ISP Security Summit Meeting Develops Answers to Internet Service Attacks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

McLean, Virginia, March 24, 2000 — Several weeks ago, The MITRE Corporation hosted an Internet Service Provider Security Summit meeting that drew together a working group of technical experts from companies that provide the backbone of the Internet, as well as vendors supplying products for the Internet. Among those participating were Bell Atlantic, Cable & Wireless, Cisco Systems, the Department of Defense, Lucent Technologies and the SANS Institute.

The group met to share their knowledge of network vulnerabilities, focusing on the recent denial of service attacks experienced by several major Internet sites. The Summit's goal was to pull the Internet community together to develop technical solutions that will prevent future service interruptions.

A major outcome of this Summit is the development of simple guidance that can be followed by every organization connected to the Internet. It is now available at the Cyber Resource Center on MITRE's Web site (www.mitre.org), and on the SANS Web site (www.sans.org). Specifically, it will address the two most common techniques used in denial of service attacks on the Internet today: an attacker's ability to hide by using a forged Internet address, and an attacker's ability to use another's site to amplify an attack.

According to Alan Paller of SANS, "there are hundreds of thousands of users who can become unwitting participants in attacks when the attacker uses their system to multiply the barrage of hits on a targeted system." Jim Duncan of Cisco Systems adds, "problems on the net affect everyone. At this juncture of technology evolution, the only reasonable approach is a collaborative one."

The Summit was built on relationships forged in the Cyber Assurance National Information Center (NIC), that came together to advise the White House Y2K Council's Information Coordination Center (ICC) on cyber events during the Y2K roll-over. MITRE, a not-for-profit company that provides technical support to the government, partnered with Veridian in leading the NIC, providing technical expertise and coordinating interactions among private industry, academia and government agencies.

According to MITRE's NIC team lead Gary Gagnon, "The unprecedented level of cooperation among public and private sector interests we saw at the NIC led us to believe we should continue the collaboration and find ways to counter attacks that can hit anyone and have serious consequences. Through this cooperation, Summit participants developed a new way to communicate information the Internet community needs to maintain security." Richard Hale of the Defense Information Systems Agency believes that "cooperation among the participants will ensure short-term results. The commitment of everyone is remarkable."

MITRE (www.mitre.org) is an independent, not-for-profit systems engineering firm engaged in scientific and technical activities in the public interest. The corporation manages Federally Funded Research and Development Centers for the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, and has corporate offices in Bedford, MA, and Northern Virginia.

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