News flash. Jan. 1, 2010: In response to Tuesday's news that Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) has acquired Internet security firm McAfee (NYSE:MFE), General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) countered by buying rival antivirus maker Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC). Meanwhile, the bidding war between VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) and Corillian (NASDAQ:CORI) for control of Titan Corp. (NYSE:TTN) and access to its pipeline of lucrative Pentagon contracts escalated to a new level, with the premium to yesterday's stock price now exceeding 50%.
OK, none of that has happened yet. Maybe it never will -- but it could.
According to a story posted on CNET last week, computer viruses have graduated to the next level, becoming a weapon of war, used to counter an insurgency. A malicious bit of computer code masquerading as, ahem, a modern version of Venus on the Half-Shell was used last week to attack supporters of Chechen guerrillas.
The worm, called "Maslan," infects the machines of those who download it and attempts to launch a denial of service attack on websites known to advocate independence for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. As a general rule, Internet virus writers fall into one of three groups:
- Group 1, or "crackers." Two kids in Manila, hacking around on their dad's old Pentium 2, writing viruses and working for the Internet version of "street cred."
- Group 2, financially motivated. Phishers and hackers working for monetary gain, often as part of an organized criminal group.
- Group 3, politically motivated. This one's relatively new, although it bled over into Group 1 during, for example, the Kosovo war, when pro-Serbian hackers attacked websites belonging to "Western" corporations and U.S. government sites.
Maslan's writers don't appear to belong to Group 1. Rather than seek attention, they tried to work below the radar, telling their worm to not send email to any addresses containing words such as "spam," "abuse," or "privacy" -- addresses likely owned by people who would try to kill the worm. The hackers also don't fall into Group 2, as their targets were political rather than financial.
No, the most likely originators of the Maslan virus would be the Russian military or one of the country's many security agencies. Someone who wants to cut off the Chechens from their international support (websites operated by the guerrillas advocate their view of the conflict and facilitate fund-raising).
Group 3 is growing, and it looks likely that Internet viruses will increasingly become a tool of war. It's only logical then that at some point our nation's defense contractors will be called upon to develop new methods to fight this new kind of war, whether by creating them in-house or by going shopping on the Nasdaq.
Read up on the month's most famous denial of service attack in:
Fool contributor Rich Smith owns no shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article.
