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Readers' comments on any of these resources would be most welcome! Do email us via feedback@netfamilynews.org.Dewie the turtle & home cybersecurity (September 27, '02 issue)
Following in the footsteps of great campaigners like Smokey the Bear, Federal Trade Commission spokesturtle Dewie launched his cybersecurity ed campaign this week. Actually, Dewie (see him here) wasn't available, so we talked to his personal aide and spokesperson, FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle. "I'm an old Marine fighter pilot," the commissioner told us, "and there's no better aide to a general than a Marine aide, so I'm his Marine aide right now."
He's got a great sense of humor but, on more serious matters, our conversation did a good job of clarifying exactly what a connected home computer has to do with national (and international) security. "Your kid is sitting at home on a computer that I've been told repeatedly is more powerful than some of the computers in the space shuttle, and you have a broadband connection," Commissioner Swindle said. "That computer is part of a network; it literally ties you directly into the Internet, made up of all these networks linked together one way or another" - networks like the power grid of the state of California, the Pentagon's, and those of global financial markets. "The Internet has become a critical part of the global infrastructure," he added. [According to the latest Commerce Department figures, about 10% of US households have high-speed Net access, Wired News reports. Half of all Americans are connected at home (that's dial-up plus high-speed access).]
So the new reality is...
- Each home computer with a high-speed connection - including those used by very young Netizens - is literally part of an infrastructure that undergirds people's everyday life and livelihood worldwide, and
- Home PC security affects infrastructure security, and vice versa.
How? Because connected home PCs without firewalls, virus protection, etc. are available as virus carriers, file sharers and storers, and parties to denial-of-service attacks. They can be manipulated by hackers with malicious intentions, as a ZDNet reporter and one-time skeptic pointed out this week: "Cyberattacks," he writes in a piece about what changed his mind, "are already part of modern warfare. In the past two years, malicious users on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict have deployed viruses and worms, inundated government sites with huge amounts of e-mail, and launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on e-commerce sites. As part of the Kashmir conflict, an Indian-authored worm, Yaha, created a DDoS attack on the main Pakistani government Web site earlier this year."What's needed most, Commissioner Swindle suggested, is some simple precautions becoming as second-nature as looking both ways when we cross the street. "We've gotten so far out ahead of good security practices," he said. "Buckling seatbelts, washing hands, getting inoculations - these are all habit patterns, and that's what we need to do with computers and information systems and networks. They are wonderful tools that bring us yet-unmeasured benefits, but there are vulnerabilities associated with them. We are aiming this message literally at everybody."
He mentioned a Sept. 12, 2001, meeting of the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development he attended in Japan. "We said we all ought to look at our security guidelines and get them revised in light of what just happened [on 9/11]. I was on the committee that hammered out a revision that was released in late July - nine principles that appeal to OECD nations and non-member nations around the world. This effort is going to be joined by other nations doing it their own way.
"We're trying to convey this sense of urgency and importance," the commissioner continued. "It's not just you getting on eBay and ordering posters. It's a big world, we're all linked together, but we can cause harm to others and they to us."
Which takes us back to the very wired Dewie, who "carries his security shell no matter what he's doing on the Internet," according to his Web site at the FTC.
Here are steps families can take from the FTC:
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