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CNN Live Today
Interview With Barton Gellman
Aired June 27, 2002 - 14:22 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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The possibility of terrorists using the Internet to unleash all sorts of damage against the United States targets has some unsettling implications.
Barton Gellman is a staff writer for the "Washington Post." He's the author of an article on the subject in today's "Post," and we also saw it last night on washingtonpost.com. And he joins us live now.
Well, Barton, this is pretty alarming, to say the very least, to an awful lot of people. How is it that it began with Mountain View police noticing that there was some suspicious computer activity going on in Silicon Valley? And how were they able to then draw conclusions or make the connections from that to a very widespread, perhaps, investigation?
BARTON GELLMAN, "WASHINGTON POST": All right. So they noticed a certain amount of reconnaissance or surveillance, of certain systems, in Mountain View. They report this to the San Francisco FBI. The FBI brings in the Lawrence Livermore Lab, and with a very broad investigation, they find that there are computers in South Asia and the Middle East that nationwide are casing utilities, government offices, 911 systems, dams, pipelines, to see how they run -- what are the control systems that run them -- and whether they might be able to break into those.
WHITFIELD: And so, what were they able to surmise, the investigators, able to surmise from these browsers, this activity, from Middle Eastern or South Asian sources?
GELLMAN: Well, in addition to that, they have interrogations, they have conversations they have become aware of. They know that al Qaeda is interested in hiring criminal hacker who have good skills. And here's what the issue is.
You have physical structures, like dams, pipelines. You have digital controls that run them. And now those digital controls are on the Internet or connected in some indirect way. And the fear is that al Qaeda may be looking for ways to take physical control, and from cyberspace, inflict damage on the real world.
WHITFIELD: Wow. So you can learn everything about the -- from the infrastructure to the actual vulnerabilities or the operations of these places? GELLMAN: Well, the thing is, these devices didn't used to be connected to international networks. And they're fairly simple devices. They have standard international programming languages that anyone can learn.
WHITFIELD: And we're talking about everything from dams, as you mentioned, to 911 systems. What else?
GELLMAN: The electrical generation and transmission and distribution system, water systems.
There was a guy -- the only time it's ever been known that someone used cyberspace to do this sort of damage was a disgruntled employee in Australia.
He used a radio transmitter and a laptop to unleash several million gallons of sewage in the Queensland Sunshine Coast, and he was using computer controls, and no one was able to stop him until they actually found him in a car on the side of the road and arrested him.
WHITFIELD: Do investigators have more than just suspicions? You said they have been able to gather other evidence, but what concrete evidence do they have that this was actually part of some conspiracy to carry out any kind of terrorist attack?
GELLMAN: Concrete's a funny problem in cyberspace. They have indications -- no one claims that they known al Qaeda is planning on doing this.
They have people in detention who have said that al Qaeda would like to try it. They know that al Qaeda has talked about hiring hackers. They know that al Qaeda computers have contained information on these systems.
What they suspect -- and it's only a suspicion, is that al Qaeda would like to combine a cyber-attack and a physical attack on the same day, because the two of them together is greater than the sum of its parts.
WHITFIELD: So investigators have not been able to follow the trail, if you will, to any particular people so as to pursue any kind of arrest or any sort of charges?
GELLMAN: Not that I know of, but I'm not sure I would know.
WHITFIELD: All right. All right. Barton Gellman, thank you very much, from "The Washington Post," for joining us. We appreciate it.
GELLMAN: Thank you.
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