The New York bulletin board is hooked up to the Internet, an international web of computers that links 20 million users. if one system is compromised, many more are vulnerable. The December break-in turned out to be the first of hundreds of similar reports; earlier this month Gary’s team concluded there was an organized effort to infiltrate the Internet. Although the culprits were still loose and their motives were unclear last week, CERT’s detective work has won the team respect and new attention on the net. A typical Internet message: “It’s nice to know that somebody out there is helping keep us techno-peons in the loop.”
Created by the Defense Department five years ago after the last widespread Internet break-in, the CERT team operates out of a sleek granite building. CERT has no legal power to arrest or prosecute; instead, the team of about 15 programmers pokes through violated systems using their only weapons: dozens of computers. Like the hackers they track, CERT team members often work round the clock, subsisting on takeout Chinese food. Gary, 52, CERT’s manager, is a decorated army attack-helicopter pilot and an expert in computer security. Hackers are “the adversary,” he says. “We try to help the victim” by posting warnings of “holes” – vulnerabilities – and fixes on the net. “But as the net grows, the incidents are climbing,” he says. “The motives are changing.”
Ten years ago hackers were usually youthful pranksters, mostly interested in demonstrating technical ingenuity. Now there’s a growing feeling that more sinister forces may be loose, perhaps a kind of net mafia intent on outright theft through use of credit-card numbers or other data.
Last year CERT responded to almost 1,500 calls, a 75 percent increase from 1992’s. CERT won’t disclose its budget, but clearly a lot of help comes from volunteers interested in preserving the integrity of the net. Particularly complicated security breaches are farmed out around the country to an unofficial brain trust of specialists in specific operating systems. The rest of the detective work is on line in Pittsburgh. Rich Pethia, 47, CERT’s coordinator, has spent 25 years working on the net; he says his job gets tougher every year. The team must deal with increasingly sophisticated hackers and criticism from netters who think that providing hole data is like giving cybercrooks keys to computers.
Unfortunately, finding holes is often easier than fixing them. CERT still doesn’t have a long-term solution to the current break-in problem. Last week, in response to the CERT alarm, network operators around the world booted and rebooted their systems, looking for signs of trouble. Back in Pittsburgh, the CERT team members were hunched over their keyboards, ready for the next call.
