A growing wave of hacker attacks on federal World Wide Web sites, including an attack that resulted in the FBI shutting down its site for more than a week, has raised agencies' awareness of their vulnerabilities and spurred efforts to increase their online security.
As a result, agencies recently have upgraded their security products, set new security policies and changed systems' architectures to keep one step ahead of hackers.
But federal IT and security experts recognize that no system connected to the Web can be completely secure. The threat of hackers wanting to make political statements or cause a nuisance by taking government Web sites down will require constant attention, but that should not sway agencies from moving more public services online, sources say.
"Just as dealing with terrorists, you don't let [hackers] stop you from doing what you believe is in your best interests," said Roger Baker, chief information officer at the Commerce Department. "By putting yourself on the Internet, you have to be much more vigilant about your security."
In the past two weeks, a group attacked the FBI's site in retaliation for the FBI arresting hackers who have broken into federal systems. Some of the hackers who have broken into the sites have identified themselves as part of a group calling itself F0rpaxe. The FBI took its site down for more than a week to make security improvements, and the site finally went live again on Friday.
The group also broke into the Web sites run by the Senate, the Interior Department and a federal supercomputer laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Also last month, several cyberattacks successfully took down Web sites at the Defense Department, the White House and other agencies, following the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Many other agency sites also were attacked, with four other successful hacks gaining international attention in the last two weeks when the victimized agencies had to take their sites down for at least a day to repair the damage.
In response to increased attacks on DOD systems, the Defense Technical Information Center, which oversees more than 90 Defense-related Web sites, has taken several steps to upgrade its security.
Until recently, DTIC maintained those sites through an "all-in-one" server. But in an attempt to foil hackers, "we're stripping these things apart," said Carlynn Thompson, director for research, development and acquisition information support at DTIC. The agency also has installed more servers, creating new layers that hackers must go through to get to the actual content of the sites.
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