Feds aim to protect McVeigh feed from hackers

From Ann Kellan
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Now that the government has authorized a closed-circuit feed of Timothy McVeigh's execution, it wants to ensure that would-be hackers can't grab the signal and make it public.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday that survivors and families of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing will be able to watch the May 16 execution on a secure feed.

But if efforts aren't made to scramble or encrypt the feed as it's being transmitted, hackers would be within their legal rights to snatch it, one expert said.

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Security on the Net

"Once that execution is on the Internet, there is no way to unring the bell," said Mark Rasch, an attorney with Predictive Systems, a network consulting company. "Basically it is everywhere for everyone to see."

The legality would depend on how hackers got physical access to a signal, Rasch said.

"If they have to break into a computer, then that would be computer crime and they could be punished for that, but if it's being broadcast over the satellite waves, and it's not encrypted, pretty much anyone can grab it just like listening to a radio," he said.

Fiber-optic option most secure

Sending the signal via satellite can be secure, especially using encryption and government satellites. But sending it over fiber-optic cable is most secure, since hackers would have to scour thousands of fibers to find the fleeting signal passing through.

The victims' families viewed McVeigh's trial from Denver, Colorado in a federal auditorium 600 miles away and out of public view.

Experts say the TV monitors the families watch this time should also be away from windows, since a special antenna could pick up radiation from a computer monitor or TV screen and steal the signal from as far as a quarter-mile away.

The images are most vulnerable at the points when they're not encrypted, at the sending and receiving end of the process. That's why security guards surrounded the machines during President Clinton's testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case, Rasch said, as it was fed over fiber-optic cable from the White House to the courthouse.

The Oklahoma City viewing site of McVeigh's execution in Terre Haute, Indiana, hasn't been determined yet.

Ashcroft OKs closed-circuit TV feed of McVeigh execution
April 12, 2001
Ashcroft discusses McVeigh execution plan
April 10, 2001
McVeigh scheduled to die by lethal injection May 16
January 16, 2001

Predictive Systems

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