No Y2K cyberterror threats after all – FBI

The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) reports no unusual cyberterror activity under cover of the Y2K rollover, despite months of sensational warnings and apocalyptic predictions involving doomsday religious cults, white supremacists, conspiracy paranoiacs and hostile foreign powers. The level of physical threats and computer intrusions recorded from 31 December to 5 January "was not beyond the norm you would usually see in that number of days," NIPC's Michael Vatis conceded. Vatis has testified before Congress on the numerous opportunities for extra computer mayhem provided by the Millennium Bug. In November the FBI published a study called "Project Megiddo" warning of numerous Millennium-related threats by religious cults. The Bureau warned that Millennium Bug havoc could nourish existing fears among the unbalanced. "Megiddo" refers to a hill in Israel associated with the Apocalypse. During her weekly press availability, US Attorney General Janet Reno dodged the question of why, if the FBI was so concerned, the rollover actually yielded so little in the way of anarchy. "The nice answer would be that there was no threat. What we must all do, I think, is...take reasonable precautions...when we have specific information that can inform the American people, that we advise them," she warbled. The NIPC did release a tool for discovering whether or not a Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6 or Solaris 7 system is infected with any sort of distributed denial of service tool such as TRIN00 or Tribe Flood Network (or TFN & tnf2k), which has uncovered a smattering of intrusions now being investigated by the FBI. The download is available from NIPC's Web site.