FBI looking for three hackers, Clinton holds summit

As President Clinton convened a high-level summit on Internet security, the

FBI announced it is looking for three hackers who go by the online names of

"coolio," "mafiaboy" and "nachoman." While not saying they are

suspect, the agency wants to question them in connection to the series of

denial-of-service attacks on popular Web sites in the past two weeks.

"Coolio" is an American-based hacker, while "mafiaboy" is

a Canadian teen. A third suspect, "nachoman" is a male who allegedly

"confessed" taking part in the recent attacks to a staff member of the

popular security site, Attrition.org. The FBI this week also sent investigative

leads in the Internet attacks to four countries, reportedly including Canada and

Germany where a 20-year-old programmer known as "mixter" created the

software tools that was used in some of last week's attacks. Mixter has stated

that he will cooperate with the FBI.

Meanwhile, President Clinton conducted a high-level summit focused on

Internet security. Clinton met with about 20 industry representatives (including

a hacker-turned-security-consultant), national security experts and Attorney

General Janet Reno. Clinton said that while the electronic attacks are a

"source of concern" they are far from and "electronic Pearl

Harbor," as some have called the attacks. "I don't think that the

analogous loss was that great. I think it was an alarm. I don't think it was

Pearl Harbor where we lost our Pacific fleet.

This is a challenge that was entirely predictable. It's part of the price of

the success of the Internet." Participants at the meeting discussed ways to

improve security on the Internet, especially on how to protect powerful Internet

servers from which the attacks were carried out. "It was a failure of

security at those that allowed the attack software to sit on their machines

unnoticed," said Terry Milholland, chief information officer at Electronic Data

Systems.

Clinton said he has asked U.S. Congress for $2 billion this year to protect

the government's computer infrastructure. He made clear that he did not want to

do anything that would undermine the high-tech industry, which he said accounted

for 8 percent of U.S. jobs and 30 percent of its expected growth. "The

trick is going to be how to do what needs to be done on security and privacy and

still keep it flourishing and growing," Peter Solvik, chief information

officer at Cisco agreed the industry is not in a crisis. "We're certainly

not facing a crisis but the events of last week show that everyone -- Internet

users, Internet companies, and government -- need to work together to strengthen

Internet security."

Charles Wang, chief executive of Computer Associates International said the

government has a lot to do, by example and by education. But the private sector

has to drive the security of the Internet. " You need prevention.

Ultimately, we have a problem -- a big problem. The government and private

sector is working together, and that can help. One-third of passwords are never

changed. Companies need to be more vigilant in their own internal security to

prevent such attacks. We did agree to work together to create a task force to

understand how' to collaborate."

Whitfield Diffie of Sun Microsystems, said he told Clinton the hacking

incidents pointed up a problem with the security of individual computers.

"What we saw were a whole lot of computers taken over. I said, 'This is as

though you lost an election because a lot of people voted against you, and they

didn't even know they voted’." Hewlett-Packard general manager of

Internet security, Roberto Medrano said Clinton was interested in hearing about

what problems exist and what else should we be doing. "The government is

trying to understand how they should play on this. The general thought is four

groups need to work together: the government, industry, academics and private

individuals."

The most unusual participant in today's White House meeting was Mudge,

nickname for a member of a "think tank" of hackers who perform security

consulting under the name AtStake.