[ISN] Hackers target government holes

[InfoSec News]

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0614/web-holes-06-14-04.asp

By Brian Robinson 
June 14, 2004 

Global threats such as the Blaster and SQL Slammer worms batter
government network defenses as much as those in the commercial arena,
but attacks that actually penetrate the network are focused on
perceived weaknesses in Web-based applications, according to a
Symantec Corp. report.

Based on an analysis of data produced in the last six months of 2003,
Symantec officials believe the problem could be due to a greater use
of file-sharing applications within government, as opposed to
industry.

Globally, there is a bigger mixture of different kinds of attacks,
according to Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager at Symantec. In the
last half of 2003, eight of the top 10 attacks on government were
related to Web servers or Web-based applications.

"It's the most dominant threat by far," Friedrichs said. "In contrast,
threats such as those posed by the Blaster worm and others seem to be
adequately blocked by [perimeter] firewall systems."

Using data provided by sensors deployed throughout the government,
Symantec officials concluded that TCP ports 6346 and 4662, which are
typically used by peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, were targeted
much more frequently by attacks against government systems than for
other systems around the globe.

That apparently means that attackers believe there are potentially
vulnerable Web applications deployed in the government sector,
Symantec officials said.

There's been a constant evolution in such Web-based applications and
technologies, Friedrichs said, but that also means they are that much
more complex "so there's greater potential for more security
problems."

That only points out the need to focus even more attention on the
security needs of Web-based systems, he said.

Brian Robinson is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. He
can be reached at hullite at mindspring.com