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'If We Find Them, They'll Pay'

WASHINGTON -- U.S. law enforcement officials are admitting they don't have a clue about attacks this week that disabled the world's most popular Internet sites.

FBI and Justice Department representatives said they didn't know who was responsible, how many computers were involved, what the reason was, or from where the distributed denial-of-service attacks originated.

"We are not aware of the motives behind these attacks," said Attorney General Janet Reno during press conference.

Government investigators are "working closely with the companies that are the victims," Reno said, and mentioned that President Clinton's budget released this week asks for more money for just that.

FBI official Ron Dick was reduced[1] to saying that "a 15-year-old kid could launch these attacks." Dick did not answer a reporter's question about which hacking tool -- smurf, trinoo, TFN -- was used.

It's not that federal police are singularly incompetent or bumbling[2] buffoons. These sorts of electronic broadsides typically involve scores of machines that have been hacked into and turned into unwitting[3] launching pads for attacks on the targeted company.

If a malicious hacker is clever enough, he might be able to conceal his footsteps from prying eyes and an investigation might reveal only that the attack originated at an anonymous account.

"We're in the process of collecting all the logs," said the FBI's Dick.

The FBI said it has launched a criminal investigation, and penalties under federal law could include five years of prison time for the first offense.


by Declan McCullagh

   

 

 

注释：

 

1． reduced：
这里reduce有“使没落、使不得不”的含义。比如：The poor woman was reduced to beggary. 那女人沦落为乞丐。再如：“他流泪了”也可以说成 He was reduced to tears.

 

2． bumbling：
常出差错的，笨手笨脚的。比如：“一个笨手笨脚的年轻大个”可以译为a big bumbling young fellow.

 

3． unwitting：
没有意识到的，不知不觉的。比如：“不知道有危险”可以译为be unwitting of danger。

  
 
 


“一旦被我们捉住，他们就得付出代价！”

华盛顿——美国的法律执行官员承认，对于造成世界著名网站瘫痪的黑客袭击案他们至今没有任何线索。

FBI（美国联邦调查局）和司法部官员说，他们不知道谁该对这一事件负责，究竟涉及了多少台电脑，也不知道遭到袭击的原因是什么，更不知道那些分散的“拒绝服务式”攻击源于何处。

“我们不知道这些攻击事件背后的具体动机是什么，”司法部长Janet Reno在一次新闻发布会上这样说。

政府调查员正在“加强与受害的公司的合作，”Reno说，他还提到克林顿本周提出的预算中包括了为调查行动增加拨款数额这一项。

FBI官员Ron Dick沮丧地说“一个15岁的小孩也能发动类似的攻击。”Dick没有对一位记者提出的有关黑客使用何种工具的问题作出回答——是smurf，trinoo，还是TFN？

这并非由于联邦警察都异乎寻常地地低能或者都是笨手笨脚的小丑。这种电子攻击的典型手段是：让某些被“黑掉”的机器在不知情的情况下变成黑客攻击目标公司的工具。

如果一个居心叵测的黑客够聪明的话，他就会躲开追踪的视线而隐藏自己的踪迹，而调查的结果只会显示攻击行为来自一个匿名帐号。

“我们正在收集所有的登录记载，”FBI的Dick这样说。

FBI声称他们已经进行了刑事调查，据联邦法律规定，对于初犯的处罚可以是五年以内的监禁。