CIA to issue cyberterror intelligence estimate
By DAN VERTON
FEBRUARY 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The CIA, working with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, this week will publish the first-ever classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the threat of cyberterrorism against U.S. critical infrastructures.

News about the estimate, which was first requested in March 2000 by a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, came today during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on cyberterrorist threats and capabilities.

However, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, and ranking member Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed concern that the Department of Homeland Security has not focused enough high-level attention on the threat posed by terrorist-sponsored cyber disruptions or physical attacks against critical cyber infrastructures.

I'm afraid that we're not taking this threat seriously enough, said Feinstein. In particular, she said she was troubled by the decision to move the position once held by former cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke from the White House to where it now sits, several layers down in the DHS bureaucracy. She questioned the extent to which Amit Yoran, the current director of the National Cyber Security Division at the DHS, can influence the overall national homeland security strategy.

Yoran, however, said the DHS does not view cybersecurity as a separate entity, but one element of a larger critical infrastructure protection strategy.

Kyl pressed Yoran to answer specific questions about the cyberthreats posed to the U.S. by both nation-states and terrorist organizations. Yoran was unable to provide any answers and relied instead on supporting testimony from John Malcolm, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, and Keith Lourdeau, deputy assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division.


According to Yoran, the DHS takes a threat-independent approach to cybersecurity and does not assess the capabilities or intent of any specific group or individual. We'll have to wait and see what the NIE says, Yoran told Kyl.

Lourdeau said the FBI's assessment indicates that the cyberterrorist threat to the U.S. is rapidly expanding. In addition, the FBI predicts that terrorist groups will either develop or hire hackers, particularly for the purpose of complementing large physical attacks with cyberattacks, he said. ...................................
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