FBI, RCMP want to get cyber attackers

There are Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RCMP) investigators all over the place here in San Diego.
While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, the law enforcement agencies are here at the Process Control Systems Industry Conference in San Diego and want to get the word out they need to be a part of a company's security plan.
That is right, they want to catch the bad guys that are hacking into systems, but the agencies just don’t think they are on companies’ radar screens to call when a cyber problem creeps up.
“When it comes to computer intrusions, we are looking at outreach to initiate relationships (in the industry) so you know who to call,” said Scot Huntsberry, supervisory special agent, cyber division/computer intrusion for the FBI.
“We are seeing increases in reports of some attacks,” said Jeff Morgan, process control systems analyst, cyber division with the FBI. “We are seeing more in the water industry, but others are getting hit also.”
As a matter of fact, to show how the FBI is getting more serious about cyber crime, Morgan said he is the first person dedicated to process control security crime. “We are trying our first SCADA case right now.”
Morgan said from his perspective, most criminal acts are coming from outside hackers, which is slightly different from what some industry security experts are saying.
“We have seen insiders are not the main cause of attacks. They get caught the most, but they are not the main cause,” he said.
The investigators said one of the problems they face is attacks are not just bound by country boundaries.
“We have had great success in communicating around the world,” said Clint Baker, sergeant, integrated technology crime unit with the RCMP.
“The FBI maintains legal attachés in 60 countries,” Morgan said. “Things can happen from anywhere and we have had some great success in bringing down bad guys.”
“We are finding we have more allays in the cyber world than we thought we had,” Huntsberry said. “We understand cyber crime does not have boundaries. We have to communicate in real time around the world.”
Both agencies understand manufacturers may be reluctant to release any information about an attack, thinking they don’t want to reveal any important proprietary information. But the FBI and the RCMP said under new laws they are able to keep private company information secret in the course of an investigation.
“We have new legislation that allows no proprietary information gets released,” Baker said.
“The U.S. also has laws that safeguard that kind of information,” Morgan said.