NZPAM001@SIVM.BITNET (05/24/90)
For possible interest, I'm forwarding the following article from yesterday's
Washington Post:
The Washington Post, Wednesday, May 23, 1990
By: Evelyn Richards
Army Scouting to Enlist Aid of Computer Virus
Wanted: Experienced computer hackers capable of breaking
into enemy software systems and destroying secret files.
Knowledge of computer viruses a must.
Such a solicitation may not be that far fetched, considering
the latest contract being put up for grabs by the U.S. Army.
its secretive Center for Signals Warfare in Warrenton, Va., is
seeking bids from businesses to study the feasibility of
disabling enemy weapons systems by infecting them with
disruptive computer programs.
"We're looking to see if we can develop some malicious
software concepts...[to] use against some adversary's command and
control system," said Richard Poisel, the Army center's chief of
research and technology. He called the bid solicitation an
effort to find businesses that could help in the "research
effort," though he admitted it could draw a few run-of-the-mill
hackers.
In particular, the Army hopes to explore the use of so-
called computer viruses--a type of unwanted software program that
can propagate undetected from one computer to another, thwarting
the computers' normal functions and sometimes garbling date.
Incidents of computer sabotage have swept the country in recent
months as hackers become increasingly efficient at breaking into
the systems of businesses, universities and research centers.
But what the Army envisions would be far trickier for your
average hacker to pull off. The biggest obstacle would be
figuring out how to implant the enemy systems with the dreaded
software.
One answer suggested by the Army is to somehow transmit the
malicious software code over radio waves. It apparently figures
that the troublemaking software could be inadvertently accepted
by an adversary's system as it was receiving other information
over the air.
But some computer experts say the concepts borders on the
absurd, in part because such communications systems would likely
contain elaborate schemes to protect against intrusions. Also,
altering software requires an intimate knowledge of how it
operates under normal conditions, something that the United
States would be unlikely to have in hand for a rival's system.
And most military computer system cannot be reprogrammed by
remote control.
"It's equivalent to walking up to an arcade game and
changing the programs of the game ... with the joystick," said
William Murray, a computer security consultant who works with
Deloitte & Touche in Connecticut.
Not everyone is convinced the idea is so far-fetched.
Myron Cramer, an electronic warfare specialist at Booz,
Allen & Hamiltion Inc. in Bethesda, sees a day when viruses could
be remotely injected into enemy computers that support air
defense and battlefield control systems, lurking there covertly
until they spring into action. He even has described an
"assassin" virus that could wreak widespread havoc and then erase
itself, leaving no trail behind.
Some experts also believe that evaluating such possibilities
could help the United States plug its own vulnerabilities to
computer disruptions. Indeed, some computer specialists who were
told of the Army's proposal said that the Untied States, more
than any other power, is prone to be a victim of malicious
software.
"In any kind of environment where you'd want to set
something like that loose, our forces would likely be more
vulnerable than anyone we would be up against," said Eugene
Spafford, a Purdue University professor who specializes in
computer security. "We have more computers and ours are more
homogeneous than what others would be running."
Is the Army, by soliciting such research, encouraging
computer tempering in the commercial world? Poisel doesn't think
so. "The Army developed the M-16 gun for military uses but
certainly would discourage the private sector from using [it],"
he said. "It's not really an issue."