---[ Phrack Magazine Volume 8, Issue 53 July 8, 1998, article 14 of 15 -------------------------[ P H R A C K W O R L D N E W S --------[ Issue 53 Hi. A few changes have been made to Phrack World News (PWN). Because of the increase of news on the net, security, hackers and other PWN topics, it is getting more difficult to keep Phrack readers informed of everything. To combat this problem, PWN will include more articles, but only relevant portions (or the parts I want to make smart ass remarks about). If you would like to read the full article, look through the ISN (InfoSec News) archives located at: ftp.sekurity.org /pub/text/isn ftp.repsec.com /pub/text/digests/isn The following articles have been accumulated from a wide variety of places. When known, original source/author/date has been included. If the information is absent, then it wasn't sent to us. If you wish to receive more news, the ISN mail list caters to this. For more information, mail majordomo@sekurity.org with "info isn". To subscribe, mail majordomo@sekurity.org with "subscribe isn" in the body of the mail. As usual, I am putting some of my own comments in brackets to help readers realize a few things left out of the articles. Comments are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Phrack, journalists, government spooks, my cat, or anyone else. Bye. - disorder 0x1: Identifying Net Criminals Difficult 0x2: "The Eight" meet to combat high-tech crime 0x3: Fired Forbes Technician Charged With Sabotage 0x4: Internet Industry Asked to Police Itself 0x5: Internet may be Hackers Best Friend 0x6: Hacker Cripples Airport Tower 0x7: Profits Embolden Hackers 0x8: Cyberattacks spur new warning system 0x9: 0xa: IBM's Ethical Hackers Broke In! 0xb: Two accused of conspiring to hack into CWRU system 0xc: FBI Warns of Big Increase In On-line Crime 0xd: Computer hacker jailed for 18 months 0xe: Afternoon Line 0xf: Hacking Geniuses or Monkeys 0x10: Low Tech Spooks - Corporate Spies 0x11: 'White Hat' Hackers Probe Pores in Computer Security Blankets 0x12: 101 Ways to Hack into Windows NT 0x13: Suspected NASA Hacker Nabbed 0x14: CEOs Hear the Unpleasant Truth about Computer Security 0x15: Codebreakers 0x16: Hackers Could Disable Military 0x17: Secret Service Hackers Can't Crack Internet 0x18: Now Hiring: Hackers (Tattoos Welcome) 0x19: Hacker Stoppers? 0x1a: Hackers' Dark Side Gets Even Darker 0x1b: Japan Fears It's Becoming a Base for Hackers 0x1c: Kevin Mitnick Hacker Case Drags On and On 0x1d: Millions Lost to Phone Hackers 0x1e: Hackers on the Hill 0x1f: RSA Sues Network Associates 0x20: Clinton to Outline Cyberthreat Policy 0x21: Programmer Sentenced for Military Computer Intrusion 0x22: Editorial - Hacker vs Cracker, Revisited 0x23: Windows NT Security Under Fire 0x24: New Decoy Technology Designed to Sting Hackers 0x25: Reno dedicates high-tech crime fighting center 0x26: Man poses as astronaut steals NASA secrets 0x27: Convention: Defcon 6.0 0x28: Convention: Network Security Solutions July Event 0x29: Convention: 8th USENIX Security Symposium 0x2a: Convention: RAID 98 0x2b: Convention: Computer Security Area (ASC) / DGSCA 98 0x2c: Convention: InfoWarCon-9 0x1>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Identifying Net Criminals Difficult Source: 7Pillars Partners Author: David Plotnikoff (Mercury News Staff Writer) Date: 10:12 p.m. PST Sunday, March 8, 1998 [snip...] What began as an innocent chat-room flirtation isn't so innocent anymore. The last e-mail message you received began: ``I know where you live. I know where you work. I know where your kids go to day care. . . .'' Potential loss: Your life. There is no way to calculate how many hundreds or thousands of times each day the Net brings crime into some unsuspecting person's life. But a report released by the Computer Security Institute found that nearly two-thirds of the 520 corporations, government offices, financial institutions and universities queried had experienced electronic break-ins or other security breaches in the past 12 months. Although fewer than half the companies assigned a dollar amount to their losses, the estimated total from those that did is staggering: $236 million for the last two years. [More estimates on losses, no doubt from accurate estimations by professionals.] [snip...] But those charged with enforcing the law in cyberspace say the vast majority of Net-borne crime never reaches the criminal justice system. And in the relatively few instances where a crime is reported, most often the criminal's true identity is never found. The San Jose Police Department's elite high-tech crimes unit is every citizen's first line of defense when trouble comes down the wire in the capital city of Silicon Valley. But today, four years after the explosion of the Internet as a mass market, even the top technology-crimes police unit in the country finds itself with just a handful of Internet crimes to investigate. [Wait... they say criminals get away with everything, then call the Police an "elite" high-tech crimes unit?] [snip...] The Internet slice of the job -- chasing down hackers, stalkers and assorted scammers -- is too small to even keep statistics on. When pressed for a guess, Sgt. Don Brister, the unit's supervisor, estimates that Internet and online-service crimes make up ``probably no more than 3 or 4 percent'' of the team's workload. [snip...] While most Net crimes are actually old crimes -- stalking, harassment, fraud and theft -- in a new venue, there is at least one criminal act entirely native to cyberia: ``denial of service'' attacks. [Route, you're such a criminal.] [snip...] ``The scary part,'' Lowry says, ``is we know the storm is coming, but we don't know exactly what shape it's going to take. The scale is huge. . . . You're sitting on this beach, knowing it's going to hit, but you don't know what it is or when it's going to hit.'' 0x2>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: "The Eight" meet to combat high-tech crime Date: Jan 1998 Recently, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno hosted a historic meeting of Justice and Interior officials from the countries that constitute "the Eight" on ways to combat international computer crime. (Formerly dubbed the G-7, the group now includes Russia along with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the U.S.) The meeting was the first of its kind and resulted in an agreement endorsing ten principles, such as "Investigation and prosecution of international high-tech crimes must be coordinated among all concerned states, regardless of where harm has occurred;" and adopting a ten-point action plan, for example, "Use our established network of knowledgeable personnel to ensure a timely, effective response to transnational high-tech cases and designate a point-of-contract who is available on a 24 hour basis." The full text will be available at http://www.usdoj.gov. 0x3>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Fired Forbes Technician Charged With Sabotage Source: Dow Jones News Service Date: 11/25/97 A temporary staff computer technician has been charged with breaking into the computer system of Forbes, Inc., publisher of Forbes magazine, and causing a computer crash that cost the company more than $100,000. According to the complaint against George Mario Parente, the sabotage left hundreds of Forbes employees unable to perform server-related functions for a full day and caused many employees to lose a day's worth of data. If convicted, Parente faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. 0x4>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Internet Industry Asked to Police Itself SEATTLE -- The Internet industry had better police itself or it will face renewed threats of government regulation, participants said Wednesday at a Seattle conference of technology leaders from throughout North America as well as Europe and Japan. [And they've done such a good job so far, with legislation like the CDA and WIPO... sure, we can trust the government to do the right thing.] [snip...] Balkam warned that Arizona Sen. John McCain plans hearings next month on the topic, and that Indiana Sen. Dan Coats plans to introduce a new content-regulation bill designed to avoid the problems that caused the Supreme Court to reject the first one. [Everyone keep your eyes peeled.] Wednesday's discussion was well-timed; the conference will hear Thursday from President Clinton's Internet czar, Ira Magaziner, who is expected to deliver a stern admonition that government won't hesitate to step in if the industry's own efforts fall short. Sponsored by GTE, Telus Corp. and the Discovery Institute, the program also included Rep. Rick White, R-Washington, founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus and Rob Glaser, founder of Seattle-based RealNetworks and a proponent of the Internet as the ``next mass medium.'' While Wednesday's sessions focused on content regulation, Thursday's deal more with electronic commerce and such issues as privacy, authentication and legal jurisdiction. Effective self-regulation has several keys, said Jim Miller, architect of a system known as PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection. [snip...] 0x5>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Internet may be Hackers Best Friend The Internet may be the computer hacker's best friend. The international computer network has made the sharing of sophisticated break-in tools easier, computer security experts say. [But they don't mention the sharing of security information, or the fact that the experts can subscribe to the same 'hacker' sharing sources.] [snip...] A report released Wednesday by the Computer Security Institute noted that while both external and internal computer crime is on the rise, the greatest losses result from unauthorized access by insiders. ``Those are the attacks that cause tens of millions of dollars,'' Power said. But it's still the outside jobs that grab headlines. A Defense Department official last week termed the attack linked to the young hackers ``the most organized and systematic attack the Pentagon has seen to date.'' [snip...] 0x6>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Hacker Cripples Airport Tower A juvenile hacker who crippled an airport tower for six hours, damaged a town's phone system, and broke into pharmacy records has been charged in a first-ever federal prosecution, the U.S. Attorney's office announced today. But in a plea bargain, the juvenile will serve no jail time, the government announced. The incidents occurred in early 1997, but the federal criminal charges were unsealed just today. The government said it was the first federal prosecution ever of a minor for a computer crime. According to U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern, the hacker disabled a key telephone company computer servicing the Worcester airport, roughly 45 miles southwest of Boston. "As a result of a series of commands sent from the hacker's personal computer, vital services to the FAA control tower were disabled for six hours in March of 1997," a release from Stern's office said. [So the FAA routes vital tower control through the PSTN? Scary...] [snip...] The plea agreement sentences the juvenile to two years' probation, "during which he may not possess or use a modem or other means of remotely accessing a computer or computer network directly or indirectly," according to Stern In addition, he must pay restitution to the telephone company and complete 250 hours of community service. He has been required to forfeit all of the computer equipment used during his criminal activity. [snip...] "Public health and safety were threatened by the outage, which resulted in the loss of telephone service, until approximately 3:30 p.m., to the Federal Aviation Administration Tower at the Worcester Airport, to the Worcester Airport Fire Department, and to other related concerns such as airport security, the weather service, and various private air freight companies. "Further, as a result of the outage, both the main radio transmitter, which is connected to the tower by the loop carrier system, and a circuit, which enables aircraft to send an electric signal to activate the runway lights on approach, were not operational for this same period of time." [NICE design guys... real nice.] [snip...] 0x7>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Profits Embolden Hackers Source: InternetWeek Author: Tim Wilson Conventional wisdom says that most IT security threats come from inside the company, not outside. Any guess who's reaping the greatest benefit from that little piece of wisdom? Hackers and computer criminals. In two separate studies completed this month, Fortune 1000 companies reported more financial losses due to computer vandalism and espionage in 1997 than they ever experienced before. Several corporations said they lost $10 million or more in a single break-in. And reports of system break-ins at the Computer Emergency Response Team site are the highest they've ever been. Despite recent security product and technology developments, computer networks are becoming more vulnerable to outside attack, not less. [Woohoo!] [snip...] "I know about 95 percent of [the vulnerabilities] I am going to find at a company before I even get there," said Ira Winkler, president of the Information Security Advisory Group -- a firm that specializes in penetrating business security systems to expose vulnerabilities -- and author of the book Corporate Espionage. "I can steal a billion dollars from any [corporation] within a couple of hours." [One trick pony...] [snip...] In a study to be published next month, WarRoom Research found that the vast majority of Fortune 1000 companies have experienced a successful break-in by an outsider in the past year. More than half of those companies have experienced more than 30 system penetrations in the past 12 months. Nearly 60 percent said they lost $200,000 or more as a result of each intrusion. In a separate study published earlier this month by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI, 520 U.S. companies reported a total loss of $136 million from computer crime and security breaches in 1997, an increase of 36 percent from the year before. The Internet was cited by 54 percent of the respondents as a frequent point of attack, about the same percentage of respondents that cited internal systems as a frequent point of attack. [snip...] What You Can Do One universal piece of advice came from hackers, hackers for hire and those who collect computer crime data: When your vendor issues a software patch, install it immediately. "The biggest mistake people make is that they underestimate the threat," Moss said. "They don't put in the patches, they misconfigure their firewalls, they misconfigure routers." [snip...] 0x8>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Cyberattacks spur new warning system Author: Heather Harreld Date: March 23, 1998 The Defense Department has created a new alert system to rate the level of threats to its information systems that mirrors the well-known Defense Conditions (DEFCONs) ratings that mark the overall military status in response to traditional foreign threats. The new Information Conditions, or "INFOCONs," are raised and lowered based upon cyberthreats to DOD or to the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Stratcom is responsible for deterring any military attack on the United States and for deploying troops or launching nuclear weapons should deterrence fail, a Stratcom spokesman said. As INFOCONs are raised, officials take additional measures to protect information systems. [snip...] Officials at Stratcom have developed detailed guidelines on raising and lowering INFOCONs based on the threat. Structured, systematic attacks to penetrate systems will result in a higher INFOCON level than when individual, isolated attempts are made, according to Stratcom. [snip...] 0x9>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Source: "Betty G.O'Hearn" Infowar.Com was notified today by the "Enforcers" Computer Hackers Group, that an agreement was reached with chief negotiator Ian A. Murphy, aka Capt. Zap, to cease and desist their cyber destruction witnessed in the recent attacks and intrusions that have rocked the Internet in past weeks. The Enforcers began their massive assault on corporate and military websites after the arrest of "Pentagon Hackers" here in the US and Israel. Ian Murphy, CEO of IAM/Secure Data Systems, and the first US hacker arrested back in 1981, issued press releases during negotiations. (see www.prnewswire.com) Murphy began the process to begin deliberations out of a sense of duty. Murphy's dialogue with members of the Enforcer group pointed to the fact that the destruction was counter productive. He urged the group to consider halting this activity. "The destruction of information systems for an alleged cause is not the way to go about such things in defense of Hackers and Crackers." [Who made Ian Murphy chief negotiator? Why wasn't I notified so I could talk to these wankers? This is the kind of pathetic shit that makes PRNewswire the pond scum of journalism. In case you couldn't tell, this is pure media hype designed to get more business for Murphy and CO.] [snip...] Statement from a Enforcers representative is below. [HTML tags have been removed.] From: Adam < Reply-To: adamb1@flash.net Date: March 26, 1998 Organization: Adam's Asylum To: "Betty G.O'Hearn" < Subject: Enforcers Press Release/Announcement STATEMENT OF THE ENFORCERS We, the Enforcers, have decided that it would be in the best interest of the hacking community and the security community at large to cease and desist all web site hacking of external businesses as advised by Mr. Ian Murphy (Captain Zap.) We agree that our actions are not productive and are doing more harm than good towards the security community. Therefore, as an agent of the Enforcers, I hereby state that all web site hacks on external sites will be immediately halted. We feel that there will be other avenues opening to achieve our goal of a substantial reduction in child pornography and racist web sites and netizens. We also support the larger goals of the hacker community and in the future we will work to augment the public's view rather than detract from it. All members of Enforcers who hacked the web sites have agreed to this release and will stop hacking external web sites. [13:51 GMT -0600 26 March 1998] We thank you for your time and assistance in this matter. We congratulate both Mr. Murphy and The Enforcers for their diligence in reaching this agreement. This is indeed an act of peace in our cyberworld. [This is indeed an act which causes illness to stomach.] 0xa>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: IBM's Ethical Hackers Broke In! TUCSON, Ariz. (March 23, 1998 8:30 p.m.) - International Business Machines Corp.'s team of "ethical hackers" successfully broke into an unnamed company's computer network in a demonstration of a live attack at a computer industry conference. [They make it sound like this is a big event. "Look guys! We actually broke in!#$!"] [snip...] Palmer said IBM charges between $15,000 to $45,000 to perform a hack of a company's system, with its permission, to test its security. Palmer said because hacking is a felony, its clients sign a contract that he calls a "get out of jail free card" specifying what IBM is allowed to do. The IBM team, which has an 80 percent success rate in electronic break-ins, is not a team of reformed hackers and Palmer warned the audience that hiring former hackers can be very dangerous, and not worth the risk. [*BULLSHIT* .. IBM hires hackers.. IBM hires hackers.. secret is out, nyah nyah.] [snip...] He said that there are currently about 100,000 hackers worldwide, but that about 9.99 percent of those hackers are potential professional hired hackers, who may be involved in corporate espionage, and .01 percent are world class cyber criminals. Ninety percent are amateurs who "cyber" joyride." [snip...] 0xb>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Two accused of conspiring to hack into CWRU system Source: Plain Dealer Reporter Author: Mark Rollenhagen Date: Thursday, March 26, 1998 A federal grand jury yesterday indicted two Cleveland Heights residents on felony computer hacking charges. Rebecca L. Ching, 27, and Jason E. Demelo, 22, who authorities said live in an apartment on Mayfield Rd., are accused of conspiring to hack into the computer system at Case Western Reserve University between October 1995 and June 1997. Ching was a systems administrator for a computer system on the CWRU campus network during at least a portion of the conspiracy, the indictment said. She is accused of helping Demelo hack into the CWRU system by directing him to install a "sniffer" program capable of intercepting electronic information, including user names and passwords. Federal prosecutors would not say why Ching and Demelo allegedly sought to hack into the system. Neither could be reached to comment. Tom Shrout, director of communications for CWRU, said Ching worked part time for the university in its information sciences division three or four years ago. The case is believed to be the first federal computer hacking case brought in Northern Ohio since the FBI organized a computer crime unit last year. Demelo is also charged with seven counts of illegally intercepting electronic communications sent to other universities, including Cleveland State University, George Mason University and the University of Minnesota, and Internet providers, including Modern Exploration, APK Net Ltd., and New Age Consulting Service, and Cyber Access, a software company. 0xc>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: FBI Warns of Big Increase In On-line Crime [Hrm.. wonder if it is time to get next year's budget?!] WASHINGTON (March 25, 1998 00:19 a.m. EST) -- Criminal cases against computer hackers have more than doubled this year as the ranks of teenage hackers were joined by industrial spies and foreign agents, the FBI warned Tuesday. [Cases have doubled... no word on convictions.. hrm...] The FBI told a congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing that it had recorded a significant increase in its pending cases of computer intrusions, rising from 206 to 480 this year. [snip...] Michael Vatis, head of the FBI's national infrastructure protection center, said: "Although we have not experienced the electronic equivalent of a Pearl Harbor or Oklahoma City, as some have foretold, the statistics and our cases demonstrate our dangerous vulnerabilities to cyber attacks." [snip...] He told how one hacker had broken into telephone systems in Massachusetts to cut off communications at a regional airport and disconnect the control tower last year. Last week a teenager agreed to serve two years' probation after pleading guilty to disrupting communications at the Worcester, Mass., airport for six hours. Another hacker in Florida is accused of breaking into the 911 emergency phone system last year and jamming all emergency services calls in the region. The FBI said the dangers of cybercrime were rising because of the increased availability of hacking tools on the Internet, as well as electronic hardware such as radio frequency jamming equipment. Last week Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre toured European governments to warn of the risks of computer crime and discuss possible counter-measures. In spite of the publicity surrounding hackers, industrial espionage remains the most costly source of cybercrime, the committee heard Tuesday. Last July an unnamed computer communications company sent a malicious computer code which diverted communications from one of its rivals. The FBI estimated the victim company suffered losses of more than $1.5 million. Other FBI officials told how the U.S. was increasingly the subject of economic attack by foreign governments using computers. Larry Torrence, of the FBI's national security division, said foreign agents were "aggressively targeting" proprietary business information belonging to U.S. companies. More frequently, criminals are using the Internet to defraud potential investors with bogus investment schemes and banks. Fraudulent schemes on the Internet were becoming "epidemic," said Neil Gallagher, of the FBI's criminal division. One pyramid scheme, called Netware International, had recruited 2,500 members across the country by promising to share profits of 25 percent a year in a new bank which it was claiming to form. Investigators said they had seized almost $1 million to date. 0xd>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Computer hacker jailed for 18 months Date: Friday, March 27, 1998 A computer hacker who tried to destroy an Internet company that refused to hire him was jailed for 18 months today for offences that include publishing customer credit card numbers. In the NSW District Court, Judge Cecily Backhouse said Skeeve Stevens seriously damaged AUSnet, which has since gone out of business, by compromising 1,225 credit cards and by prominently displaying a message on its homepage on the World Wide Web. The April 1995 message included: "So dont (sic) be surprised if all you (sic) cards have millions of dollars of shit on them ... AUSNET is a disgusting network ... and should be shut down and sued by all their users!" Stevens, 26, pleaded guilty to inserting data into a computer system in Sydney in April 1995 and asked the judge to take into account another eight offences, including accessing confidential information. [snip...] The judge said Stevens' actions caused serious harm to the goodwill of AUSnet, whose staff had to answer non-stop calls from angry customers - many of whom cancelled their accounts - and who had to deal with crippling effects of their cash flows. Judge Backhouse said general deterrence was important in this type of offence, which was very hard to detect. She jailed him for three years, but ordered him to be released on a recognisance after 18 months. - Australian Associated Press *Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) is 11 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. 0xe>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Afternoon Line Source: The Netly News Author: Declan McCullah Date: March 24, 1998 Technology is one of those issues where lawmakers vie to sound as dumb as possible. At a "cyber-theft" hearing this morning, Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) said that his only knowledge about computers dates back to when his printer had a cover "to shield our ears from the noise." Could the witnesses from the FBI please explain the problems they had with this newfangled Internet? Sure, replied Michael Vatis, the head of the National Infrastructure Protection Center: "There are hacker web sites" out there, he said, with software that lets you "click on a button to launch an attack." The fact that Carnegie Mellon University's CERT center reported a 20 percent reduction in attacks from 1996 to 1997 didn't faze him. The real problem, Vatis griped, is "people out there who still romanticize hackers as kids just having fun. [What about] the elderly person who can't get through to 911 in an emergency because of a hacker?" Joining Vatis in testifying before Congress' Joint Economic Committee were top FBI honchos Larry Torrence and Neil Gallagher. Nobody representing civil liberties groups, computer security organizations, or high tech companies was invited to speak. --By Declan McCullagh/Washington [...] Witness at the Persecution Then again, there's a job opportunity in Los Angeles for someone with top-notch skills in telecommunications, system and network administration, and computer security -- and you won't even have to turn on a computer. The lawyer for renown hacker Kevin Mitnick is looking for an expert witness to testify at his client's trial, and has issued a sort of want-ad press release. "Qualified candidates must have an advanced degree and be knowledgeable in DOS, Windows, SunOS, VAX/VMS and Internet operations," the job description reads. Oh well, they lost me after "qualified," but with Uncle Sam paying the tab it could be the perfect opportunity for someone with a taste for the spotlight and nothing on their agenda starting as early as March 30. 0xf>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Hacking Geniuses or Monkeys Source: ZDTV Author: Ira Winkler Date: March 30, 1998 By now everyone has heard about the Pentagon hacks-- and the ensuing arrests of two teenagers in Cloverdale, Calif., and The Analyzer, the Israeli claiming to be the superhacking mentor of the Cloverdale teens. There were also two other Israelis arrested at the same time. The media and Websites like antionline.com portrayed the criminals as geniuses. I never heard of these supposed geniuses before, but the one thing that went through my mind was a quote by Scott Charney, Chief of the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Unit: "Only the bad ones get caught." I wanted the inside scoop, so I talked to some real hackers, who are really considered "elite" within the hacking community. These are people who have been hacking for over a decade and can take control of any system that they want. They invent the hacks that the wannabes find tools to accomplish. The opinion of the elite varied little: "The hackers involved in the Pentagon and ensuing hacks are clueless." Bad hackers are clueless Why are the Pentagon hackers clueless? In the first place, they were caught. The inside scoop is that the Pentagon hackers did nothing to cover their tracks and used the same routes of access again and again, making their capture inevitable. In short, they failed the basics of Criminal Hacking 101. The true act of stupidity, however, was talking to the press and being totally unrepentant about their actions. They even bragged about it. This is like asking the FBI, "Please prosecute me." While the Department of Justice doesn't usually prosecute juveniles, the teenagers were almost daring them to. Then The Analyzer jumped in, threatening to wreak havoc on the entire Internet if the teenagers were pursued. A week later he was arrested. Skilled hackers remember the arrest of the people who hacked the DoJ and CIA webpages. The lesson: if you leave any tracks while embarrassing the US Government, you will be caught. The hacking inner circle told me that The Analyzer did not cover his tracks at all, and his capture was easy, even though it spanned international lines. And how skillful are The Analyzer and the Pentagon hackers? According to my sources, almost all the hacks were accomplished via a tool that automatically exploited the rstatd problem. You really don't have to know what the rstatd problem means. The best analogy is that the Pentagon hackers found a master key on the street and tried it on every lock that they could find. Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of "locks" that the master key fits. This is hardly the sign of a computer genius, according to the elite. Who is The Analyzer, anyway? The real hackers then wondered why they have never heard of The Analyzer before. The talented hackers do seem to know each other or at least hear about the "rising stars" of the community. The Analyzer never fit this category. Nor did anyone recognize him when his picture was wired around the world. And what about the language that the Pentagon hackers and The Analyzer used in their unwise interviews? The Analyzer threatened to damage "Internet servers." Apparently, real hackers don't use this term, it is too mainstream. The California teenagers were quoted as saying that the reason they hacked was, "Power." Among the elite, real power is the anonymous and undetected control of a computer. Needless to say, the Pentagon hackers were not anonymous or undetected. I wonder how "powerful" they will feel in prison. It didn't surprise my hacker friends when another group of hackers, calling themselves The Enforcers, jumped on the bandwagon. These people threatened to hack computers all over the world in retaliation for the capture of The Analyzer and the Cloverdale teens. Of course, The Enforcers' self-proclaimed leader used the same email address to put out his statements and respond to queries from the media-- making himself and his group easy targets for federal attention. The only reasons he may not be arrested is that his group hasn't caused any real damage, and the FBI has more important problems to deal with than wannabe hackers looking for their 15 minutes of fame. Hacker wannabes I'm really getting sick of the Pentagon hacking stories, and all the wannabe hackers clamoring for their moment in the spotlight. Perhaps, when the FBI starts actively prosecuting juveniles and other people for hacking-related crimes, these wannabes will start using their computers in more productive ways. More importantly, maybe the media will stop portraying anyone who can hack a computer as some sort of genius. As I have said before, and as the real hackers can confirm, I can train a monkey to break into a computer in a few hours. The Pentagon hackers have displayed no more talents than the monkeys of which I speak. On the other hand, the fact that they can break into Pentagon computers makes the Department of Defense look like monkeys as well. The fact that the media continues to paint these wannabes as geniuses makes them worse than monkeys. 0x10>------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Low Tech Spooks - Corporate Spies Source: Forbes Author: Adam L. Penenberg In his slightly crumpled brown uniform, Richard Jones looked like any typical deliveryman, bringing in a new batch of urgently needed office supplies to corporations everywhere. But Jones, who was heading for the parking lot of a major chipmaker's border town maquiladora, only looked the part. Everything about him that day was made up. His uniform, "A close match, but not perfect," he would recall later, the office supplies--paper, pens and toner cartridges--picked up from a local stationery store. Even his name was fictional. As Jones took a final deep breath and carried the supplies into the company's air-conditioned chill, a security guard took one look at the brown uniform and lazily waved him through to the office manager's office. Jones had already contacted the delivery company and, pretending to be from the semiconductor company, had canceled that week's delivery run. [snip...] And that was that. The office manager showed Jones around the entire premises, pointing out photocopiers, fax machines, bookshelves, supply cabinets that had to be resupplied and the offices of executives. She even got him coffee. What was the point of the charade? Jones, not his real name, is a corporate spook. A rival company had paid him to obtain the semiconductor company's forthcoming quarterly earnings before they were announced. The fee: a nifty $35,000. [snip...] Many former Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency employees have sought refuge in the corporate world, often heading their own companies. They even have their own trade organization: the Society of Competitor Intelligence Professionals, or SCIPs. [You must have proper ID and know the secret handshake to join.] "The scope of the problem is enormous," says Ira Winkler, security consultant and author of Corporate Espionage. "On any one day there are a few hundred people engaged in breaking into companies and stealing information in this country. I can literally walk into a company and within a few hours walk out with billions of dollars." [One trick pony...] [snip...] 0x11>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: 'White Hat' Hackers Probe Pores in Computer Security Blankets Source: Washington Post Author: Pamela Ferdinand Date: April 4, 1998 BOSTON: In a chaotic room crammed with computer terminals and circuit boards, a long-haired man in black jeans -- "Mudge" by his Internet handle -- fiddles with the knobs of a squawking radio receiver eavesdropping on the beeps and tones of data transmissions. Nearby, a baby-faced 22-year-old in a baggy sweat shirt, nicknamed "Kingpin," analyzes reams of coded equations to break password sequences percolating on his computer screen. Other figures with equally cryptic identities toil in an adjoining chamber, their concentrated faces lit only by a monitor's glare and the flicker of silent television sets. This is the L0pht, pronounced "loft," a techie operations center in a suburban warehouse several miles from city center that is inhabited by a group whose members have been called rock stars of the nation's computer-hacking elite. The seven members of this computer fraternity-cum-high tech clubhouse have defeated some of the world's toughest computer and telecommunications programs and created security software that is the gold standard of corporate and hacking worlds. By day, they are professional computer experts, mostly in their twenties and thirties, with jobs and even wives. By night, they retreat to the warehouse and their electronic aliases troll the Internet for security gaps. Hacking mostly for the challenge, they have exposed security flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s leading network operating system, revealed holes in Lotus software and figured out how to decode pager messages and mobile police terminal data, among other feats. Hackers typically get into supposedly secure computer systems and pinpoint security breaches by deciphering elaborate number, letter and symbol combinations designed by manufacturers to protect their products. If security is breached, users risk having everything from private e-mail read to databases erased. A single, unintentional hack is not illegal, the U.S. attorney general's office here says. But repeat intruders face criminal penalties, especially when they compromise and damage confidential government, military or financial information. [Hrm.. such nice vague wording. Break in one time (the first time), and it isn't illegal?!] [snip...] L0pht members pride themselves on a less invasive and more altruistic goal just this side of the law: To locate and document Internet security gaps for free for the sake of consumers who have been led to believe their online transactions are secure. "We think of our Net presence as a consumer watchdog group crossed with public television," said "Mudge," a professional cryptographer by day who declined to identify himself for security reasons. "At this point, we're so high profile . . . it would be ludicrous for us to do anything wrong." Even companies whose products have been hacked for security weaknesses laud the social ethos and technical prowess of the members of the L0pht, who frequently notify manufacturers and recommend fixes before going public with their finds. Unlike villainous hackers labeled "black hats," who probe cyberspace for profit and malice, Robin Hood-style "white hats" like the L0pht are generally accorded respect, and even gratitude. [snip...] In the L0pht's most widely publicized hack, "Mudge" and a colleague assaulted Microsoft's Windows NT operating system last year and found inherent flaws in the algorithm and method designed to hide user passwords. They demonstrated the security breach by posting their victorious code on the Internet and showing how it was possible to steal an entire registry of passwords in roughly 26 hours, a task Microsoft reportedly claimed would take 5,000 years. "It's big. It's bad. It cuts through NT passwords like a diamond tipped, steel blade," boasts advertising for the latest version of their security-auditing tool, dubbed "L0phtcrack." "It ferrets them out from the registry, from repair disks, and by sniffing the net like an anteater on dexadrene." Microsoft took notice and, in an unprecedented move, executives invited the L0pht to dinner at a Las Vegas hacker convention last year. They have worked with the L0pht to plug subsequent security loopholes while simultaneously adding hacker-style techniques to in-house testing. [snip...] In doing so, the L0pht is grabbing the world's attention. But for all their skill in unscrambling the great riddles of technology, they remain baffled by some fundamental mysteries of life. Asked what puzzle they would most like to solve, "Kingpin" replied: "Girls." [See! At least 2 out of 7 l0pht members hack for girls!] 0x12>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: 101 Ways to Hack into Windows NT Source: Surveillance List Forum Date: April 3, 1998 MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: A study by Shake Communications Pty Ltd has identified not 101, but 104, vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows NT, which hackers can use to penetrate an organisation's network. Many of the holes are very serious, allowing intruders privileged access into an organisation's information system and giving them the ability to cause critical damage - such as copying, changing and deleting files, and crashing the network. Most of the holes apply to all versions (3.5, 3.51 and 4) of the popular operating system. [snip...] Shake Communications also provides links to patches/fixes in its Vulnerabilities Database, which also covers other operating systems, programs, applications, languages and hardware. [snip...] 0x13>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Suspected NASA Hacker Nabbed Source: CNET news.com Date: April 6, 1998 TORONTO, Ontario--A 22-year-old Canadian man suspected of breaking into a NASA Web site and causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage has been arrested by Canadian Mounties. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the northern Ontario city of Sudbury charged Jason Mewhiney with mischief, illegal entry, and willfully obstructing, interrupting, and interfering with the lawful use of data, Corporal Alain Charbot said today. [u4ea?!] [snip...] More than $70,000 worth of damage was caused at the NASA Web site and officials were forced to rebuild the site and change security, Charbot said. The FBI tracked the hacker by tracing telephone numbers to the Sudbury area. The Mounties raided the homes of Mewhiney's divorced parents and seized an ancient computer, a second basic computer, a high-speed modem, diskettes, and documents. [snip...] Charbot said ironically, once hackers are released from police custody they are prime candidates for cushy corporate jobs, doing the same type of work--but with the permission of Web site builders. [Why must these people revert to the use of 'web' terms?!] 0x14>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: CEOs Hear the Unpleasant Truth about Computer Security Source: CNN Author: Ann Kellan Date: April 6, 1998 ATLANTA (CNN) -- Computer hackers breaking into government and corporate computers is estimated to be a $10 billion-a-year problem, so CEOs met Monday in Atlanta to hear what government and industry experts are doing about it. [More expert figures on damage... ] They learned, among other things, that the Pentagon alone had 250,000 hacker attempts on its computer system last year, and that computer networks are easy targets. [And more quoting of inaccurate statistics...] They also learned that there are almost 2,000 Web sites offering tips, tools and techniques to hackers. Among the things a hacker can do is send an e-mail to someone and attach a computer program to it. The attached program will, in the words of one hacker, "open up a back door" into the computer system it was sent to. [Its just that easy I bet...] [snip...] According to IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, government and corporations need to work together to set standards for security practices such as hacker-resistant encryption codes. "We should be encouraging the widespread adoption of encryption technology right now, led by U.S.-based manufacturers," Gerstner said. CIA Director George Tenet told the CEOs not to look to the government to fix the problem. [Now there is a good quote.] [snip...] 0x15>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Codebreakers Source: Time Magazine Date: April 20, 1998 CRACKED Thought your new digital cell phone was safe from high-tech thieves? Guess again. Silicon Valley cypherpunks have broken the proprietary encryption technology used in 80 million GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phones nationwide, including Motorola MicroTAC, Ericsson GSM 900 and Siemens D1900 models. Now crooks scanning the airwaves can remotely tap into a call and duplicate the owner's digital ID. "We can clone the phones," brags Marc Briceno, who organized the cracking. His advice: manufacturers should stick to publicly vetted codes that a bunch of geeks can't crack in their spare time. --By Declan McCullagh/Washington 0x16>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Hackers Could Disable Military Source: Washington Times Author: Bill Gertz Date: April 16, 1998 Senior Pentagon leaders were stunned by a military exercise showing how easy it is for hackers to cripple U.S. military and civilian computer networks, according to new details of the secret exercise. Using software obtained easily from hacker sites on the Internet, a group of National Security Agency officials could have shut down the U.S. electric-power grid within days and rendered impotent the command-and-control elements of the U.S. Pacific Command, said officials familiar with the war game, known as Eligible Receiver. [snip...] Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said, "Eligible Receiver was an important and revealing exercise that taught us that we must be better organized to deal with potential attacks against our computer systems and information infrastructure." [Such a neat name too!] The secret exercise began last June after months of preparation by the NSA computer specialists who, without warning, targeted computers used by U.S. military forces in the Pacific and in the United States. The game was simple: Conduct information warfare attacks, or "infowar," on the Pacific Command and ultimately force the United States to soften its policies toward the crumbling communist regime in Pyongyang. The "hackers" posed as paid surrogates for North Korea. The NSA "Red Team" of make-believe hackers showed how easy it is for foreign nations to wreak electronic havoc using computers, modems and software technology widely available on the darker regions of the Internet: network-scanning software, intrusion tools and password-breaking "log-in scripts." [They successfully hack their target, yet they are "make-believe"?] According to U.S. officials who took part in the exercise, within days the team of 50 to 75 NSA officials had inflicted crippling damage. They broke into computer networks and gained access to the systems that control the electrical power grid for the entire country. If they had wanted to, the hackers could have disabled the grid, leaving the United States in the dark. [snip...] The attackers also foiled virtually all efforts to trace them. FBI agents joined the Pentagon in trying to find the hackers, but for the most part they failed. Only one of the several NSA groups, a unit based in the United States, was uncovered. The rest operated without being located or identified. The attackers breached the Pentagon's unclassified global computer network using Internet service providers and dial-in connections that allowed them to hop around the world. [snip...] The targets of the network attacks also made it easy. "They just were not security-aware," said the official. A second official found that many military computers used the word "password" for their confidential access word. [*scribbling notes..*] 0x17>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Secret Service Hackers Can't Crack Internet Source: PA News Author: Giles Turnbull Date: April 21, 1998 [So the NSA has better hackers than the Secret Service. ] Professional computer hackers from the secret services were brought in to attempt to hack into the Government's internal secure communications system, which was launched today. As part of the year-long planning and preparation of the Intranet, staff from GCHQ and similar security organisations were brought in to try to hack into the system. But they failed. [snip...] 0x18>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Now Hiring: Hackers (Tattoos Welcome) Source: Tribune Author: Susan Moran Date: April 12, 1998 Even the computer professionals who like to wear Birkenstocks and T-shirts to work find the dress code of GenX hackers a bit extreme. The main elements seem to be tattoos and nose rings. [No stereotyping here...] They'd better get used to them. Many computer hackers, some of them recovering computer criminals, are adeptly turning their coveted expertise into big bucks. A surge in computer crime, spurred by the shift to networked computers and by the growing popularity of the Internet, has created a huge demand for information security experts who can help protect companies' computer systems. Recent high-profile attacks on government and university computer networks highlighted the vulnerability of these networks and spurred corporate executives to seek ways to fortify their systems. [snip...] In a separate recent incident, the Justice Department last month arrested three Israeli teenagers suspected of masterminding the break-ins of hundreds of military, government and university computer sites to gaze at unclassified information. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating two California teens who linked up with their Israeli co-conspirators over the Internet. [Three Israeli teens? Gee, could they mean the two Cloverdale CALIFORNIA kiddies and 'the analyzer'?] [snip...] Hackers' anarchistic style is gradually gaining acceptance in corporations and government agencies, although some conservative organizations feel safer renting experts from established consulting firms. [Experts that consist of hackers who can dress well, and act all 'corporate'.] [snip...] That yellow-haired hacker, a 24-year-old who prefers to be known by his alias, "Route," also sports a tongue bar. His work as an information security consultant is worth $1,500 to $2,000 a day to clients who want to arm themselves against attacks by "crackers"--the correct term for hackers who use their computer expertise to commit malicious acts of infiltrating computer networks. On his own time, Route edits Phrack, a computer security journal (phrack.com). And he occasionally gives talks to government and corporate clients for Villella's firm, New Dimensions International (www.ndi.com). Route writes his own security-related tools and claims he's never used them for illegal snooping. [Woohoo! Go Route! Go Route!] [snip...] Another hacker who now makes a healthy living consulting goes by the alias "Mudge." He is a member of L0pht, a sort of "hacker think tank" consisting of a handful of Boston-based hackers who work out of a loft space, where they research and develop products and swap information about computer and cellular phone security, among other things. Mudge consults for private and public organizations, teaches classes on secure coding practices, and writes his own and reviews others' code. "It pays well, but the money isn't the main reason I'm doing it," he said. [In a recent talk over beer, Mudge confided in me that he does it for the girls. :) ] What he likes best is knowing he's among the elite experts who understand computer security more than big-name consultants. He's proud that he and his ragged assortment of hacker friends are called in to solve problems that stump the buttoned-down set. "Not bad for a bunch of bit-twiddlers," he wrote in an e-mail missive. 0x19>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Hacker Stoppers? Source: InformationWeek Author: Deborah Kerr Date: April 27 Companies bought $65 million worth of network-intrusion tools last year, but capabilities still lag behind what's promised. Neal Clift no longer sleeps on the floor of his office. Ten years ago, he slept under his Digital VAX at Leeds University in England, listening for the telltale clicks and hums that signal an intruder on his network. For weeks, a hacker had been shamelessly crashing his machine, deleting files, and reconfiguring controls. Clift tracked the hacker's movements, recorded the keystrokes, and eventually closed up the hacker's entry points. At the time, pulling late-nighters was the only way to catch a hacker, since poring over system logs could only establish the hacker's patterns after the fact. Now, intrusion-detection technology lets network security managers and administrators catch trespassers without spending the night on the office floor. Intrusion-detection tools are a $65 million industry that will grow as large as the firewall market, which reached about $255 million in 1997, according to the Hurwitz Group, in Framingham, Mass. Touted as network burglar alarms, intrusion-detection systems are programmed to watch for predefineds2000] attack "signatures," or predefined bytecode trails of prespecified hacks. Intrusion-detection systems also send out real-time alerts of suspicious goings-on inside the network. enger] But don't bet the server farm on intrusion-detection systems yet. They're still new, and their capabilities are limited. No matter what you buy, some portion of the enterprise will be unprotected. Intrusion-detection systems also can break down under certain types of attacks, in some cases even turning on their own networks under the guidance of a truly knowledgeable hacker. "There's no one tool to solve all the security problems throughout your network," says Jim Patterson, vice president of security and telecommunications at Oppenheimer Funds, in Denver... [snip...] 0x1a>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Hackers' Dark Side Gets Even Darker Author: Douglas Hayward LONDON -- The hacker community is splitting into a series of distinct cultural groups -- some of which are becoming dangerous to businesses and a potential threat to national security, an official of Europe's largest defense research agency warned Thursday. New types of malicious hackers are evolving who use other hackers to do their dirty work, said Alan Hood, a research scientist in the information warfare unit of Britain's Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). Two of the most dangerous types of malicious hackers are information brokers and meta-hackers, said Hood, whose agency develops security systems for the British military. Information brokers commission and pay hackers to steal information, then resell the information to foreign governments or business rivals of the target organizations. Meta-hackers are sophisticated hackers who monitor other hackers without being noticed, and then exploit the vulnerabilities identified by these hackers they are monitoring. A sophisticate meta-hacker effectively uses other hackers as tools to attack networks. "Meta-hackers are one of the most sinister things I have run into," Hood said. "They scare the hell out of me." [Great.. more terms and lousy journalism..] DERA is also concerned that terrorist and criminal gangs are preparing to use hacking techniques to neutralize military, police and security services, Hood said. [Criminal gangs.. oooh...] [snip... lame stereotype crap] 0x1b>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Japan Fears It's Becoming a Base for Hackers Source: Daily Yomiuri On-Line Author: Douglas Hayward Date: 4/29/98 To fill in legal loopholes that have caused an increase in unauthorized computer access, the National Police Agency has set up a group of experts to study how to prevent Internet crimes. Unlike Europe and the United States, Japan has no law prohibiting unauthorized access to computers through the Internet. There has been a stream of reports of anonymous hackers accessing corporate servers. [Gee, they have no laws making hacking illegal, and they wonder why they are becoming a base for hackers? Bright.] [snip...] The Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center has been studying cases of unauthorized access through the Net, and found a total of 644 from the time of the center's establishment in October 1996 to last month. Meanwhile, police uncovered 101 high-tech crimes in 1997, three times as many as in the previous year. 0x1c>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Kevin Mitnick Hacker Case Drags On and On Source: ZDTV Author: Kevin Poulsen Date: 4/28/98 [If you haven't visited, go to www.kevinmitnick.com right now.] LOS ANGELES-- "Now, have we made any progress here?" With those words, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer opened the latest hearing in the Kevin Mitnick case in L.A.'s U.S. District Court Monday. She might as well have said, "Let's get ready to rumble." It's now been more than three years since a dramatic electronic manhunt ended with Mitnick's arrest, national headlines, books and movie deals. Since then, the excitement has faded. The books oversaturated the market; the movies never got made. And the once fast-paced story of a compulsive hacker with a goofy sense of humor is mired in its epilogue: the slow ride to disposition over the speed-bumps of the federal justice system. [snip...] But only some of it. The government wants to keep a tight lid on the "proprietary" software in the case, and on what it calls "hacker tools." The defense can review these files, but they can't have their own copies for analysis. [snip...] If the evidence was in paper form, the government would have probably agreed. But Painter says that with electronic evidence, "it's too easy for this to be disseminated by the defendants." In other words, the government doesn't want the data to show up on a Web site in Antigua. [snip...] 0x1d>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Millions Lost to Phone Hackers Author: Andrew Probyn MILLIONS of dollars are being ripped off phone users in Australia by hackers using increasingly elaborate phone scams. Households, businesses and mobile phone users have become victims of widespread and systematic phone fraud. [Hackers using phone scams?] As carriers Telstra and Optus make advances in protecting their telecommunications networks, hackers are increasingly adept at breaking their security codes to rip off users. The Herald Sun has discovered many cases of billing discrepancies blamed on hackers, including one householder charged $10,000 for calls he said he never made. A Herald Sun investigation has also shown: SEX calls to chat lines in the United States, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Chile and the Seychelles are commonly charged to other people's accounts. HACKERS can divert their Internet, local and international call costs without detection. [Why do I think they are using 'hackers' for any sex-fiend that stole a code?] [snip...] "Hacking could be costing consumers in the region of millions of dollars," he said. "Some of these calls are very expensive - sex calls, for example, can be up to $30 just to be connected." [snip...] 0x1e>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Hackers on the Hill Author: Annaliza Savage [FINALLY...get some incredible hackers up there to school these weenies. Go l0pht!] Seven hackers will face the Senate Government Affairs Committee Tuesday. But they aren't in any trouble. The seven hackers have been invited by Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.)-- the sometime-actor you may remember from such films as The Hunt For Red October and Die Hard 2-- to testify about the state of the US Government's computer networks. The seven-- Mudge, King Pin, Brian Oblivian, Space Rouge, Weld Pond, Tan and Stefan-- are all members of the L0pht, a hacker hangout in Boston, and have been part of the hacker underground for years. "We were surprised to get an email from a senator's aide. We have had some contacts with law enforcement over the years, but this was something completely different," said Weld Pond. [snip...] "We are trying to return the label hacker to the badge of honor it used to be in the old days. A word that means knowledge and skill, not criminal or script-kiddies, as it does in the popular press today," Weld Pond said. [snip...] When Thompson's aide, John Pede, showed up at the L0pht to discuss the Senate hearings with the group, the irony of the visit wasn't wasted on hackers. Weld Pond explained: "We thought about blindfolding him on the way over here but decided against it in the end. The visit was a little uncomfortable. When the FBI has reporters visit them they clean up quite a bit and keep an eagle eye on the visitors. This was no different except the tables were turned." Mudge was glad to be able to show off the l0pht to the men in suits. "We actually enjoyed having the government officials over. It's a wonderful sight when we bring guests over to the l0pht and their jaws drop on the floor after seeing all of the stuff we have managed to engineer and get working. Especially when they realize it has all been without any formal funding." [snip...] 0x1f>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: RSA Sues Network Associates Source: CNET NEWS.COM Author: Tim Clark Date: 5.20.98 RSA Data Security is seeking to bar Network Associates from shipping any Trusted Information Systems software that uses RSA encryption technology. [Nyah nyah!] Earlier this year, Network Associates acquired TIS, licensed by RSA to use its encryption algorithms in TIS virtual private network software. RSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Security Dynamics. [snip...] "RSA is a company based on intellectual property," said Paul Livesay, RSA's general counsel. "Right now we perceive Network Associates as having an approach to doing business by acquiring companies and ignoring third-party agreements, so why would we want to assign the license to TIS to a party that operates in that manner?" 0x20>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Clinton to Outline Cyberthreat Policy Source: CNET NEWS.COM Author: Tim Clark Date: 5.21.98 In a commencement speech at the U.S. Naval Academy tomorrow, President Clinton is expected to highlight cyberthreats to the nation's electronic infrastructure, both from deliberate sabotage and from accidents such as the satellite outage that silenced pagers across the nation this week. Clinton also is expected to outline two new security directives, one aimed at traditional terrorism and the other at cyberthreats. The cyberthreats directive follows last year's report from the Presidential Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. [snip...] "Clinton will announce a new policy for cyberterrorism based on the recommendations of the commission, stressing the fact that we need private-sector help to solve this problem, since the private sector owns 80 to 90 percent of the nation's infrastructure," said P. Dennis LeNard Jr., deputy public affairs officer at PCCIP. Under the new policy, that agency will become the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, or CIAO. Clinton also is expected to order federal agencies to come up with a plan within three to five years that identifies vulnerabilities of the nation's infrastructure and responses to attacks as well as creating a plan to reconstitute the U.S. defense system and economy if a cyberattack succeeds, said a former White House staffer familiar with Clinton's speech. [Three to five years.. how.. timely.] [snip...] "The Department of Justice is not keen on sharing information that could lead to criminal prosecutions," the official said. "The private sector does not trust the FBI, and the FBI doesn't want to give out secrets. They're afraid that if they share information, they may someday have to testify in court." 0x21>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Programmer Sentenced for Military Computer Intrusion Source: CNN Date: 5.25.98 DAYTON, Ohio (AP)- A computer programmer was sentenced to six months at a halfway house for gaining access to a military computer that tracks Air Force aircraft and missile systems. Steven Liu, 24, was also fined $5,000 Friday after pleading guilty to exceeding authorized access to a computer. Liu, a Chinese national who worked for a military contractor in Dayton, downloaded passwords from a $148 million database at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He said he accidentally discovered the password file and used it to try to find his job-performance evaluation. [snip...] 0x22>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Editorial - Hacker vs Cracker, Revisited Source: OTC: Chicago, Illinois Author: Bob Woods Date: 5.22.98 Newsbytes. If a person talks about or writes a news story regarding a hacker, one creates an image that is perpetuated in a Network Associates TV ad: the heavily tattooed, ratty looking cyberpunk who breaks into systems and posts proprietary information on the Internet for the same reason "why (I) pierce (my) tongue." The big problem, though, is that person is more accurately described as a "cracker," not a "hacker." ZDTV CyberCrime correspondent Alex Wellen said earlier this week that "cracker" is gaining acceptance in the media -- and quoted an old column of mine in the process. Because of this unexpected exposure, I decided to take a second look at my old work. First, here's the text of my January 23, 1996 column: Our readers have their hackles up when hacker is mentioned in our stories. "Hackers," they argue, are good people who just want to learn everything about a computer system, while "crackers" are the ones who are breaking into computer systems illegally. The problem arises when the public and people who shape society get a hold of terms like "hacker" -- a word once viewed as non-threatening, but is now turned into a name that conjures up visions of altered World Wide Web pages and crashed computer systems. "Que's Computer and Internet Dictionary, 6th Edition," by Dr. Bryan Pfaffenberger with David Wall, defines a hacker as "A computer enthusiast who enjoys learning everything about a computer system and, through clever programming, pushing the system to its highest possible level of performance." But during the 1980s, "the press redefined the term to include hobbyists who break into secured computer systems," Pfaffenberger wrote. At one time hackers -- the "good" kind -- abided by the "hacker ethic," which said "all technical information should, in principle, be freely available to all. Therefore gaining entry to a system to explore data and increase knowledge is never unethical," according to the Que dictionary. These ethics applied to the first-generation hacker community, which Que said existed from roughly 1965 to 1982. While some of those people do still exist, many other people who describe themselves as "hackers" are a part of the current generation of people who "destroy, alter, or move data in such a way that could cause injury or expense" -- actions that are against the hacker ethic, Que's dictionary said. Many of those actions are also against the law. Today's hacker generation -- the ones bent on destruction -- are more accurately called "crackers." Que defines such a person as "A computer hobbyist who gets kicks from gaining unauthorized access to computer systems. Cracking is a silly, egotistical game in which the object is to defeat even the most secure computer systems. Although many crackers do little more than leave a 'calling card' to prove their victory, some attempt to steal credit card information or destroy data. Whether or not they commit a crime, all crackers injure legitimate computer users by consuming the time of system administrators and making computer resources more difficult to access." Here's the rub: whenever the media, including Newsbytes, uses the term "hacker," we are hit with complaints about the term's usage. E-mails to us usually say "I'm a hacker, yet I don't destroy anything." In other words, the people who write us and other media outlets are a part of the first generation of hackers. But the media reflects society as much as, if not more than, they change or alter it. Today's culture thinks of hackers as people who destroy or damage computer systems, or ones who "hack into" computers to obtain information normal people cannot access. While it's probably the media's fault, there's no going back now -- hackers are now the same people as crackers. Besides, if a person outside of the computer biz called someone a cracker, images of Saltines or a crazy person or an investigator in a popular British television series would probably come to mind. For most people on the street, the last thing they would think of is a person they know as a hacker. So, what's to be done about the situation? Not a whole heck of a lot, unfortunately. The damage is done. If more people in the "general public" and the "mainstream media" read this news service and saw this article, some headway might be made. But even if they did, cultural attitudes and thoughts are very difficult to change. For those people in the US -- remember New Coke? Or the metric system? If you're outside the US, can you imagine calling football "soccer?" And to the first generation of hackers -- those of us "in the know" in this industry do know about you. When we report on hackers nowadays, we're not talking about you, and we do not mean to insult you. Honest. === Today's Opinion Okay, so that last paragraph was a bit on the hokey side. Alright, so it was really hokey. But from what I remember, we had been getting quite a few angry e-mails at the time regarding our usage of "hacker," and I was trying to do a bit of damage control. But if memory serves me correctly, we received a couple of "nice try" letters after we published the editorial. Nice try? Well, I thought it was. But, was it a "safe" editorial? Sure. But it was -- and still is -- also "safe" to just write about "hackers" and offend a few people, rather than use the term "cracker" and leave a bunch of people scratching their heads over what the heck a "cracker" even was. While I'm seeing "cracker" more and more in computer-related publications (unfortunately, though, not in ours as much as I'd like to see) these days, the term is sorely lacking in the widely read/viewed/listened-to media outlets. I'll take the liberty of quoting what ZDTV's Wellen quoted me as saying two years ago: "If more people in the 'general public' and the 'mainstream media' read this news service and saw this article, some headway might be made (in accurately calling people crackers instead of hackers)." Now, I can see a mainstream media-type -- I used to be one of these people, by the way -- wondering how in the heck can they get their average seventh-grade audience to understand that a cracker is different from a hacker. It's easy for us computer/IT journalist types to write to our expectations of our audience, because it is generally pretty much like us. The answer, though, is pretty easy. Here's an example: "Two teenage hackers, more accurately known as 'crackers,' illegally entered into the Pentagon's computer system and took it out in an overnight attack." The real trick, then, is to never again use "hacker" in the story. Just use "cracker." Your audience will pick up on this, especially if you do it in all of your stories. I promise. So there. My unwieldy media consulting bill is now in the mail to all of the non-computing local and national media outlets. 0x23>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Windows NT Security Under Fire Author: Chris Oakes Date: 6.1.98 Listen to security expert and consultant Bruce Schneier and he'll tell you that Windows NT's security mechanism for running virtual private networks is so weak as to be unusable. Microsoft counters that the issues Schneier points out have mostly been addressed by software updates or are too theoretical to be of major concern. Schneier, who runs a security consulting firm in Minneapolis, says his in-depth "cryptanalysis" of Microsoft's implementation of the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) reveals fundamentally flawed security techniques that dramatically compromise the security of company information. "PPTP is a generic protocol that will support any encryption. We broke the Microsoft-defined [encryption] algorithms, and also the Microsoft control channel." However, he said he was unaware of some of Microsoft's NT 4.0 updates when he ran his tests. With relative ease, intruders can exploit the flaws, Schneier said, which he summarizes as weak authentication and poor encryption implementation. The result is that passwords can be easily compromised, private information can be disclosed, and servers used to host a virtual private network, or VPN, can be disabled through denial-of-service attacks, Schneier said. It's kindergarten cryptography. These are dumb mistakes," Schneier said. In letting companies use the public Internet as a means for establishing "private" company networks, VPN products use the protocol to establish the "virtual" connections between remote computers. PPTP secures the packets sent via the Internet by encapsulating them in other packets. Encryption is used to further secure the data contained in the packets. It is the scheme Microsoft uses for this encryption that Schneier says is flawed. Specifically, Schneier's analysis found flaws that would let an attacker "sniff" passwords as they travel across a network, break open an encryption scheme, and mount denial-of-service attacks on network servers, which render them inoperable. Confidential data is therefore compromised, he said. The nature of the flaws varied, but Schneier identified five primary ones. For example, Schneier found a method of scrambling passwords into a code -- a rough description of "hashing" -- to be simple enough that the code is easily broken. Though 128-bit "keys" can be used to access the encryption feature of the software, Schneier said the simple password-based keys that it allows can be so short that information could be decrypted by figuring out what may be very simple passwords, such as a person's middle name. "This is really surprising. Microsoft has good cryptographers in their employ." The problem, he said, is that they're not adequately involved in product development. Schneier emphasized that no flaws were found in the PPTP protocol itself, but in the Windows NT version of it. Alternate versions are used on other systems such as Linux-based servers. Microsoft's implementation is "only buzzword-compliant," Schneier said. "It doesn't use [important security features like 128-bit encryption] well." Windows NT has in the past been the object of several security complaints, including denial-of-service vulnerabilities. Microsoft says the five primary weaknesses Schneier has called attention to are either theoretical in nature, previously discovered, and/or have been addressed by recent updates to the operating system software. "There's really not much in the way of news here," said Kevin Kean, an NT product manager at Microsoft. "People point out security issues with the product all the time. "We're on our way to enhancing our product to take care of some of these situations already," Kean said. He acknowledged that the password hashing had been fairly simple, but that updates have used a more secure hashing algorithm. He also contends that even a weak hashing can be relatively secure. The issue of using simple passwords as encryption keys is relevant to individual company policy more than Microsoft's product. A company that has a policy requiring employees to use long, more complex passwords can ensure that their network encryption is more secure. An update to the product, Kean said, lets administrators require a long password from company employees. On another issue, where a "rogue" server could fool a virtual private network into thinking it was a legitimate node on the network, Karan Khanna, a Windows NT product manager, said while that was possible, the server would only intercept of a "stream of gobbledygook" unless the attacker had also cracked the encryption scheme. That and other issues require a fairly difficult set of conditions, including the ability to collect the diverging paths of VPN packets onto a server, to come into place. For that reason, Microsoft insists its product offers a reasonable level of security for virtual private networks, and that upcoming versions of the software will make it stronger. Windows NT security expert Russ Cooper, who runs a mailing list that monitors problems with Windows NT, agrees with Microsoft that most of Schneier's findings have been previously turned up and discussed in forums like his. What Schneier has done is tested some of them, he said, and proven their existence. But he points out that fixes for the problems have only recently been released, outdating Schneier's tests. The problems may not have been all successfully addressed by the fixes, Cooper said, but represent an unknown that may negate some of Schneier's findings. On Schneier's side, however, Cooper agrees that it typically takes publicity of such weaknesses to get Microsoft to release fixes. "Folks need to get better response from Microsoft in terms of security," Cooper said. He also added support to a point that Schneier makes -- that Microsoft treats security more casually than other issues because it has no impact on profit. "Microsoft doesn't care about security because I don't believe they think it affects their profit. And honestly, it probably doesn't." Cooper believes this is part of what keeps them from hiring enough security personnel. Microsoft vehemently contests the charge. Microsoft's Khanna said in preparing the next release of the operating system, the company has installed a team to attack NT, an effort meant to find security problems before the product is released. And, Microsoft reminds us, no product is totally secure. "Security is a continuum," Microsoft's Kean said. "You can go from totally insecure to what the CIA might consider secure." The security issue at hand, he said, lies within a reasonable point on that continuum. 0x24>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: New Decoy Technology Designed to Sting Hackers Source: ZDNet Author: Mel Duvall There was a sweet bonus for Network Associates Inc. in its recent acquisition of intrusion detection company Secure Networks Inc. The security vendor gained access to a new technology that is designed to sting hackers, not just keep them out. Secure Networks is developing a product, code-named Honey Pot, that is essentially a decoy network within a network. The idea is to lure hackers into the decoy, like flies to a honey pot, to gain as much information about their hacking techniques and identity as possible. "It's a virtual network in every way, with one exception - it doesn't exist," Secure Networks President Arthur Wong said. The product is unusual in that it acknowledges a fact of life few companies are willing to admit - that hackers can and do break into corporate networks. Tom Claire, director of product management at Network Associates, said after years of denying the problem exists, companies are beginning to take intrusion detection seriously. "Now they're starting to say, maybe I can watch what hackers are doing in my network and find out what they're after and how they do it," he said. "Then they can use that knowledge to make their systems better." The seriousness of the issue was underscored last week with reports that America Online Inc. was suffering from a series of attacks during which hackers gained access to subscriber and AOL staff accounts. The intruders appeared to gain access by tricking AOL customer service representatives into resetting passwords, based on information they obtained by looking at member profiles. Honey Pot, which is due to be released in the fourth quarter, draws hackers in by appearing to offer access to sensitive data. Once into the dummy network, hackers spend their time trolling through fake files, while the software gains information about their habits and tries to trace their source. Wong said it's unlikely a hacker's identity can be obtained after one visit to the Honey Pot, but once a hacker breaks into a system, he or she tends to come back for more. "It's like tracing a phone call - the more they return, the more you can narrow down their identity," Wong said. Larry Dietz, a security analyst at Zona Research Inc., said another security company, Secure Computing Corp., built offensive capabilities into its Sidewinder firewall as early as 1996, but "strike back" technologies, such as Honey Pot, are still relatively unused in the corporate market. "It's a good idea if you have a sophisticated user that knows what to do with the technology," Dietz said. "But how many companies have the staff or the expertise to be security cops?" 0x25>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Reno dedicates high-tech crime fighting center Source: Knight Ridder Author: Clif leblanc COLUMBIA, S.C. -- With the grandeur of a French royal palace, the nation's first school for prosecutors was dedicated Monday with a challenge from U.S. Attorney Janet Reno to fight 21st century electronic crime. ``When a man can sit in St. Petersburg, Russia, and steal from a New York bank with wire transfers, you know you've got a problem,'' Reno told a conference room full of dignitaries at the National Advocacy Center. She said the high-tech equipment the center on the University of South Carolina campus offers will allow prosecutors to ``fight those who would use cyber tools to invade us.'' An estimated 10,000 federal, state and local prosecutors annually will learn from the nation's best government lawyers at the $26 million center, which takes up about 262,000 square feet and has 264 dormitory rooms for prosecutors in training. Students -- practicing prosecutors from across the nation -- will be taught to use digital wizardry and conventional classroom training to win convictions against computer criminals, health care frauds, employers who discriminate and run-of-the-mill offenders. The center is a unique facility dreamed up 17 years ago by then-U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell so government lawyers at all levels could learn to prosecute crime better. Reno, formerly a state prosecutor in Dade County, Fla., said she was especially happy the center will help state and local prosecuting attorneys, too. ``I'm a child of the state court system,'' she said. ``It is my hope that this institution can lead the way in properly defining the roles of state and local ... law enforcement.'' About 95 percent of all prosecutions in the nation are by local prosecuting attorneys, said William L. Murphy, president of the National District Attorneys Association, who attended Monday's opening. Reno said she also wants the center to tap into University of South Carolina faculty to teach prosecutors about office management, budgeting, alternatives to litigation and even to find better ways for citizens and police to work together to fight crime. ``We can all blaze a trail to make government responsible to its people and still make people accountable,'' Reno said in a 15-minute dedication speech. If the center works as she envisions it, federal prosecutors will get better at trying capital cases, and DNA evidence will reduce the chances that innocent people will be wrongly convicted, Reno said. In her third trip to Columbia, Reno joked good reports from students trained at the center have put a stop to early complaints of ``who wants to go to Columbia?'' Reno thanked Sen. Fritz Hollings for pushing the idea of the center. She recalled that in their first meeting Hollings confronted her with a Forbes magazine article that reported the Justice Department was too big, ``and there was this little center he wanted to talk about.'' USC President John Palms said when Hollings first approached him about placing the center at the school, Palms' immediate answer was: ``Whatever it is, yes.'' But the center has a much bigger role for USC, Palms said. He described the dedication as, ``an event that's probably as important as anything that's ever happened at the university.'' Hollings, who is seeking re-election to a seventh term in the U.S. Senate, jokingly described the finished facility as, ``a little Versailles.'' The 1,300-room Palace of Versailles was the opulent home of the French royal family for more than 100 years. ``This is the most beautiful building the government has ever built,'' Hollings said. ``We've got the best of the best for America's prosecutors,'' Hollings said. ``Now it's up to us to produce the best.'' [Image] 0x26>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Man poses as astronaut steals NASA secrets Source: Reuters Date: 6.4.98 HOUSTON (Reuters) [6.4.98] - A licensed airline pilot posing as an astronaut bluffed his way into a top-security NASA facility and got secret information on the space shuttle during an eight-month deception, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Jerry Alan Whittredge, 48, faces up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine for misrepresenting himself as a federal employee, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Southern Texas said. Whittredge contacted NASA's Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in November, claiming he had been chosen for a space shuttle mission and requesting a tour of the facility. According to an affidavit by NASA special agent Joseph Gutheinz, Whittredge told NASA officials that he was a CIA agent and held the Medal of Honor. On the basis of his false credentials he was granted a tour on Nov. 21 and 22. "Mr. Whittredge was permitted to sit at the console of NASA Mission Control (NASA's most secure area) at Marshall Space Flight Center during a shuttle mission," the affidavit said. In March Whittredge tricked NASA into giving him confidential information about the shuttle's propulsion system and in May he hoodwinked officials at Kingsville Naval Air Station in Texas into giving him training on a T-45 flight simulator. Gutheinz said Whittredge had most recently been living in Texas but did not appear to be employed there and that he also had a permanent address in Florida. Whittredge made an initial appearance in court on Tuesday and is due to attend a bond hearing on Friday. 0x27>------------------------------------------------------------------------ DEF CON 6.0 Convention Announcement #1.00 (03.27.98) July 31-August 2 @ The Plaza Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas IN SHORT:-------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT: Speakers & partying in Vegas for hackers from the world over. WHEN: July 31st - August 2nd WHERE: Las Vegas, Nevada @ The Plaza Hotel and Casino COSTS: $40 at the door MORE INFO: http://www.defcon.org/ or email info@defcon.org 0x28>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Network Security Solutions Conference Announcement July 29th and 30th, Las Vegas Nevada ****************** Call For Papers Announcement *************************** Network Security Solutions is now accepting papers for its 1998 event. Papers and requests to speak will be received and reviewed from March 24th until June 1st. Please submit an outline on a self selected topic covering either the problems or solutions surrounding network security. Topics of interest include Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), distributed languages, network design, authentication systems, perimeter protection, and more. Talks will be an hour with a half hour for Q&A. There will be LCD projectors, overhead, and slide projectors. Updated announcements will be posted to newsgroups, security mailing lists, email, or visit the website at http://www.blackhat.com/ 0x29>------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Program Chair, Win Treese of Open Market, Inc., and the Program Committee announce the availability of the Call for Papers for: 8th USENIX Security Symposium August 23-26, 1999 Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C. Sponsored by USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association In cooperation with The CERT Coordination Center ================================================ IMPORTANT DATES FOR REFEREED PAPERS Paper submissions due: March 16, 1999 Author notification: April 21, 1999 Camera-ready final papers due: July 12, 1999 ================================================ If you are interested in submitting a paper to the committee, proposing an Invited Talk, or proposing a tutorial, you can find the Call for Papers at http://www.usenix.org/events/sec99/cfp.html. The USENIX Security Symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, system administrators, system programmers, and others interested in the latest advances in security and applications of cryptography. Symposium topics include: Adaptive security and system management Analysis of malicious code Applications of cryptographic techniques Attacks against networks and machines Authentication & authorization of users, systems & applications Detecting attacks, intrusions, and computer misuse Developing secure systems File and file system security Network security New firewall technologies Public key infrastructure Security in heterogeneous environments Security incident investigation and response Security of agents and mobile code Technology for rights management & copyright protection World Wide Web security ============================================================= USENIX is the Advanced Computing Systems Association. Its members are the computer technologists responsible for many of the innovations in computing we enjoy today. To find out more about USENIX, visit its web site: http://www.usenix.org. 0x2a>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last Call For Participation - RAID 98 (also available at http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~dac/RAID98) First International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection September 14-15, 1998 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium We solicit your participation in the first International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID 98). This workshop, the first in an anticipated annual series, will bring together leading figures from academia, government, and industry to talk about the current state of intrusion detection technologies and paradigms from the research and commercial perspectives. We have scheduled RAID 98 immediately before ESORICS 98, at the same time as CARDIS 98, and at the same location as both of these conferences. This provides a unique opportunity for the members of these distinct, yet related, communities to participate in all these events and meet and share ideas during joined organized external events. The RAID 98 web site: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~dac/RAID98, The ESORICS 98 web site: http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esorics98. The CARDIS 98 web site: http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/cardis98/ 0x2b>------------------------------------------------------------------------ Computer Security Area (ASC) / DGSCA DISC 98 "Individual Responsability" Fifth Computer Security Event In Mexico Mexico, D.F. November 2-6, 1998 ========================================================================== C A L L F O R P A P E R S The goal of DISC 98 event is to create a conscience about the strategies of security to protect information between the community who uses computers. This year the DISC belongs to the most important events of Mexico. The computing general congress (http://www.org.org.mx/cuarenta) celebrates forty years of computing in Mexico and convoques those specialist in computer sucurity to participate on this as lecture. "Individual responsability" is the slogan of this year and suggest that the security of an organization should be totally supported by directive, security responsables, managers, and system's users. WWW : http://www.asc.unam.mx/disc98 0x2c>------------------------------------------------------------------------ C A L L F O R P A P E R S Assurance for the Global Convergence: Enterprise, Infrastructure and Information Operations InfoWarCon-9 Mount Royal Hotel, London, UK December 7-9 December 7 - Tutorials December 8-9 General Session. Sponsors: MIS Training Institute - www.misti.com Winn Schwartau, Interpact, Inc. - www.infowar.com For more information contact: Voice: 508.879.7999 Fax: 508.872.1153 Exhibitors & Sponsorship: Adam Lennon - Alennon@misti.com Attendance & Registration: www.misti.com ----[ EOF