tom Clancy, but it is a reality and people are
fascinated by it. If they can come to be fascinated by it, they
can come to be concerned about it and then we can help Mr.
Tritak and others get their job done on a timely basis.
I thank both of you for being here very much and would like
to call the next witness now, Jack Brock. We will get started,
and if we have to be interrupted, we will, but I would at least
like to begin the testimony.
Mr. Brock, as I said, is with GAO. He is the Director of
the Government-Wide and Defense Information Systems, Accounting
and Information Management Division, and will testify
specifically to what GAO has found with respect to government
vulnerabilities and hope to be able to answer the questions
that Senator Feinstein got into.
Senator Feinstein. I did not mean to jump his testimony.
STATEMENT OF JACK L. BROCK, JR., DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT-WIDE AND
DEFENSE INFORMATION SYSTEMS, ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, DC; ACCOMPANIED BY JEAN L. BOLTZ
Mr. Brock. I hope so. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I
would like to have Ms. Boltz----
Senator Kyl. We welcome Jean Boltz on the panel, as well.
Mr. Brock. Thank you.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. Go ahead.
Mr. Brock. I appreciate very much, Ms. Feinstein, your
summarizing the most interesting part of my statement, and you
did it very effectively.
I think the first two witnesses, as well as the opening
statements, Mr. Chairman, of you and Ms. Feinstein and Senator
Bennett, very effectively talked about that there is a real
threat, that there are real opportunities with connectivity and
that these opportunities are wonderful. They offer incredible
advances in the way we do business, the way we communicate, and
the future opportunities are even greater and we do not want to
lose that advantage. Almost ironically, though, these same
opportunities offer new ways of disrupting the national
infrastructure, and that is what the purpose of your hearing is
today.
I want to focus primarily on the Federal portion of that.
We have reported that 22 of the largest Federal agencies have
significant weaknesses and our statement details several
examples. We could have gone on page after page after page of
examples, were it NASA, at VA, at, although we did not list it
in here, the Financial Management Service, the Department of
Agriculture, agencies that have billion dollar portfolios,
agencies that protect the national defense, we have broken
into.
In breaking into these agencies and doing our penetration
testing, we could have done severe damage to the systems, we
could have done severe damage to the information that was
contained in those systems, and we could have denied access by
the agencies to that information. We obviously did not do so,
but the risk is there. The vulnerabilities are there.
To get to your point, and I will just answer your question
now, have the agencies repaired these holes? Yes and no. At the
individual problem level, they have taken immediate action. All
of them have been very responsive. However, it is like having a
bad roof on your house and you are continually having leaks and
you put up a shingle here and a shingle there and pretty soon
you have sort of shingled over the house but you are still
having the leaks. These agencies need a whole new roof. It is
not just a question of fixing the vulnerabilities we find.
When we go back to agencies--at DOD, we were there 2 years
ago. We just issued our second report last month. At VA, we
were there a couple of years ago. We just issued our report.
These agencies had taken good strides in fixing the
vulnerabilities we identified before, but there were new
vulnerabilities that cropped up.
We believe that at many agencies, computer security is a
bottoms-up type of affair, that the real problem needs to be
owned, as Senator Bennett said, by the top management, and if
top management does not own the problem, if they do not provide
the resources, if they do not assign the accountability, then
computer security is more likely a catch-as-catch-can affair.
We have been looking at computer security for several years
and we find the same problem every time--poor access controls,
poor system controls, poor management controls, and we were
just beginning to repeat ourselves. A couple years ago, we
started work on what we called best practices or leading
practices, where we went to a number of organizations that had
good computer security programs, and almost uniformly, these
organizations had one, a central point of control, someone that
was clearly accountable for information security. That person
was always accountable to the chief executive officer or the
chief operating officer.
There was a real assessment of the risk that that
organization faced in terms of defining threats,
vulnerabilities, and the value of the information that the
organization had. These organizations then developed policies
and procedures and processes that allowed them to be responsive
to those risks.
Next, they made people well aware of what their roles and
responsibilities were and made sure that those were accountable
for monitoring and maintaining control over the processes and
applying them.
And then lastly, there was independent assessment of the
organization's performance, and this is a continuous cycle. It
is not a one-time thing that stops. It goes on and on and on.
We think that if agencies did this, that, in fact, they could
eliminate many of the weaknesses that they have right now. Our
report has been endorsed by the CIO Council. It has been
endorsed by many individual agencies. I think the level of
effort, though, goes to endorsement and we have not seen a lot
of real positive action on implementing the broad management
reforms that need to take place.
I would like to talk a little bit, though, about PDD 63 and
the current environment that is going on. We see this as a real
opportunity, that there is now a discussion at a national level
about issues that could have a significant impact, a positive
impact, on the ability not only of Federal agencies, but also
the ability of the entire infrastructure to provide better
assurance that vulnerabilities will be closed up.
We have identified seven topics, though, that we think need
to be addressed in the discussion in order for things to move
forward. First of all is clearly defined roles and
responsibilities. Under the current law, there are a lot of
agencies that have some set of responsibilities and duties. It
is not always clear what these are and it is not always clear
that they are being implemented. PDD 63 has also introduced a
number of new organizations and many of these organizations and
processes are immature and have not found their way yet. So it
is unclear how they are going to relate and interrelate and it
is unclear about what sort of impact they can have on agencies
and on the private infrastructure. So it is important that as
the debate unfolds, that roles and responsibilities be clearly
defined, that authorities and accountability be clearly
defined.
Second, we see a need for specific risk-based standards.
Right now, most of the guidance is very general. For example,
NIST issues guidance saying that users should be authenticated.
Well, that can mean anything from a four-digit password to your
thumbprint. We believe that agencies need more specific
guidance on how to identify risk, how to categorize these
risks, and then have standards that are tailored to addressing
these risks.
We think there should be routine evaluations of agency
performance that we need to measure. If you cannot measure what
you are doing, if you cannot report on the success, the
failures, the opportunities missed, the opportunities gained,
then it is really impossible to see what the lessons learned
and what you need to do. The CFO Act is a good example of this,
where there are now independent audits of agencies' financial
statements, and as a result of that, agencies have made
incredible strides in improving their financial management
operations over the past 5 years. We think similar
opportunities exist with computer security.
Next, executive branch and Congressional oversight. Senator
Bennett has been instrumental in the Senate in terms of
providing very rigorous oversight over Y2K issues. Just as
importantly, though, most of the individual committees that
have oversight over individual agencies have also had hearings,
and not just one hearing but multiple hearings. The same thing
is true on the House side. The same thing is true in the
executive branch, where the oversight over Y2K has been notably
more rigorous than it has been on computer security issues.
As a result of this, many of the hurdles have been overcome
by the constant pressure of the spotlight being shone on the
issue, identification of things that need to be done, and
solutions reached. So a continuation of that type of executive
branch and Congressional oversight and leadership is important
in this area, as well.
The next area is adequate technical expertise. If you do
not have the right kind of people, you are not going to come up
with the right kind of solutions, and this is a problem. We
have an executive council of independent CIO's in the private
sector. They are telling us that a system administrator that is
well qualified can make about $150,000 in the private sector.
That is not true in the public sector. There is inadequate
training. There are just not enough people sometimes to go
around. If this problem is not addressed, then regardless of
the policies and procedures and the good work that goes into
it, if you do not have the technical resources to carry it out,
you still will not be able to reach success.
The next area is adequate funding. The most positive
response we got to our publication last week on critical
infrastructure protection, comprehensive strategy control, and
year 2000 experiences, we pointed out in that report that there
was funding for Y2K fixes, that the funding was made available
not only with the agencies directly in their budgets but also
in the emergency supplemental fund, that there was a relatively
good assurance that the funds would be available. That is not
always true on computer security.
On the other hand, because of the relatively low level of
some agencies in terms of their abilities to effectively deal
with the problem, you do not also want to paper it over with
money. You need to make sure that if agencies have more funds,
that they are also prepared to spend them wisely.
Incident response and coordination, and again, talking
about the Federal Government, there is no real requirement to
report incidents. As a real matter, within some agencies, we
find that even within the agency, they do not report incidents,
if they are aware of it. Certainly, agencies are not uniformly
reporting them to FedCIRC, housed at GSA, and as a result,
opportunities are missed to learn from what agencies are
experiencing, opportunities within the agency and opportunities
among the agencies.
We think that if these seven issues come up for serious
discussion and resolution during the discussion of the national
plan and then placed on top of a renewed infrastructure within
the agencies, that solutions are available to improve computer
security within the government. There is no panacea. There is
no magic bullet. There is no assurance that problems will be
completely eliminated, but we think there is lots of
opportunity for improvement.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement, and Ms. Boltz
and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. There are other important hearings
going on today, but I think what you have said here, while I
know it has been in the public domain before, maybe has not
been focused on, and I think it is important that I repeat just
a little bit of it and have you comment on it.
You are basically saying that through your audits, the GAO
audits, you found that our government--I am quoting now--``is
not adequately protecting critical Federal operations and
assets from computer-based attacks.'' You go on to say that the
audits show that 22 of the largest Federal agencies have
significant computer security weaknesses, right?
Mr. Brock. That is correct.
Senator Kyl. You further say that reports issued over the
last 5 years describe persistent computer security weaknesses
that place Federal operations such as national defense, law
enforcement, air traffic control, and benefit payments at risk
of disruption, as well as fraud and inappropriate
disbursements, I think is the word, or disclosures.
Mr. Brock. Yes, sir.
Senator Kyl. Specific incidents, you mention just this year
you successfully penetrated several mission-critical systems of
NASA. Just in August of this year, you reported weaknesses in
DOD's system that provide people the opportunity to modify,
steal, inappropriately disclose, or destroy sensitive DOD data.
You talked about the fact that DOD functions, including weapons
and supercomputer research, as well as others, have already
been adversely affected by system attacks or fraud.
Mr. Brock. That is correct.
Senator Kyl. See, those are very important, disclosures
that are important for the public to appreciate, and I do not
believe that the message has gotten out yet. I am told that you
have to repeat something 6 times before it takes hold. Maybe
that is true in the Senate; I am not sure about the public
generally. But I think it is important that the results of this
GAO work be conveyed to the public in order to help generate
the support for the financial systems that is needed as well as
the other reforms that you pointed out can be accomplished.
Let me ask you whether you can say whether in these attacks
by GAO you were able to gain access to classified information.
Mr. Brock. We were focusing our penetration test on
sensitive but unclassified systems.
Senator Kyl. OK.
Mr. Brock. The last thing I ever want to see is a headline
in the morning saying, ``GAO Brings Down Critical Systems.''
Senator Kyl. Yes. Why has it taken so long for PDD 63 to
get off the ground? You mentioned that there has been no real
action on the broad reforms that are necessary, and we heard
testimony earlier that you heard about the delays of well over
a year in getting this plan off the ground. Why is it taking so
long?
Mr. Brock. I think there are a couple of reasons. First of
all, let me say that I think the concept behind PDD-63 is long
overdue. However, you are starting from an environment where
there was not a lot of consensus over what needed to be done
and how it should be done, and I think that part of the delay
has been in building that consensus. I think part of the delay,
as well, is one of the requirements of PDD 63 is for each of
the agencies to develop a plan. It has taken a long time to
develop those plans and it is taking a long time to get them in
the kind of shape, because they are also starting from ground
zero.
So part of it is trying to bring some people together that
may have some different agendas. I think that is important to
do that. Part of it, I am sure, is logistics, and part of it
has been, I believe, the inability of some agencies to respond
with the kind of material that was required by PDD 63.
Senator Kyl. Let me add just two more things. First of all,
this subcommittee will continue to explore, in particular, any
legislative action that might be necessary. We can generate
that as an ongoing committee of the Senate. The Y2K Committee,
of course, does not do that, but they point out problems and
then we can take it from there. So we will continue to focus on
that, and if there are any legislative suggestions that you
want to bring to our attention that become apparent, or the
need for which becomes apparent as a result of your auditing, I
hope you will just consider this an open request to do that.
But second, I am going to quote one statement you conclude
your statement with, that weaknesses continue to surface
because agencies have not implemented a management framework
for overseeing information security on an agency-wide and
ongoing basis. Because of that, I am going to recommend to the
chairman of the Government Operations Committee, which would
have a different kind of oversight jurisdiction, to review your
audits very carefully, prioritize them in some way to identify
those that seem most behind, and to begin bringing them in,
agency by agency, to ask very specific and very hard questions
using the information from your audits to bring to light some
of the deficiencies. Obviously, the goal here is not to point
fingers, but as you pointed out, to get on with the fixes that
have to be put into place.
Do you have any other comment about what we could do to
help advance this all, in addition, of course, to helping to
provide the resources that you identified earlier?
Mr. Brock. I think the constant spotlight, the questions,
the suggestion you had for the committee to bring the
individual agencies up, I mean, that imposes a level of
accountability that forces action. It forces the top management
within those agencies to say, here is an issue that Congress is
interested in. I need to elevate my own interest. As I said,
that was very successful in Y2K and I think it can be
successful in computer security, as well.
Senator Kyl. Whether we do that in this subcommittee or if
another full committee takes that oversight, we will expect to
maybe check back with you in a few months, maybe sometime mid-
year next year and have you give an honest, straightforward,
unvarnished evaluation of how our government agencies are
doing.
Mr. Brock. We will do so, sir.
Senator Kyl. Thank you. Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. You know, Mr.
Brock, first of all, again, your report is very straightforward
and I appreciate that very much. But we have all heard the same
adage, you cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip. In many
respects, the Federal Government is a turnip in this respect.
You pointed out the differential in salaries. The private
sector goes out, they get the most experienced personnel, their
cutting-edge software, all the rest. I question whether we
really have the expertise to do what is necessary.
I read your conclusions and your suggestions in your
report, but the one thing where this is really lacking is how
do you get that kind of cutting-edge technical knowledge that
departments can go to and say, here, I know we have a problem.
Do something about it. It seems to me we lack that. Now,
whether it can be contracted out for in the private sector,
whether the government has to put together some specific area
and really bring together the brightest and the best across the
nation to do this, I do not know.
But it seems to me that you can go to someone and say,
look, you have got a big problem, and they can look at it and
they may not even know how to remedy it or even have the people
that can make the suggestions that were adequate. You spoke
about a new roof. I do not think you are going to get a new
roof unless we can reach out in an unprecedented way.
Mr. Brock. I agree with you, Senator. There are sort of two
aspects of that. One of the things that I believe that the
national plan is contemplating on proposing are initiatives in
terms of increasing skills and abilities, sponsoring more
research and development in the area, training people,
providing opportunities. People have been looking at salary
differentials and ways of addressing that.
So looking at ways of bringing on skills, either by
improving the skills on board or attracting new people, that is
one issue. Contracting out, under proper controls, is an issue.
Many of the weaknesses that we identified, though, are almost
no cost.
When we go into agencies, for example--and these are real
examples--and we find the schematic for their network topology
on the website and we find on another website an open
discussion of the weaknesses they have over some of their
controls, it is like a bank saying, here is our building plan
and here is our guard schedule and here are the guards that
have bullets and here are the guards that do not. I mean, there
are some basics like that that just require basic attention.
The other big area that is really, again, very basic is
that many of our penetration tests are done through password
guessing. We have these programs that just generate password
after password after password and people are very lax in
changing their passwords. They use overly simplistic passwords.
This is one of the reasons we were calling for different
standards for risk. For some types of information, a simple
four- or five- or six-digit password probably is not enough.
You need another level of protection.
So there are a lot of basic things, and some agencies have
made remarkable progress in terms of addressing this within
more of a comprehensive management perspective, where they are
improving their information management across the board.
For example, when we have looked at controls at the Federal
Reserve, they are very well done. They also have a very good
Y2K program. They also have a very good information management
program.
We have had some negative reports about IRS and its
computer security. Recent reports have indicated they have been
making real progress, and also, and I do not think it is
coincidental, we have also noted that they made real progress
in the way they manage their big systems development efforts,
as well.
So management attention is the most critical factor, but I
would agree with you that providing the availability of
resources is a thorny issue and it may be one of these areas,
Mr. Chairman, where some sort of legislative alternatives may
need to be looked at.
Senator Feinstein. In your report, you mention that the
examples that I mentioned and Senator Kyl went over more
thoroughly are just examples of weaknesses. I would like to ask
for the full list of weaknesses that you found.
Then second, I would like to ask you to go back in one
month and repeat this and see if those weaknesses have been
remedied. I will bet you they have not. I will bet you 25 cents
they have not. That will be my request, and I will put that in
writing to you, as well. But I would like to see the full list
rather than just the examples, if I might, of the 22
departments.
Mr. Brock. OK. We can provide you with an overview of each
of the 22 and details to support them, as well.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Kyl. Senator Feinstein, by the way, I will see your
bet and raise you, but we will not convey it on the Internet.
How is that?
Senator Feinstein. All right.
Senator Kyl. We probably should consider writing a letter
to the President and perhaps the Director of the OMB to
encourage them as they begin thinking about the new budget that
they will be preparing for submission to the Congress next
year, that they be very alert to the requests of the different
agencies for the financial resources to accomplish all of these
objectives so that it is not a matter of after the fact, that
they are all focusing on their needs early on, they put those
needs down, and the President is fully cognizant of them when
he submits his budget to us.
Senator Feinstein. May I make one suggestion?
Senator Kyl. Absolutely.
Senator Feinstein. The prior speakers brought out that
there was no requirement to report incidents. There should be a
requirement to report incidents.
Senator Kyl. Mr. Brock, you alluded to that, as well. Do
these agencies just not have an interagency protocol?
Mr. Brock. It is really unclear to me whether it is a
matter of choice that they do not report or just a simple
matter of omission. But most of them, or many of them, do not
report incidents. Jean, do you have anything to add to that?
Ms. Boltz. Yes. In many cases, there is really not a
commonly accepted definition of what an incident is. It can be
just a probe, it can be an attack, an actual intrusion, which
may or may not cause damage. So there are really no rules about
what to report to whom and to when.
Senator Kyl. I agree with Senator Feinstein. This is the
kind of thing where there has got to be a consistent policy,
and if it cannot be done through the plan--I think the first
thing would be to see if we can get them to put that in the
plan for sure. If not, then legislation would be perhaps
appropriate.
But as Senator Bennett has pointed out before, come January
1, who is to know what it is? The computer goes down. Well, was
it because of Y2K? Was it because somebody was taking advantage
of Y2K? Was it because there is just an effort to disrupt, or
maybe was that the result of something more intrusive? So you
cannot know for sure, and that is why, what I think Senator
Feinstein's point is, all of these incidents need to be
reported and then we can sort out later what the problem is.
Senator Feinstein. Could we write a letter formally from us
to Mr. Tritak and ask that this be included in the plan?
Senator Kyl. I think that is a good suggestion.
Senator Feinstein. And we could put some specifics into
that request.
Senator Kyl. And we might even call upon Mr. Brock and Ms.
Boltz to help us formulate that.
Senator Feinstein. Yes.
Senator Kyl. I really appreciate your being here today.
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Senator Kyl. I also want to note that Mr. Richard
Schaeffer, Director of Infrastructure and Information
Assurance, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, has
submitted a written statement which will be included in the
record. His statement comments on DOD's role and responsibility
relative to the PDD 63 and the national plan.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schaeffer follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD C. SCHAEFFER, JR., DIRECTOR,
INFRASTRUCTURE AND INFORMATION ASSURANCE OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
INTRODUCTION
Information Superiority is essential to our capability to meet the
challenges of the 21st Century. It is a key enabler of Joint Vision
2010 and its four fundamental operational concepts of dominant
maneuver, precision engagement, full dimensional protection and focused
logistics. This is because each of these concepts demands that we
obtain, process, distribute and protect critical information in a
timely manner, while preventing our adversaries from doing the same.
Without Information Superiority we will, very simply, not be able to
achieve the goals established by the Department in Joint Vision 2010.
Information technology has provided us with a means to gain a
military advantage over our adversaries while actually reducing our
force structure. These technologies have made precision strike and
focused logistics possible. They allow us to attack targets surgically
with fewer munitions (albeit more expensive ones), and manage our
logistics requirements more efficiently so we can move forces much
farther and faster--and sustain them--than we have ever been able to do
before. Similarly, information systems are essential to the situational
awareness needed to achieve dominant maneuver and full dimensional
protection.
But our dependence on these systems, and their presence in every
aspect of our operations, has made us very vulnerable should they be
disrupted. The same technologies we can use to such advantage are
becoming available to our adversaries. And because they are relatively
inexpensive and accessible, the range of adversaries that potentially
can cause great disruption has broadened considerably.
We no longer have the luxury of focusing our defense, as we once
did, mainly on our peer competitors. We now have to establish defenses
that will defeat attacks by major adversaries as well as by the
terrorist, hacker, and disenchanted insider--and the latter is a
significant challenge. In the past much of our defensive efforts
focused on protecting our offensive capabilities. Now we also have to
protect an extensive DOD information infrastructure--virtually all of
which depend on commercial communications networks--as well as the
other critical Defense infrastructures it supports. We simply cannot
conduct and sustain offensive operations without these critical
infrastructures.
I am not especially concerned about our ability to develop and
employ the information technologies needed to achieve the strike,
maneuver, and other offensive goals of Joint Vision 2010, I am very
concerned about our ability to defend the information systems that make
actual offensive operations possible. Not too long ago we focused
primarily on the ``confidentiality'' aspects of our information systems
(can we keep something secret). Today, we must address a much broader
concept that we call `Information Assurance.' This includes not only
confidentiality of information, but also the integrity of the data
bases from which it's drawn, the availability of the infrastructure to
deliver the message, our ability to identify and authenticate those who
are using our networks, and non-repudiation features to keep people
from reneging on electronic contracts. These five factors:
confidentiality, integrity, availability, identification and
authentication, and non-repudiation constitute information assurance or
IA.
Over the past two years, we have initiated a number of efforts to
improve the overall information assurance posture of the Department. We
established a Defense-wide Information Assurance Program (DIAP) to
bring a comprehensive IA approach to this almost overwhelming challenge
of building and sustaining a secure information infrastructure. Since
1997 we have conducted a number of exercises, and experienced real
world events, that have emphasized to all of us in DOD that our
information systems are interconnected, and hence interdependent. This
means that we conduct our daily operations in a shared-risk
environment, underscoring the need for all organizations connecting to
a network to thoroughly understand the risks that exist prior to
operating in that environment. Each organization must know in advance
whether they can accept, manage, or adequately mitigate risks that have
been accepted by others before connecting to a network.
ELIGIBLE RECEIVER, in June 1997, was the first large-scale exercise
designed to test our ability to respond to an attack on our information
infrastructure. Designed to test DOD planning and crisis-action
capabilities, it also evaluated our ability to work with other branches
of government to respond to an attack on our National Infrastructures.
ELIGIBLE RECEIVER revealed significant vulnerabilities in our
information systems and the interdependence of the defense and national
information infrastructures. It showed that we had little capability to
detect or assess cyber attacks and that our ``indications and warning''
process for cyber events was totally inadequate.
A few months later, in early 1998, we experienced a series of
attacks that targeted DOD network Domain Name Servers, exploiting a
well-known vulnerability in the Solaris Operating System. Known as
SOLAR SUNRISE, these attacks were widespread, systematic and showed a
pattern that indicated they might be the preparation for a coordinated
attack on the Defense Information Infrastructure. The attacks targeted
key parts of Defense Networks at a time we were preparing for possible
military operations in Southwest Asia.
SOLAR SUNRISE validated the findings from ELIGIBLE RECEIVER and
helped focus the legal issues surrounding cyber attacks. Because of the
world situation, it was a high interest incident that significantly
increased pressure for a quick response. It also validated the need to
establish a standing response team. The ELIGIBLE RECEIVER/SOLAR SUNRISE
experience resulted in a number of defensive actions being taken.
Specifically, we have:
Increased our situational awareness by establishing a 24-
hour watch.
Established positive control over the identification and
repair of information systems at risk--SOLAR SUNRISE could have
been prevented had available patches been in place in certain
computer operating systems!
Installed intrusion detection systems on key system nodes.
Expanded computer emergency response teams to perform
alerts, critical triage and repair.
Developed contingency plans to mitigate the degradation or
loss of networks.
Improved our ability to analyze data rapidly and assess
attacks.
Established a close working relationship with the National
Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), teaming with law
enforcement agencies and developed procedures to share
information with the private sector.
Increased ``red team'' exercises to test our systems and
improve our operational readiness.
Dependence on interconnected information systems and networks will
only increase as we move into the 21st Century and towards Joint Vision
2010. We cannot eliminate this ``networked dependence,'' so we have to
meet the challenges of Computer Network Defense, even as we change our
systems to make them less susceptible to attack. Defending a computer
network is a significant challenge and the challenge is increasing
daily. Actually, it is a set of very significant technical challenges
and associated legal and social issues. There are significant technical
problems with characterizing and attributing attacks in complex
networks that have no real borders. And as we develop technical
solutions, we inevitably find ourselves immersed in a host of policy
and legal issues--law enforcement versus national security interests,
domestic versus foreign intelligence--while trying to work significant
operational problems requiring the most urgent attention.
To address the operational response problem in a coherent and
integrated manner, the DOD activated a Joint Task Force for Computer
Network Defense (JTF-CND). Established in December 1998, it is directly
responsible to the Secretary of Defense. The Joint Task Force is, in
conjunction with the CINC's, Services and Agencies, responsible for
coordinating and directing the defense of DOD computer systems and
computer networks. Its mission includes the coordination of DOD
defensive actions with non-DOD government agencies and appropriate
private organizations. This is a major first step in restructuring the
Command and Control regime in the Department to address the crucial
importance of computer network defense in both our war fighting and
business operations. The task force is based in Washington to provide
interagency access and leverage established relationships with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the National Security
Agency (NSA). It provides a single, accessible DOD point of contact
with the NIPC. And it is co-located with the Defense Information
Systems Agency (DISA) so that it can leverage their technical and
operational capabilities: their network management center, an
established 24 hour operations center, and regional operations centers
with CINC liaison. This co-location also facilitates coordination with
the National Communications System. As of October 1, 1999, the United
States Space Command was assigned responsibility for computer network
defense (CND), with JTF-CND reporting directly to this unified command.
It is important to understand that we will always have to deal with
a network of interconnected and interdependent information
infrastructures that serve an ever-expanding set of interrelated
communities. We cannot avoid this global interaction. And we, DOD and
the U.S. Government, will have relatively little effect on its
evolution. We must take advantage of it, understand its perils, and
design an appropriate level of security into our systems and
procedures. We have to learn to adapt our security practices to the
evolving global environment.
At the same time we must be ever vigilant to a world that is an
increasingly dangerous place. As we've improved our ability to monitor
network activities, the number of probes, intrusions, and cyber events
we can observe continues to increase. We are now detecting 80 to 100
events daily. Of these approximately 10 each day require detailed
investigation. Such investigations are carried out by many of the same
people we rely on to keep our networks operational, so there are limits
on the resources we have to work with.
We also must recognize that the interconnected nature of the
information infrastructure, and the increasing availability and
sophistication of hacker tools, places at risk immediately any
information that is not properly secured. We are increasingly concerned
about those who have legitimate access to our networks--the trusted
insider. This is consistent with industry experience, which reports
significant losses from disgruntled or dishonest employees.
We have taken significant steps to increase our internal security
and security awareness, but again, vigilance is the watchword. Internet
exploitation operations can be executed remotely, from any country.
They can be completely anonymous, done in real time and automatically.
There are extraordinary resources available to the data ``miner.'' Our
own ``red team'' assessment last year of DOD information available on
the Internet revealed some very sensitive material. We recently
completed a major examination of all the information the Department has
on its web pages and have instituted stringent procedures to insure
that classified or sensitive material, alone or in aggregate, is not
inadvertently accessible.
The Secretary has also instituted a policy to insure that every
individual in the DOD with access to Top Secret or a specially
controlled access category or compartment make an oral attestation that
they will conform to the conditions and responsibilities imposed by
that access. We are using this as a means to reinforce to DOD personnel
the significance of the responsibilities associated with access to this
information.
We also recognize that our dependence on the information
infrastructure extends to our other critical infrastructures as well.
We have reorganized within OSD to bring information assurance and
critical infrastructure protection together under a single Director. We
have developed, and are now implementing, our Critical Infrastructure
Protection plan. The Defense Department is serious about protecting its
critical infrastructures. We have provided a comprehensive chapter to
the national plan outlining how DOD will meet our defense mission (e.g.
facilities, equipment), determining the critical assets, identifying
their associated vulnerabilities, recognizing interdependencies and
taking measures to protect them.
I would like to outline the two major concepts on how Critical
Infrastructure Protection (CIP) will be addressed within and outside
DOD.
To examine critical infrastructure (CI) issues within DOD, we will
have representatives (some full time, some part time) from each of the
defense infrastructure sectors--financial; transportation; public
works; Defense Information Infrastructure/Command, Control, &
Communications (DII/C3); Intelligence, Sensors, & Reconnaissance (ISR);
health affairs; personnel; emergency preparedness; space; and
logistics--that will work together to discuss common infrastructure
concerns. They will identify critical nodes and networks, nationally
and internationally, that the DOD depends upon to execute successful
military operations. They will assess the vulnerability of such nodes
and networks to physical and/or cyber attack and make recommendations
to enhance their security. The infrastructure providers--the private
sector--are indispensable in our execution of military operations. This
brings me to my second point--how we reach outside DOD.
PDD 63 calls for a partnership with the private sector. Along with
others in government, we are exploring with industry the best concepts
on how we share or ``partner'' information with the private sector.
Private sector involvement is crucial throughout the continuum of the
Defense infrastructure, but we are working with industry to determine
government and private sector companies will exchange information (e.g.
classified, business confidential) and the means to which it should be
shared, documented and updated routinely. At the DOD installation
level, we are exploring information-sharing concepts on two fronts.
First, we need to ensure that the government and private sector
representatives (e.g. the installation commander and staff with the
local railroad owner)--our first line defenders--jointly respond to the
needs identified in the planning assessments. Second, these government
and private sector representatives will need to work with state, local,
and county governments as to determining what their installations need
in order to support their missions. Our goal is the establishment of an
information-sharing model that allows for a continuous and credible
information flow from the installation level to senior levels in
government to include the National Information Protection Center
(NIPC).
So where do we go from here? What is the way ahead? There is no
simple or single solution. Our strategy is based on a multidimensional
approach. We must have trained and disciplined personnel. We must
improve our operations. And we must be innovative technologically. We
have to recognize that information technology is vitally important to
all the DOD critical infrastructures. And we must implement this
strategy through a comprehensive, coherent, and integrated Defense-wide
infrastructure and information assurance program.
Some steps we are taking include:
Employing a defense in depth security model and changing our
basic approach to network architecture. A major effort is
underway to fundamentally restructure the Defense Information
Infrastructure into a Global Networked Information Enterprise
(GNIE)--a new concept of how the Department will meet its
information needs.
Moving toward a robust, DOD Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
that can bring public key cryptography to bear to help provide
the required range of assurance and data integrity services as
well as permitting segregation of the networks into communities
of interest. This will allow us to limit the extent of the
damage an intruder can inflict.
Increasing our deployment of more sophisticated intrusion
detection and monitoring technology.
Continuing to build strategic partnerships with industry to
foster an open security framework and development of security
enabled products.
Investing our R&D dollars in developing highly assured
products and systems and for real-time monitoring, data
collection, analysis and visualization.
In addition, the JTF-CND is working toward full operational
capability (FOC) and we are expanding our CINC, Service and Agency
Computer Emergency Response Teams. We are instituting a real-time
network monitoring and reporting structure. We have established
positive control through our Information Assurance Vulnerability Alert
or IAVA process. We are establishing a continuous vulnerability
analysis and assessment program, and are increasing our red team
assessment capability. We have made significant improvements in our
ability to perform long-term trend analysis, thereby identifying
certain types of sophisticated attacks.
We are increasing our efforts to promote information assurance
training and awareness. We are looking closely at certification and
retention issues for personnel performing key functions--the system
administrators and system maintainers. And we are examining an expanded
use of military reserves.
Substantial progress has been made, but we must always think of it
as a journey, not a destination. As new technology is created, new
attacks will be developed, and new countermeasures must be adopted.
There is a lot more that has to be done in virtually every area that
I've mentioned today. But only by recognizing this challenge, and
facing it head on, can we realize the military potential afforded by
achieving Information Superiority.
Senator Kyl. I invite anyone else who would like to submit
a statement for this record to do so. One of the best things, I
think, we can do is to make the record here and then get that
out to the public.
I appreciate the work that you are doing with GAO. Keep it
up. We will be calling upon you again.
If there is not anything further, then this hearing will be
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]