APCERT Nails Down Online Underground Economy In Regional Drill Exercise
4 December 2008 (Bernama)

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 4 (Bernama) - The Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) has successfully completed its APCERT Drill 2008 today, which focused on how to effectively mitigate the impact of large-scale cyber attacks and malicious programmes propagation.

The exercise, across five time zones, challenged the participating teams' incident response capability in dealing with large-scale cyber attacks involving both local and international scenarios, APCERT said in a statement here Thursday.

It said that a scenario of cyber attacks by the professional cybercriminal groups targeting the Asia Pacific economies was simulated to put pressure on the participating teams in APCERT to test their response capability in addressing cyber threats.

The simulated attacks were themed to be deployed by the professional cybercriminal groups who trade stolen data or malicious online service in the underground economy.

APCERT said that the online underground economy was growing and the cybercriminal groups were becoming organised and scattered across border, impairing the economic activity and political stability.

Chair for APCERT, Husin Jazri said this year's exercise was to test the participating teams' communication capability, particularly in its ability to communicate and relay information across physical borders and time zones and to enable effective decision making.

It is also to coordinate swift response with the aim of assisting neighbouring economies to reduce the impact of underground cyber attacks, he said in the statement.

"Cybercriminal groups can hide behind legitimate service provider to add hurdles to investigation and take down of attacks. Strong networking and local presence among national CERTs help to improve information sharing among trusted parties in curbing online crime," Husin said.

"We believe the APCERT Drill has reinforced the collaboration among the participating economies and further streamlined the communication framework.

Our hope is that the teams will benefit in terms of testing or proving their procedures in meeting the objectives set for the drill," he added.

The APCERT Drill 2008 was planned and coordinated by the Malaysian Computer Emrgency Response Team (MyCERT), CyberSecurity Malaysia, in collaboration with the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT.)

The drill is an annual event held since 2005.

This year the participating teams include 14 teams representing 13 economies in the Asia Pacific region, namely Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taipei, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

APCERT, established by leading and national Computer Security and Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) from the economies of the Asia Pacific region, aims to improve cooperation, response and information sharing among CSIRTs in the region.

APCERT consists of 21 CSIRTs from 15 economies.

CyberSecurity Malaysia, which is under the purview of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, is a one-stop reference and specialist centre for cyber security.

Its services include digital forensics, Malaysia's Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT)/Cyber999, security management and best practices, security assurance, cyber security training and professional certification and cyber security policy and legal research.