Oic-cert (oic Computer Emergency Response Team)

OIC – CERT Cyber attacks cases incident is raising rapidly around the world and it is gaining recognition as a credible threat to economy and security of a nation. Cyber siege on Estonia in May 2007 paralyzed Internet communications targeting the government, banking, media, and police websites for three weeks. Huge economic losses were incurred as online transactions were disrupted. This fits with the argument of military strategists that physical attack or bombing against critical infrastructure would disrupt and cripple an enemies’ capacity to wage war. During World War II, the Allied Forces applied this theory by destroying critical infrastructure such as electrical power, transportation and manufacturing facilities. The same doctrine is now duplicated through cyber attacks. The cyber siege on Estonia is a prime example of a paralyzing cyber attack. Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said that "The attacks were aimed at the essential electronic infrastructure of the Republic of Estonia. All major commercial banks, telcos, media outlets, and name servers — the phone books of the Internet — felt the impact, and this affected the majority of the Estonian population. This was the first time that a botnet threatened the national security of an entire nation." A bot or zombie is a computer that is being infected with malicious software either in the form of virus or Trojan that allows it to be controlled by a cyber criminal. Herds of bot are then organized into a botnet that acts in tandem. A classic attack carried out by botnet is to simply overwhelm a web server with high volume of information that will deny legitimate users to access the website. The attack which is termed denial of service had news sites as it early victims. On 28 April 2007, the website of Postimees is flooded with 2.3 million page views and crashed 20 times. Soon after, cyber attacks also crippled ATMs in the town of Tallinn. The attack escalates into a siege when web site operators around Estonia have to cut international connection to stave off attacks. The incident in Estonia started when the government decided to move a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. The action offended the Russian government and invited an official rebuke from Kremlin. It also leads to street riot which kills one and injured 150 others. In the same time, instructions on how to carry out cyber attacks are circulating in Russian on Russian websites. Fueled by nationalistic sentiment, Russian community of hackers mounted the attack on Estonia. The siege is only diffused when US and European experts assisted to identify and block the botnets that are scattered in 128 locations around the world. This highlights the need for international cooperation in combating cyber attacks due to its borderless nature.

Realizing this as a credible threat, formation of Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) among OIC member countries was proposed during the Annual Meeting of Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Board of Governors at Putrajaya, Malaysia in 2005. Seeking to establish an OIC-CERT, the meeting was tasked to initiate the establishment of a Task Force in cooperation with leading OIC member countries. The first Task Force meeting in the following year led to the appointment of CyberSecurity Malaysia and National Agency for Computer Security Tunisia as the protem Chairman and Secretariat. Islamic Development Bank also lends their support by providing financial assistance. Key aspects of OIC CERT include strengthening the relationships among CERTs in the OIC member countries and enhancing information sharing in cyber security field. It also seeks to prevent and reduce cyber-crimes as well as providing cyber emergency channels among member countries. Other agendas include cultivating education in ICT security and promote collaborative technology R&D. Finally, the collaboration of OIC-CERT proposal (Resolution No. 3/35-INF) have been approved and accepted during Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC Meeting in Kampala, Uganda in June 2008. To date, only Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran and Saudi Arabia have became members of OIC-CERT. It is prudent to expand the membership as cyber war have already encroach the OIC sphere. In January 2009, Kyrgyzstan faced attack on two of it four (Internet Service Provider) ISP, grounding 80% of its westbound traffic. Some analyst pointed out that the attack came on the same day with the pressure from Russia towards Kyrgyz President Bakiyevk to close U.S. access to a key airbase. The OIC might have been lamented for their lack of peacekeeping force but at least OIC CERT will prepare OIC in facing the era of cyber war. Hopefully this cooperation in cyber world paves the way to greater collaboration in defense and technology among Muslim nations.