Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 18:13:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jamal Hannah <jah-AT-iww.org>
Subject: City on Red Alert for Saboteurs


>From  London Evening Standard:

City on red alert for saboteurs
by Ken Hyder

City firms have been warned to vet temporary staff in the
run up to worldwide anti-capitalist protests on 1 May
amid increasing fears that anarchists may try to infiltrate
banks and sabotage vital computer systems. 

Financial institutions should be wary of temporary workers
gaining employment with the intention of planting programmes
designed to bring business to a halt, and they are being 
urged to check references carefully. 

The City police's top crime prevention officer, Chief
Inspector Norman Russell, also warned that sympathetic
staff could help demonstrators by leaving doors open
allowing them to storm the buildings. There is risk of
potentially greater damage from temporary staff giving out
computer passwords, making it easy for hackers outside
to get into systems. 

Chief Insp Russell said: "We are advising these institutions
to watch out for people taking jobs for a few weeks with
the intention of infiltrating systems and preparing them for
a hacking attack." 

Once inside the company, the saboteurs place a tiny file on
the computer system, finish their temporary job, and
vanish. At the specified time hackers can dial in from
anywhere in the world and use the file to open the system
to attacks. Alternatively, the saboteurs can even leave
programmes which will go into action automatically,
crashing the system at a specific time and date. 

One of the country's most senior hi-tech security
consultants pointed out: "Employees sympathetic to the
protesters do not have to be on the IT staff in order to
create havoc on computers. Once they are physically
inside a building they have effectively stepped over the
'firewalls' designed to protect computer systems from
outside interference. If they can plug into a wall socket
they are then able to get into the network." 

To boost the defences against cyber attack MI5 is heading
a programme to protect key utilities and vital services 
like electricity supply, broadcasting, telecommunications 
and air-traffic control, collectively known as Britain's 
"critical national infrastructure", or CNI. 

City institutions are included in the list and MI5 is
operating a system for collating data on the latest threats
to computer security and logging all serious hacking 
intrusions to public and private-sector networks. 

However, MI5 sources privately acknowledge that at
present they are leaving specific plans to counter the May
demonstration firmly in the hands of the Met and City of
London police. Thousands of anarchists and other
protesters are expected to converge on Washington DC
this week to disrupt meetings of the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 

Fearing a repeat of the violent chaos anti-global capitalism
and environmental campaigners and anarchists brought to
the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle last
November, police in Washington have spent nearly £1
million on riot control equipment. 

Officers have been training for weeks to protect the
bankers and finance ministers who are expected to attend
the normally routine annual talks. Organisers of the
"festival of resistance", thought to include forming a human
chain around the US Capitol building, have issued
guidelines calling for non-violent protests.

--