Internet Wire

Serbian Cyber Attack intensifies on NATO Financial Institutions & Public Utilities Next

London, UK, 8th April 1999 - mi2g, a leading authority on high security Knowledge Systems, issued a warning today that "The real threat of cyber warfare from Serbian hackers is to the economic infrastructure of NATO countries and not to their better prepared military command and control network."

In the last ten days, The Department of Defence (DoD) in the US and the NATO command in Europe have confirmed that Serbian hackers have attacked their computer network, thereby causing a Denial of Service. This was achieved by flooding their network with empty ping packets and despatching new variants of the Melissa and Papa viruses. The DoD's Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defence confirmed that the US Army and Airforce had to take their e-mail servers, across the world, out of action over the weekend to disinfect them from the Melissa Virus.

mi2g's SIPS (Security Intelligence Products and Systems) division predicts that Serbian, and sympathetic Russian hackers, will most likely attack civilian targets in NATO countries such as financial institutions and public utilities. This may cause severe disruption to normal economic activity. The governments of some NATO countries are concerned that civilian facilities are much less well prepared than their military counterparts in dealing with cyber attack.

According to the ICSA (International Computer Security Association) more than 70% of corporate networks are vulnerable to attack in spite of firewalls at their network perimeter. "Few large corporations have contingency plans and even those that do are not comprehensive enough to cope with persistent cyber attack. The probability of electronic transaction disruption or loss of daily records is much higher than ever in history as we arrive at a new juncture in Cyber Warfare" said D K Matai, the founder of mi2g.

About mi2g

mi2g is a three year old, Central London based e-commerce software house whose Chairman is Sir Christopher Benson. Sir Christopher has been shaping the banking and finance sector strategy of mi2g since becoming Chairman in early 1997.

mi2g's main business to business activities are:
1. On-line Security Systems for Large Corporations using artificial intelligence
2. E-commerce System Design based on high level security and client profiling
3. Subject specific e-commerce lounge development with over 3 Million visitors
4. Internet Marketing Intelligence Software using supercomputing technology

mi2g works with financial institutions in the banking, insurance and re-insurance sector to develop bespoke e-commerce solutions for large business-to-business and business-to-consumer projects. mi2g also assists in the proper assessment and solution of the Cyber Warfare threat faced by organisations deploying complex computer networks.

mi2g's client list includes companies such as Amazon.com (USA), Cendant Corp (USA), Department of Trade and Industry (UK Government), Euler (France), First Premier Bank (USA), Granville Bank (UK), Greek Royal Family, Lloyd's of London (UK), Nations Bank, Progressive Insurance (USA) and Spydamedia (UK).

Since 1995, mi2g has also been developing an automatic business-to-consumer e-commerce airport with specific lounges and intelligent ferrets. carlounge.com, gameslounge.com and lawlounge.com are the pilots which are now up and running for tests and have 3 million visitors. The airport, lounges and ferrets are unique technology to mi2g and its visitors and will function together by the year 2000.

The airport lounges are designed to provide the best price for a product the visitor desires. They are reverse auction categorised shopping systems that appear to run uniquely for each visitor via the chosen ferret. They will work not only in English but also German and French. The lounges will focus on products such as cars; computer games; personal finance - investments, insurance, mortgages, loans and other credit instruments; branded consumer goods - books, music tracks, video and leisure with travel bookings.

The ferret helps the airport lounge visitors to find and filter automatically the most cost efficient pre-qualified vendors (such as Amazon.com, E-Bay, E*Trade etc), of quality goods and services, place an order in high security, and have the product delivered in the minimum amount of time and shipping cost.

DK Matai, the Founder and Managing Director of mi2g has worked in the R & D Labs of IBM Inc, Inmos SGS-Thomson SA and OY Helvar-Electrosonic on Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) Vector Computer Engineering, 200MHz RISC Processor Design and HDTV Video Wall Development respectively.