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WASHINGTON (AFP) - White House officials are seeking a "partnership" between technology companies and the government to fend off cyber attacks and make the Internet safer, a top official said yesterday.
White House chief of staff John Podesta told CNN ahead of an Internet security conference at the White House that the private sector and government needed to cooperate on thwarting incidents like last week's spate of hacker attacks on major websites.
The conference focused on working with the private sector to create a partnership between the public and private sectors to share information, to enhance our security and to make the overall digital economy a safer place to do business.
President Bill Clinton called the conference on Internet security after a rash of attacks on high profile web sites last week. Hackers sent streams of requests for information to the sites, essentially causing a traffic jam.
Although security on the target sites was not breached, the attacks required the use of innocent third-party computers to launch. Hackers installed the tools onto those computers without the host recognizing the violation.
"I think these latest attacks have been a wake-up call for Americans that more needs to be done ... which is to come together to share ideas, to do more research and development on security measures that can be taken to enhance the network security, and to build a really strong foundation of security and privacy for the information infrastructure as we create this great promise of the digital economy," he said. They also addressed press reports that some financial institutions had warnings of the impending attacks four days before they started, but did not pass the information on to authorities.
Also, federal investigators were to question three suspects in last week's attacks the Washington Post reported. The Post said FBI agents might begin questioning suspects after security experts analyzed data records and traced online aliases to the names and addresses of individuals who used them. Investigators said the attacks were carried out by at least two different groups using different strategies and said some of the attacks may have been copycat crimes.
The US government plans to spend $1.75bn this year on safeguarding its own Internet infrastructure. However, President Clinton appears particularly keen to minimize the damage that the attacks have inflicted on public confidence in e-commerce. The online disruption did not amount to an "electronic Pearl Harbor" he insisted at the summit.
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