Cyberterrorism, Hoaxers, and Policymakers.(Letter to the editor)

Publication: Skeptical Inquirer

Publication Date: 01-JUL-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

Carolyn Meinel ("Hoaxers, Hackers, and Policymakers," March/April 2006) is right to conclude that we should be wary of unsubstantiated claims from "self-described computer security researchers," but her article itself makes unsubstantiated claims. She argues that the testimony of "Dr. Mudge" (Pieter Zatko) and fake hacker "Se7en" ("Christian Valor") before federal policymakers about "a looming electronic Pearl Harbor" may have been a cause of two events for which she provides no evidence of a connection.

The first, a possible FBI sting operation, in which Khalid Ibrahim, a member of Indian separatist group Harkat-ul-Ansar, paid $1,000 to "Chameleon" (eEye Digital Security's Chief Hacking Officer, Marc Maiffret), is described fairly accurately in two books which Meinel says "hyped the raid to say that hackers were in league with al Qaeda." Neither Adam Penenberg and Marc Barry's Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America (2001, Perseus Books, ch. 9) nor reformed hacker Kevin Mimicks The Art of Intrusion (2005, Wiley, pp. 32-34) is guilty of such hype; both mention the FBI operation theory and the fact that, despite Maiffret's admitting to receiving the payment, he was never indicted. Neither mentions al Qaeda; both correctly say that Khalid Ibrahim was in Harkat-ul-Ansar. There's no evidence that this incident had anything to do with Mudge or Se7en.

The second claim is that the hacker testimony led to a diversion of resources and attention from counterterrorism to cybersecurity on the part of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), citing the fact that in 2000, NIPC spent only $4.9 million on counterterrorism, which mostly went for office equipment and training. Meinel concludes that this prevented NIPC from having the resources to follow up on Phoenix FBI Special Agent Ken Williams's memo about al Qaeda members at flight schools, citing a book by Gerald Posner in support of this conclusion.

Posner's book's discussion of the Williams memo (pp. 169-173) does not support Meinel's claim. Posner makes no mention of NIPC and attributes the failure to act on the memo to the failure of FBI middle management...

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