222 lines
7.7 KiB
Plaintext
222 lines
7.7 KiB
Plaintext
|
||
[%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%]
|
||
[ ]
|
||
[ The Great Satellite Caper ]
|
||
[ ]
|
||
[ Typed by: ]
|
||
[ Silent Rebel ]
|
||
[ * ]
|
||
[ ( 40 columns ) ]
|
||
[ ]
|
||
[ Uploaded by Elric of Imrryr ]
|
||
[ Lunatic Labs News Dept ]
|
||
[ ]
|
||
[%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%]
|
||
|
||
Taken from: Time magazine
|
||
July 29, 1985
|
||
|
||
The Great Satellite Caper
|
||
Hackers' arrests point up the growing
|
||
problem of system security
|
||
----
|
||
It started innocuously enough: a
|
||
credit card customer in Connecticut
|
||
opened his monthly statement and
|
||
noticed a charge for a piece of
|
||
electronic equipment that he had never
|
||
purchased. By last week that apparent
|
||
billing error had blossomed into a
|
||
full-fledged hacker scandal and led to
|
||
the arrest of seven New Jersey
|
||
teenagers who were charged with
|
||
conspiracy and using their home
|
||
computers and telephone hookups to
|
||
commit computer theft.
|
||
According to police, who confiscated
|
||
$30,000 worth of computer equipment
|
||
and hundreds of floppy disks, the
|
||
youths had exchanged stolen credit card
|
||
numbers, bypassed long-distance
|
||
telephone fees, traded supposedly
|
||
secret phone numbers (including those
|
||
of top Pentagon officials) and
|
||
published instructions on how to
|
||
construct a letter bomb. But most
|
||
remarkable of all, the first reports
|
||
said, the youngsters had even managed
|
||
to shift the orbit of one or more
|
||
communication satellites. That feat,
|
||
the New York Post decided, was worth
|
||
a front-page headline: WHIZ KIDS ZAP
|
||
U.S. SATELLITES.
|
||
It was the latest version of the hit
|
||
movie WarGames, in which an ingenious
|
||
teenager penetrates a sensitive
|
||
military computer system and nearly
|
||
sets of World War III. Two years ago,
|
||
for instance, the story was re-enacted
|
||
by the so-called 414 Gang, a group
|
||
of Milwaukee-area youths who used
|
||
their machines to break into dozens
|
||
of computers across the U.S.
|
||
The New Jersey episode assumed heroic
|
||
proportions when Middlesex County
|
||
Prosecutor Alan Rockoff reported that
|
||
the youths, in addition to carrying
|
||
on other mischief, had been "changing
|
||
the position of satellites up in the
|
||
blue heavens." That achievement, if
|
||
true, could have disrupted telephone
|
||
and telex communications on two
|
||
continents. Officials from AT&T and
|
||
Comsat hastily denied that anything of
|
||
the sort had taken place. In fact, the
|
||
computers that control the movement
|
||
of their satellites cannot be reached
|
||
by public telephone lines. By weeks
|
||
end the prosecutor's office was quietly
|
||
backing away from its most startling
|
||
assertion, but to most Americans, the
|
||
satellite caper remained real, a
|
||
dramatic reminder that for a bright
|
||
youngster steeped in the secret arts
|
||
of the computer age, anything is
|
||
possible. Says Steven Levy, author
|
||
of Hackers: "It's an immensely
|
||
seductive myth, that a kid with a
|
||
little computer can bring a powerful
|
||
institution to its knees."
|
||
Last spring postal authorities traced
|
||
the Connecticut credit card purchase
|
||
and a string of other fraudulent
|
||
transactions to a post-office box in
|
||
South Plainfield, N.J. Someone was
|
||
using the box to take delivery of
|
||
stereo and radar-detection
|
||
equipment ordered through a
|
||
computerized mail-order catalog. The
|
||
trail led to a young New Jersey
|
||
enthusiast who used the alias "New
|
||
Jersey Hack Sack" and communicated
|
||
regularly with other computer owners
|
||
over a loosely organized network of
|
||
electronic bulletin boards. A computer
|
||
search of the contents of those boards
|
||
by Detective George Green and Patroman
|
||
Michael Grennier, who is something of
|
||
a hacker himself, yielded a flood of
|
||
gossip,advice,tall tales, and hard
|
||
information including excerpts from an
|
||
AT&T satellite manual, dozens of secret
|
||
telephone numbers and lists of stolen
|
||
credit card numbers.
|
||
The odd mix was not unique to the
|
||
suspect bulletin boards. Explains Donn
|
||
Parker, a computer crime expert at
|
||
SRI International in Menlo Park,Calif.:
|
||
"Hacking is a meritocracy. You rise in
|
||
the culture depending on the
|
||
information you can supply to other
|
||
hackers. It's like trading bubble gum
|
||
cards."
|
||
Some of the information posted
|
||
by the New Jersey hackers may have been
|
||
gleaned by cracking supposedly secure
|
||
systems. Other data, like the access
|
||
numbers of remote computers, were
|
||
probably gathered automatically by
|
||
so-called demon dialers, programs that
|
||
search the phone system for on-line
|
||
computers by dialing, in sequence,
|
||
every phone number within an area code.
|
||
"In some cases it takes a great deal
|
||
of skill and knowledge," says Parker.
|
||
"In others it's as simple as dialing
|
||
into a bulletin board and finding the
|
||
passwords that other kids have left."
|
||
And sometimes it is even simpler than
|
||
that. Two of the New Jersey youths
|
||
admitted that at least one of the
|
||
credit card numbers they used had come
|
||
not from a computer but from a slip
|
||
of carbon paper retrieved from a trash
|
||
can.
|
||
No matter how mudane, the actions of
|
||
the New Jersey hackers have again
|
||
focused national attention on a real
|
||
and growing problem: how to safeguard
|
||
the information that is stored inside
|
||
computers. Americans now carry more
|
||
more than 600 million credit cards,
|
||
many of them allowing at least partial
|
||
access to a computerized banking system
|
||
that moves more than $400 billion every
|
||
day. Corporate data banks hold consumer
|
||
records and business plans worth untold
|
||
billions more.
|
||
Alerted to the threat by earlier
|
||
break-ins, corporations and government
|
||
agencies have been moving to shore up
|
||
their systems. Many have issued
|
||
multiple layers of password protection,
|
||
imposing strict discipline on the
|
||
secrecy of passwords and requiring
|
||
users to change theirs frequently.
|
||
Others have installed scrambling
|
||
devices that encode sensitive data
|
||
before they are sent,over the wires.
|
||
Audit trails make crime detection
|
||
easier by keeping a permanent record of
|
||
who did what within a system. Dial-back
|
||
services help keep out unauthorized
|
||
users by recording each caller's ID
|
||
number, disconnecting the call and then
|
||
redialing only that telephone number
|
||
authorized by the holder of the ID.
|
||
All told, U.S. business spent
|
||
$600 million last year on security
|
||
equipment and software. By 1993,
|
||
according to Datapro Research, security
|
||
expenditures could exceed $2 billion
|
||
annually. In addition to the cost,these
|
||
measures tend to make the systems
|
||
harder to use, or less "friendly," in
|
||
the jargon of the trade. But computer
|
||
operators who like to keep their
|
||
systems casual may be courting trouble.
|
||
Says SRI's Parker: "These are
|
||
reasonable, cost-effective steps that
|
||
managers who don't use them pretty much
|
||
deserve what they get."
|
||
|
||
-By Phillip Elmer-DeWitt
|
||
Reported by Marcia GaugerNNew York and
|
||
Stephen KoeppLLos Angeles
|
||
|
||
|
||
Downloaded from Just Say Yes. 2 lines, More than 500 files online!
|
||
Full access on first call. 415-922-2008 CASFA
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Another file downloaded from:
|
||
|
||
!
|
||
-$- & the Temple of the Screaming Electron
|
||
! * Walnut Creek, CA
|
||
+ /^ |
|
||
! | |//^ _^_ 2400/1200/300 baud (415) 935-5845
|
||
/^ / @ | /_-_ Jeff Hunter, Sysop
|
||
|@ _| @ @|- - -|
|
||
| | | /^ | _ | - - - - - - - - - *
|
||
|___/____|_|_|_(_)_| Aaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! /
|
||
|
||
Specializing in conversations, E-Mail, obscure information,
|
||
entertainment, the arts, politics, futurism, thoughtful discussion,
|
||
insane speculation, and wild rumours. An ALL-TEXT BBS.
|
||
|
||
"Raw data for raw minds."
|
||
|