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American Morning
Is Your Web Site Really Secure?
Aired November 21, 2001 - 09:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, cybercrime is a serious concern, particularly in this time of terrorism. Is your Web site secure? Well, that is a big question. And for the answer to that, we turn to Washington and to Ben Venzke. He is CEO of Tempest Publishing and intelcenter.com. They specialize in terrorism, national security issues and cyber-threats.
Ben, good to see you again. Seems like we are always dragging you in to talk about this kind of stuff.
BEN VENZKE, INTELCENTER.COM: Yes, good to see you though.
HARRIS: Happy holidays to you.
Listen, first of all, considering that this has come up now and we did hear the comment in the report about how this only makes the press when it happens to a big company, like a Playboy or whatever, but how big of a problem do you think this is going into this holiday shopping season?
VENZKE: It is a serious problem. But we need to look at it from two different points of view. One, for the person at home that's doing your holiday shopping online, or for instance, even myself, I barely have been able to make it out of the office since 9/11 with the high level of threat, probably made at least 30 or so purchases online. It's not as big as an issue. Credit card companies are not going to let you bear the brunt of any fraudulent charges, because they want you shopping online. Who it's really going to hurt will be the credit card issuers, and the businesses that have to absorb that cost.
HARRIS: So you are saying that shoppers out there should not be extra concerned because of this at all? What about precautions? Is there any kind of precaution that a shopper could take to keep it from happening?
VENZKE: Well, There are some things you can do. One, you want to making purchases from reputable sites, reputable shops, things that you would recognize -- Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other well- known names like that. Two, you should be doing. This is one more reason to do the things we have always been told to do. Request every year a copy of your credit report. Make sure that there are no unknown credit cards showing up that you weren't aware that you had. Check your credit card statement every month to make sure that there aren't any fraudulent charges.
By doing those simple little things, you can you spot anything that's untoward, and contact the company and deal with it quickly.
HARRIS: Any idea exactly how these guys got into the Playboy Web site?
VENZKE: It's really not clear at this point. Unfortunately, there are numerous different vulnerabilities that these hackers can use, to penetrate a system, to steel information, and the difficulty and the challenge for companies is you no sooner patch one hole, then you've got five other holes that have you to deal with.
HARRIS: I have to ask you this one last question, because it kind of ties in all of the worlds you deal with, whether you have cyber-crime, and also terrorism, because we talked about this. In fact, the last time you and I spoke, we talked about this idea of groups like Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network out there sending out messages to each other through these X-rated Web sites like "Playboy" and encrypting their messages within those Web sites.
Is it possible that these hackers who did this on the Playboy web site could also be good enough to uncover that kind of information from these terrorist networks, too?
VENZKE: Possibly. It's in the same world, but they're different skill sets. I think what we need to keep in mind is that when we are talking about hackers or attacks in cyberspace, it's no longer a teenager just sitting in front of a computer or an intelligence agency. All of those threats we know in the real world, extortionist, petty thieves, organized crime, terrorists, are active in cyberspace, and using this technology for exactly the same reasons that you and I would use it.
HARRIS: OK, Ben, good to see you again, man. Stay well.
VENZKE: Thank you. Happy holidays.
HARRIS: Same to you. Have a good one.
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