WASHINGTON -- President Clinton doubted on Friday that the U.S. government and Internet companies would be able to reach an "instantaneous solution" to a wave of hacking attacks on popular Web sites.
But "we're doing all we can" at this point, he said. And he said he would convene a White House meeting on Tuesday of government officials and leaders in the Internet business community to respond to the threat represented by computer hackers.
Hackers this week launched a startling wave of attacks, taking down popular sites Yahoo! (YHOO), the largest independent Web site, leading retailers Buy.com (BUYX), eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN) and the news site CNN.com (TWX
In an appearance in the White House briefing room, Clinton predicted it would take some time to solve the problem just as it took time to improve security of banks to better protect them from robbery.
"What you will see here is there will not be an instantaneous solution to this," he said. "But banks are a lot harder to rob today than they used to be. That's what's going to happen here."
Clinton said the open nature of the Internet and the growing speed and importance of computers have brought people closer together. But this "has necessarily made for greater vulnerability for people who are just mischievous and people who have darker motives," he said.
At the meeting on Tuesday will be National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Attorney General Janet Reno, Commerce Secretary William Daley, as well as representatives from Internet companies and site providers.
"This will be an ongoing effort to try to make sure we get all the benefits of the Internet, all the benefits of the computer revolution, but we develop better defenses and better defenders. And I believe we will do that," Clinton said.
Last month Clinton proposed a national plan to protect America's computer systems from hackers and viruses, including subsidizing college costs for computer students who agree to work for the government.
He has asked Congress for $2 billion for fiscal year 2001 to handle the security challenges faced by computer networks.
The nonpartisan congressional watchdog organization, the General Accounting Office, reported in October that computer networks used by government and business are increasingly at risk of severe disruption, and the federal government is not doing enough about the threat.
Security shortcomings jeopardize national defense, tax collection, law enforcement and air traffic control among other key operations, the GAO said.
The number of security incidents handled by Carnegie Mellon University's CERT Coordination Center, a federally funded emergency response team, rose from 1,334 in 1993 to 4,398 during the first half of 1999, the report said.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton wanted hold the meeting on Tuesday "to talk about what our overall long-term plan is and to work through whether we're doing everything we can now."
The United States said on Thursday that it still had no idea who or what was behind a wave of Internet vandalism and ordered a review of its defense computer networks to ensure they had not been tampered with.
The Defense Department said 10,000 or so computer networks would be looked at to make sure none had been hijacked in the
cyber-vandalism that crippled major Web sites this week.
Ron Dick, a senior FBI computer crime investigator, said that the sabotage could be the work of anyone, from a foreign foe to a 15-year-old using easy-to-download computer "hacking" programs. "This is not something that takes a great deal of sophistication to do," he said.
