Google Case in China Reveals
Growing Holes in Security


By STEVE LOHR

THE RECENT COMPUTER attacks on the mighty Google left every corporate network in the world looking a little less safe.

Google’s confrontation with China - over government censorship in general and specific attacks on its systems - is an exceptional case, of course, extending to human rights and international politics as well as high-tech spying. But the intrusion into Google’s computers and related attacks from within China on some 30 other companies point to the rising sophistication of such assaults and the vulnerability of even the best defenses, security experts say.

“The Google case shines a bright light on what can be done in terms of spying and getting into corporate networks,” said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who now heads a computer security investigation firm in New York.

Computer security is an everescalating competition between so-called black-hat attackers and white-hat defenders. One of the attackers’ main tools is malicious software, known as malware, which has steadily evolved in recent years.

Malware was once mainly viruses and worms, digital pests that interfered with and sometimes damaged personal computers and networks. Malware today, however, is likely to be more subtle and selective, nesting inside corporate networks. And it can be a tool for industrial espionage, transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer lists, future plans and contracts.

Corporations and government agencies spend billions of dollars a year on specialized security software to detect and combat malware. Still, the black hats seem to be gaining the upper hand.

In a survey of 443 companies and government agencies published last month, the Computer Security Institute found that 64 percent reported malware infections, up from 50 percent the previous year. The financial loss from security breaches was $234,000 on average for each organization.

“Malware is a huge problem, and becoming a bigger one,” said Robert Richardson, director of the institute, a research and training organization.

Security experts say employee awareness and training are a crucial defense. Often, malware infections are a result of high-tech twists on old-fashioned cons. One scam, for example, involves small U.S.B. flash drives, left in a company parking lot, adorned with the company logo. Curious employees pick them up, put them in their computers and open what looks like an innocuous document. In fact, once run, it is software that collects passwords and other confidential information on a user’s computer and sends it to the attackers. More advanced malware can allow an outsider to completely take over the PC .

Another approach, one used in the Google attacks, is a variation on so-called phishing schemes, in which an e-mail message purporting to be from the recipient’s bank or another institution tricks the person into giving up passwords. Scammers send such messages to thousands of people in hopes of ensnaring a few. But with socalled spear-phishing, the bogus e-mail is sent to a specific person and appears to come from a friend or colleague inside that person’s company, making it far more believable. Again, an attached file, once opened, unleashes the spy software.

Other techniques for going inside companies involve exploiting weaknesses in Web-site or network-routing software .

To combat leaks of confidential information, network security software looks for anomalies in network traffic - large files and rapid rates of data transmission, especially coming from corporate locations .

“Fighting computer crime is a balance of technology and behavioral science, understanding the human dimension of the threat,” said Mr. Stroz. “There is no law in the books that will ever throw a computer in prison.”

As cellphones become more powerful, they offer new terrain for malware to exploit in new ways. Recently, security experts have started seeing malware that surreptitiously switches on a cellphone’s microphone and camera. “It turns a smartphone into a surveillance device,” said Mark D. Rasch, a computer security consultant in Bethesda, Maryland .

Security experts say the ideal approach is to carefully identify a corporation’s most valuable intellectual property and data, and place it on a separate computer network not linked to the Internet .

“Sometimes the cheapest and best security solution is to lock the door and don’t connect,” said James P. Litchko, a former government security official who is a manager at Cyber Security Professionals, a consulting firm.

But in the Internet era, isolationism is often an impractical approach for many companies. Sharing information and knowledge with industry partners and customers is seen as the path to greater flexibility and efficiency. Work is routinely done by far-flung project teams. Mobile professionals want vital company data to be accessible wherever they are. Most of that collaboration and communication is done over the Internet, increasing the risk of outside attacks.


Companies spend
billions a year to
keep data secret.


The complexity of software code from different suppliers, as it intermingles in corporate networks and across the Internet, also opens the door to security weaknesses that malware writers exploit. One quip among computer security experts is: “The sum of the parts is a hole.”

But, security experts say, the software products themselves are riddled with vulnerabilities .

The long-term answer, some experts assert, lies in setting the software business on a path to becoming a mature industry, with standards, defined responsibilities and liability for security gaps, guided by forceful self-regulation or by the government.

“It’s a classic market failure - the market hasn’t delivered security,” said James A. Lewis, a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Our economy has become so dependent on this fabulous technology - the Internet - but it’s not safe. And that’s an issue we’ll have to wrestle with.”


MINH UONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The cyberattacks on Google from China signal rising sophistication.