Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Nextel Teams Up With The UNITED STATES SECRETE SERVICE

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 18:15:34 -0500

Nextel Teams Up With The UNITED STATES SECRETE SERVICE
01/27/03; Vol. 22 No. 2

E-crime Squad

By William Jackson
GCN Staff

Secret Service goes where the crime
is—into cyberspace

The Secret Service, formed in 1865 to combat
counterfeiting, has become the lead agency in
investigating electronic crime.

It was a natural evolution, said Michael
Stenger, special agent in charge of the
Washington field office, because “the majority
of counterfeit money in the United States today
is produced on computers.”

Not only has counterfeiting become high-tech,
but credit card fraud, check forgery and even
threats against the president have all
“gravitated to electronic media,” Stenger said.
“We had to develop the expertise to handle the
investigations we are doing now.”

Wayne Peterson, a member of the Washington
office’s Electronic Crimes Task Force, said,
“Just about every search warrant we execute
now involves a computer.”

Even if a crime is not electronic in nature,
computers frequently produce evidence for the
investigation. About 100 agents across the
country have been trained in computer
forensics by the Secret Service’s Electronic
Crimes Special Agent Program.

The 2001 USA Patriot Act called for the Secret
Service to establish a network of task forces,
and Washington’s is one of nine so far. The
first came into being in the 1990s in New York
because of online banking crimes.

Bankers “started calling their friends at the
Secret Service,” said Chris McFarland,
assistant to the special agent in charge of the
Washington office.

New York’s model helped in setting up the
Washington field office. Today its e-crimes task force includes law enforcement agencies
from
Baltimore to Richmond, Va., as well as organizations such as AOL Time Warner Inc. and
Nextel
Communications Inc.

The Washington office has 12 agents dedicated to the task force, five of them trained in
forensics.
Other task forces, all sharing information and resources, are near Boston, Charlotte,
N.C., Chicago,
Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco.

Cooperation among the task forces is a product of the Secret Service’s small size.
“Historically we
have had good relations with other agencies,” Stenger said.

Corporate cooperation with the task force usually is informal, but law enforcement
agencies commonly
sign a memorandum of understanding, McFarland said. Local departments might have an
officer sworn
in as a special federal deputy to ease investigations across jurisdictions. About 20
special deputies
from local enforcement agencies work with the Washington task force.

The task forces can shift personnel or accept evidence for investigation as needed. “We’ve
learned to
be flexible and travel light,” McFarland said.

The Washington office has two labs equipped with 10 custom forensic workstations with
multiple hard
drive bays from Skytek Inc. of Alexandria, Va., as well as two Apple Computer Inc.
systems. Hard
drives brought in as evidence must be mirrored before examination.

“If you touch a file [on a drive], you can change the date or time stamp, raising
questions in court,”
Peterson said.

He left the Secret Service several years ago for the private sector but later returned.
During the
high-tech boom the money was good, “and I took the bait,” he said. “But I always missed
the service. I
had mixed feelings.” After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he decided to come back.

Security survey says ...

Despite the growing volume of electronic crime, Peterson said, the workload is not too
heavy. “It
comes, and it goes,” he said. He has developed a survey to help companies evaluate their
network
security—part of the outreach that is the task force’s top priority.

“Prosecution is third on the list for us” behind education and prevention, McFarland said.

For several years, representatives from the service and other agencies, including the FBI
and National
Security Agency, have been making the rounds of conferences and trade shows, asking for
private-sector cooperation. To combat e-crime, they say, companies must be willing to
report incidents
and share information with each other and with law enforcement.

So far, results have been mixed.

In a recent Salt Lake City talk, McFarland asked his audience how many had been victims of
hacking.
Almost everyone raised a hand. Asked how many had reported the incidents, almost no one
raised a
hand.

“It’s a matter of relationships,” McFarland said. Where relationships exist, cooperation
is much better,
he said. “The thing that worries me most now is the wireless networking that people are
putting into
their homes,” because compromised home computers can become launching pads for attacks.

“The difference between physical and IT security is becoming less and less,” he said.

http://www.gcn.com/22_2/tech-report/20928-1.html

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