NeT-FlicKs

1999 tO 2006

As in all groups, there those whom are good and those who commit crimes. We all know of virus's and malicious codes which infect your computers or corporations that plant intrusive cookies or spyware into your PC to monitor your activities. One has to wonder who is the true criminal here. The criminal hacker or the manufacturer of computers and software which make your computer vulnerable to these attacks. If it wasn't for some hackers who have exploited these breeches, we all would be going on without the knowledge of these flaws in software. So who is the real criminal in this scenario? The hacker who exploits the vulnerabilities in the software or the manufacturers who design them.

THE APOCALYPSE VIRUS & COMPUTER ARMAGEDDON IN 2007?

YEAR 1999
HACKERS & CYBER TERRORISM

1999 MAY:Be carefull of what you download or send over the Net.You read every week where someone was busted for sending porn over the Net.Even if you download something by accident you may not even be aware it's on your hard-drive now.Always clear your cache and run de-frag & scandisk.If they can hack into the Department of Justice, The C.I.Aand the Pentagon,and most recently The US Senate Web Site in May,1999 & the US Army Web site in June 1999.Criminals and crooked cops can hack you too.You never know who is on the other end of that e-mail.Also some police agencies will work with your ISP and can tell what you download from newsgroups,or they or hackers can make it look like you posted in a certain newsgroup and come bashing into your house.The Era of Big Brother is Here. You have been warned! I do not CONDEMN or CONDONE hacking,but one thing is for sure,the hackers have shown the government and industry how vulnerable the United States computer infrastructure is as well as other countries.Instead of throwing some of these people in jail,they should perhaps talk and learn from them.I trust the Government & law enforcement about as much as a chicken would trust Col. Sanders.Who is the guilty party here? The hacker who breaks into a system,or the person who was lax in security when designing the system?

The FBI is teaching agents across the country how to investigate threats posed by computer savvy terrorists and hackers trying to break into the nation's most sensitive data networks. But so far, the bureau has been able to train agents in only a handful of its biggest field offices.That shortfall, disclosed in congressional testimony by the head of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, comes during a time of growing recognition within the federal government that even some of the nation's most critical computer networks are inadequately protected. The FBI's case load for computer hacking and intrusion investigations continues to grow dramatically, too.Vatis said the agency has 800 pending cases, and the number of those investigations has doubled every year for the past two years.The General Accounting Office released a report earlier this week warning that computer systems at the Defense Department, law enforcement agencies and private companies are at risk because of poor management and lax oversight.Experts said it will take more than the federal government to tighten security on its networks. ''All our efforts to put the federal government's house in order and to serve as a model for industry will be of little service if our government information systems are impossible to break into, but the electrical power that they operate on is shut down by malicious actions of a foreign government,'' said John Tritak, director of the government's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office.Vatis also publicly acknowledged for the first time that the FBI believes hackers suspected of breaking into some of America's most sensitive networks earlier this year were based in Russia. Those attacks, dubbed ''Moonlight Maze'' by investigators, were first reported in July by a London newspaper. Citing congressional sources, the paper said the attackers may have stolen some of the nation's most sensitive military secrets, including weapons guidance systems and naval intelligence codes.

Hackers Ascend Upper 'Echelon:

If the hunch of a loose-knit group of cyber-activists is correct, the above words will trip the keyword recognition filter on a global spy system partly managed by the US National Security Agency. The near-mythical worldwide computer spy network reportedly scans all email,packet traffic, telephone conversations and more around the world, in an effort to ferret out potential terrorist or enemy communications.Once plucked from the electronic cloud,certain keywords allegedly trigger a recording of the conversation or email in question.Privacy activists have used the words in their signature files for years as a running schtick, but on 21 October, a group of activists orginating on the "hacktivist" mailing list hope to to trip up Echelon on a much wider scale."What is [Echelon] good for?" asked Linda Thompson, a constitutional rights attorney and chairman of the American Justice Federation."If you want to say we can catch criminals with it, it is insane that anyone should be able to snoop on anyone's conversations.Criminals ought to be caught after they to invade all our privacy to catch that two percent [of criminal communications]," she said.A 1994 report by the Anti-Defamation League described Thompson as "an influential figure in the militia movement nationally." The report says the American Justice Federation describes itself as "a group dedicated to stopping the New World Order and getting the truth out to the American public." The Anti-Defamation League says Thompson claims to have contact with militias in all 50 states. On 21 October 1999, Thompson, along with Doug McIntosh, a reporter for the federation's news service,and members of the hacktivism mailing list community, invite anyone concerned about the system to append a list of intriguing words to their emails Specifically, they suggest the following keywords:

Russian News Site Hacked:

Dec.1999 -Tass news agency said Sunday its Internet site had been hacked by "computer terrorists" demanding that Russia halt its military campaign in Chechnya."They called themselves 'princes of darkness' and 'angels of freedom' and demanded that Russia stop the war in Chechnya," a spokesman for the agency told Reuters in a telephone interview. Tass said the site raiders had sent an email protesting over the "murder of peaceful Chechens." It added that the identity of the hackers was unknown and that it was working to repair the damage.The West has fiercely criticized Moscow's military campaign to clear the breakaway North Caucasus region of Islamic separatist fighters it calls "international terrorists," saying that innocent people are suffering. Russian media have strongly backed Russia's tactics and the campaign enjoys widespread public support

------ Cracker Launches Attack on NASA::

November 23,1999 The Web pages of three US Government agencies, including NASA's Goddard Flight Center, have been defaced by a cracker who is worried that US government security systems are vulnerable to cyberattack. The front pages of the sites for NASA's Goddard Flight Center international page, the Bureau of Land Management's National Training Center, and the Defense Contracts Audit Agency, on Wednesday were replaced with a page showing a cartoon of a hooded hacker wearing a peace symbol necklace and a message warning of Web site security holes. "To the US government and military I have warned you about these security flaws," wrote ytcracker on the Flight Center's front page. "Please secure our military systems to protect us from cyber attack.Identifying himself as a 17-year-old high school student from Colorado Springs,Colorado, ytcracker (for whitey-cracker) said he defaced the sites as a warning to the US government. "I'm not about being malicious," he said. "A lot of other countries are planning cyberwarfare on the US government. If other countries have malicious intent,how can we as US citizens feel safe? I did this to let them know they really have to prepare for these things." Ytcracker said he chose the sites after scanning numerous government agencies for those most vulnerable. The three sites were penetrated using a well-known trick that should have been known to the administrators and plugged, ytcracker said. Furthermore, he said, the administrators had been recently notified of the security hole but had ignored the warnings. "It seems the only way to get their attention is to show them," he said. The DCAA was cracked early Wednesday, followed by BLM and then NASA early Wednesday afternoon, ytcracker said. Speaking only minutes after cracking theNASA site, ytcracker declined to give his real name but said he has done very little to cover his tracks.As well as being able to follow the sites'server logs, which track visitors to the site, a link on the cracked NASA page leads more-or-less straight to his home page."If they want to find me, it won't be very hard," he said. "I don't want them to misinterpret my actions. I didn't do it to offend them or show them up. It's basically to alert them. All I can do is pray to God and hope they do."NASA spokeswoman Janet Ruff said the organization took security "very seriously... when things like this happen they require a fast response." Ruff said NASA was continuing to investigate the breach, but that she could not comment further. However, B.K. DeLong, curator of Attrition.org's Web site defacement archive, which has mirrored the cracks, said the US government doesn't take the defacement of its Web sites kindly. DeLong noted that another cracker,known as Zyklon, was sentenced to 15 months in jail and a $36,000 fine last week for defacing the White House's Web page.DeLong said the cracks were significant security breaches. "Any government, military, or high-profile corporation is a significant hack," he said. "It shows once again that they're lacking in security." DeLong said the crack exploited the remote administration capabilities of Windows NT systems and isn't particularly difficult to perform. Before hanging up, tracker said: "I'm very much a patriot. I promote the same democratic ideals as the government endorses. I believe strongly in peace and harmony."

Marine Corps Headquarters at Pentagon hit by Computer Virus:

October 22, 1999:Marine Corps computer technicians were at work overnight Friday, improving security, after the Corps headquarters at the Pentagon was hit by a "worm virus," a Marine Corps source told CNN. The Thursday afternoon attack infiltrated only "unclassified" computer systems, according to the source, and affected Microsoft programs only.Computer systems containing sensitive or "classified" information were not affected, he said. The Marine Corps computer warriors were working with computer experts from Symantec Corp. to defeat the virus and retrieve lost files.The attack left Marines around the Pentagon looking at blank pages where documents had once resided. Symantec installed Norton Anti-Virus software for the Marines. While the military is a popular target for computer hackers, the Marine Corps official told CNN that Thursday's attack was from "a different strain or a virus we have not seen before."Only computers at the Pentagon and the nearby Navy Annex to the Pentagon were infected by the virus, the official said.The Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last several years bolstering computer security, to combat attacks on computer systems from international foes, companies and domestic computer hackers. The Marine Corps official said it was not clear how the virus entered its system.

Password Thief Ransacks AOL:

October 12,1999 Hello, I've got the password to your America Online account. Ha-ha!

MSN Messenger Shows Passwords:

August 18.1999: As the sandbox fight between Microsoft and America Online rages over instant messengers and access to networks, users have something new to consider: Anyone can get your MSN Messenger password if you walk away from your computer.The bug was first found by a member of BetaNews.com, a Web site that follows software under development. The exploit can be reproduced by selecting "Tools" from the menu, then "Hotmail Inbox." This will launch the user's browser to connect to Microsoft Hotmail.If the user quickly hits the stop button on the browser and then views the page HTML source, all of the user information is visible, including the password, as seen in the sample code (the username and password have been removed below):

ICSA:

David Kennedy is a modern day computer detective who tracks down malicious hackers and virus programming outlaws.Kennedy's team is ICSA.net which assesses corporations security and back door computer threats.Kennedy also sends his undercover employees to hacker conventions like the 2600 hacker convention held in New York City.Kennedy's ICSA chief executive technology office Peter Tippett stated their goal is to keep a ear to the underworld ground of hackers.It was the ICSA team that went after the infamous Milissa virus that effected over 100,000 computers and brought the arrest of the accused writer of the virus David L. Smith of Aberdeen,New Jersey.The ICSA also surfs net newsgroups as alt.comp.virus under the guise of anonymity and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which allows them to tap away at their computers in live conversation on a kind of party line.The company has been flamed by hacker publications and it claims it's web sight gets attacked 22 times a day by attempted hackers.Mr. Tippet stated"It would give them a great deal of pleasure if they could penetrate the security of a company like ours."My opinion is when Mr. Tippet makes pompous statements like this,feeling they are infallible to a hack attack he is just looking for trouble and soon I'm sure that the ICSA team will wake up one day, pop up their web sight on their browser and notice the companies web site has been hacked leaving it with a blank black and white page saying "This Company Sucks" or "ICSA" stands for Incompetent Co*k Sucking AssH*les.

Japan Risks Digital Pearl Harbor:

Japan is terribly vulnerable to electronic attacks and its defenses against "cyberterrorists" are virtually nonexistent, an adviser to the Japanese government's critical infrastructure group said Tuesday. The cause: Technological cluelessness and obsolete thinking on the part of top officials.In sharply worded remarks, Raisuke Miyawaki said that "there is a lack of technology knowledge and a leadership that's void.Japan's most senior leaders simply do not have the technological understanding." Miyawaki, the former head of the national police's organized crime unit, told a panel hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Japan needed to create an "emergency cybercorps" to respond to computer attacks.The United States has created the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office.His criticism found a welcome audience at CSIS, which has argued for spending more US tax dollars on information warfare studies and offensive and defensive capabilities.

YEAR 2000

Y2K Disaster Passes As World Sighs a Heave of Relief

A network connecting many computer networks and based on a common addressing system and communications protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). From its creation in 1983 it grew rapidly beyond its largely academic origin into an increasingly commercial and popular medium. By the mid-1990s the Internet connected millions of computers throughout the world. Many commercial computer network and data services also provided at least indirect connection to the Internet.

College Student Accused of Hacking Government Computers::2000 February PT BOSTON--A Northeastern University student today was charged with hacking into federal government computers, including systems at NASA and the Defense Department, in a coast-to-coast attack on public and private Web sites and servers, authorities said.If convicted, Ikenna Iffih, 28, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.U.S. Attorney Donald Stern alleged that Iffih seized control of a NASA Web server in Maryland last year and was able to read, delete and alter files, as well as intercept and save login names.Using the NASA computer as a platform, Iffih allegedly attacked the Interior Department's Web server, defacing the agency's Web page, prosecutors said. Prosecutors also said Iffih accessed a Defense Department computer, as well as the Web site of an Internet service provider in Washington state, where he "recklessly caused damage" and caused a "significant" loss of business, prosecutors said. "All in all, the defendant used his home computer to leave a trail of cybercrime from coast to coast," Stern said.

NASA Hacker Caught:

JULY 2000: NEW YORK A 20-year-old man was arrested for allegedly hacking into two computers owned by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and using one to host Internet chat rooms devoted to hacking. Raymond Torricelli of New Rochelle, New York, was named in a five-count complaint that also charges him with sending unsolicited advertisements for a pornographic website and intercepting passwords and user names of computers owned by Georgia Southern University and San Jose State University. Torricelli is also accused of stealing credit card numbers that were used to make more than $10,000 in unauthorized purchases

Phone Phreaks to Rise Again?

May. 16, 2000:Back before there were hackers, phreakers ruled the underground.They may be making a comeback, to the chagrin of those on whom they prey.A phreaker explores the telephone system. Some are just electronic voyeurs who want to understand how telecom structure works. Others exploit vulnerabilities in the system to get free long-distance service, re-route calls, change phone numbers, or eavesdrop on conversations.In the 1960s and '70s, phreaking usually involved building devices that could trick telephone systems into believing that the phreaker's instructions were originating from the telephone company's internal systems.But computer-based telephone systems weren't susceptible to these sorts of creative workarounds. So phone phreaks had to learn some hacking skills.And, as the world moves towards integrated voice and data systems, "black hat" phreaks may soon pose more of a threat to computer system security than the "pure" hackers and crackers who disrupt and vandalize computer systems and websites.Chad Cooper of ProDX Professional Data Exchange, an information technology consulting company, said he believes that IP-based telephone systems, where phones are connected into a PC's RJ-45 Ethernet jack, may represent a new backdoor into corporate networks.The rub is the phones have to have access to the Internet, and this is all the hacker phreak needs, Cooper said. "Essentially, the software and hardware of this phone system would be tied directly into MS Windows MAPI (mail API's) and TAPI (telephony API's) extensions, which are commonly exploited in Trojans and worm viruses," he said.

Philippine Investigators Detain Man in Search for 'Love Bug' Creator:

On May 8,2000 Authorities search a suspect's home but may have not found the right culprit who sey of the ILOVEYOU virus which affected over 45 million computers world wide in early May,2000. Philippine authorities searching for the author of last week's "Love Bug" computer virus raided the Manila home of a suspect on Monday and detained a man who may have some connection to the case. National Bureau of Investigation officers detained the man after obtaining a search warrant earlier as the investigation into the "ILOVEYOU" virus narrowed to an apartment in the Pandacan area of the capital Manila. Officials told CNN they had not arrested the man because they did not have an arrest warrant. Officers were waiting at the home for a woman who also lives there.Gil Alnas, head of the area residents' council, told reporters outside the raided home that investigators seized a telephone, telephone wires and computer magazines from the residence."One of the concerns we often have in computer crimes is getting to the target computer before evidence is erased, before a hard drive is discarded or the trail is covered up by a suspect," Michael Vatis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" show.But, he said, "these are difficult cases to investigate, partly because they're often international in scope, because cyberspace knows no boundaries."Moves to arrest the suspected creator of the devastating virus were delayed because under Philippine laws hacking is not a crime, police and a legal expert said Monday.But they are examining whether a law covering illegal wire-tapping and electronic eavesdropping can be applied."We have no law on hacking," NBI chief Federico Opinion told reporters. "We are consulting some technical experts to see how it would fit into wire-tapping laws."Although earlier reports said evidence in the case pointed to a male hacker, the suspect is believed to be a young woman living in Manila. The first two lines of the computer code of the "ILOVEYOU" virus identify the author as "Spyder," in Manila, Philippines. Spyder's ICQ account identifies him as a male born on April 4, 1977 and living in Manila. This would make him 23. Access Net, the owner of Super.Net, previously identified Spyder as a 23-year-old male living in the Pandacan neighborhood of Manila.The account profile also lists Spyder as a male, and lists as his interests, "computer programming .... sex." "He's left enough trails in the sand to find out who he is," says Richard M. Smith, a private computer investigator and the man who identified the author of the "Melissa" virus last year.Toby Ayre, spokesman for Sky Internet in Manila, says authorities told him a warrant will be served imminently in the international investigation to find the creator of the virus. As the FBI continues to work on the "Love Bug" computer-virus case, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has unveiled a major new FBI crime center charged with fighting Internet consumer fraud. The bureau, along with the National White Collar Crime Center, opened the Internet Fraud Complaint Center in Morgantown, W.Va., to receive and track complaints concerning online fraud.

BEWARE OF NEW LOVE VIRUS!

2000 MAY: A new, virulent worm known as the "Love Bug" infested computer networks through out the world beginning Wednesday night, May 3,2000 shutting down major email servers, including those belonging to the Pentagon, the British Parliament, and NASA. Experts say it might exceed the infamous Melissa worm in both speed and destructiveness.The self-replicating worm can clog email programs and destroy MP3 and JPEG files on PCs and through connected networks.It evidently can only be spread through PCs via the Microsoft Outlook email program. It does not affect Macintosh, Linux, or Unix operating systems. The worm, spread through an email visual basic script (.vbs) attachment with the subject header "I LOVE YOU," began invading U.S. networks overnight after being first detected in Europe.Companies with branch offices in Europe and Asia first reported the arrival of the worm on their networks. The worm caused system administrators to shut down email servers at the Space Center in Houston, Ford Motor Co.,Vodafone AirTouch, the Jet Propulsion Lab, Philips Customer Call Centers, and Ticketmaster Citysearch.The "Love Bug" also was reportedly sent to the CIA, the General Accounting Office, and the Civil Air Patrol, when a Pentagon office inadvertently transmitted it with its daily news clippings."This worm spreads at an amazing speed", said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research at F-Secure Corporation. "We got the first report around 9 a.m. on Thursday from Norway, and by 1 p.m.May 4,2000 we had reports from over 20 countries." He also notes that the worm seems to be deleting JPEG graphic files and replacing them with copies of the .vbs virus file. The virus is believed to have originated in the Philippines, where it was called "the Manila Killer." It arrives in an email with a subject line that reads 'ILOVEYOU.' The email contains a one-line message reading, "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me" and an attachment titled LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.VBS.

Hacker Pleads Guilty to U.S. Attacks:

2000 APRIL; The 19-year-old co-founder of a hacker group known as Global Hell faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to breaking into White House and U.S. Army Web sites. A report in The Wall Street in April.2000 said Patrick W. Gregory of Houston, a high-school dropout known on the Net as "MostHateD" was one of the founders of the Global Hell online cybergang, and pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit telecommunications wire fraud and computer hacking in Texas U.S. District Court.Gregory was among those netted during nationwide antihacker raids launched last May by the Federal Bureau of Investigation a few days after a penetration of the White House online computer. The raids and subsequent arrests sparked retaliatory cyberattacks for several months that struck important U.S. government sites in Washington, including those of the Senate, FBI and the Army, prompting emergency security upgrades on several sites, the report said.The other Global Hell founder, 20-year-old Chad "Mindphasr" Davis, of Green Bay, Wis., pleaded guilty earlier this year to vandalizing the Army site and making it appear the attack was committed by the Chinese government. Davis has been sentenced to six months in custody, ordered pay the Army $8,054 in damages, and forbidden to communicate with Gregory or any others involved in Global Hell, the Journal said.

Hack Attacks:::

2000 MARCH: The Pentagon,which sends at least of its 85% of communications over commercial telephone lines,is vunerable,as are most government agencies and private business interprises.About a dozen nations have information-warfare program software including,Libya,Iraq,Iran,and of course,The United States.Foreign intelligence services routinely break into American public and government computers,mapping their power-grids to find weak links or back doors to access information.Intrusions into government computers are detected only 10% of the time.The Pentagon is hacked into 250,000 times a year;some 500 of these intrusions are deemed serious.It easy to MASK the true identify of the hackers whom are seeking information on our government or even YOU! Most hackers are just teenagers or nerds"which should scare you more" playing a cat and mouse game.Hacker groups routinely hold competitions to see who can hack into the most secret systems.NASA is a favorite target.A German hacker club called CHAOS offered a $25,000 bounty to anyone who could tap into mission control systems. The truth is,when teenagers can access our national security systems,how much does a more expertise hacker accessed?Whether it be the government or YOUR personnal files.

Hacking or Was It Big Brother?

2000 FEB: Hackers pulled off a series of brazen attacks on major Web sites in the early days of February 2000, leading to shutdowns at Buy.com Inc. and eBay Inc. after a similar assault hit Yahoo! Inc. the day before. Datek Online Holdings Corp., the No. 4 U.S. online broker, on Wednesday said its Web site crashed for 35 minutes as it became the latest apparent victim of computer hackers that have wreaked havoc across the Internet this week.Online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN.O) also appeared to have fallen victim to an attack, according to Internet monitoring firm Keynote Systems Inc. Hackers also did serious damage to the CNN Interactive, which administers the Web site of Cable News Network, cnn.com, slowing content flow to a trickle for nearly two hours, a CNN official said.The Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Francisco met with Yahoo, the first to be hit. The government has bolstered its efforts to track down electronic crime on the Internet since e-commerce has turned into a serious driver of the economy over the past two years. U.S. law enforcement officials are admitting they don't have a clue about attacks that disabled the world's most popular Internet sites. "We are not aware of the motives behind these attacks," said Attorney General Janet Reno in a press conference.FBI official Ron Dick was reduced to saying that "a 15-year-old kid could launch these attacks." Dick did not answer a reporter's question about which hacking tool,(smurf, trinoo, TFN) was used.If a malicious hacker is clever enough, he might be able to conceal his footsteps from prying eyes and an investigation might reveal only that the attack originated at an anonymous dialup account."We're in the process of collecting all the logs," said the FBI's Dick.An FBI official said the applicable statute, Title 18 US Code Section 1030 (a) 5A, would be applied "when a person or persons knowingly transmits a program information code or command and as a result of such conduct intentionally causes damage."Other major sites who were under attack also included,ZDNet.com,E~Trade and Excite.The computer's at several California Universities were infiltrated prior to the attacks and may have been used to launch the shut downs.In April of 2000 a teenage hacker from Canada known as mafiaboy was arressted for the attack on CNN's web site.Police in Canada stated mafiaboy's lack of stealth and downright sloppiness led to his capture.Mafiaboy's capture was because of two desktop computers at the Univerisity of Berkley,Ca. he allegedly hacked which led to the assault on CNN.

Reno: 'We Must Punish Mafiaboy:

2000 APRIL: On April 19,2000 Attorney General Janet Reno said Wednesday a 15-year-old boy arrested in Canada for jamming Yahoo, Amazon.com, eBay, and CNN.com in February must face punishment. Canadian police in Montreal announced charges against the 15-year-old hacker known online as "Mafiaboy" for jamming several sites for four hours Feb. 8. "I think that it's important first of all that we look at what we've seen and let young people know that they are not going to be able to get away with something like this scot-free," Reno told reporters on Capitol Hill. "There has got to be a remedy, there has got to be a penalty." Reno said the U.S. government continued to work with industry on that incident and others, now that law enforcement has shown it can crack cyber-attack cases. "I believe this recent breakthrough demonstrates our capacity to track down those who would abuse this remarkable new technology, and track them down wherever they may be," she said.The February attacks alarmed Internet users across the globe, cost Web sites millions of dollars in revenue and shook the e-commerce industry because of the apparent ease with which major sites were made inaccessible.In the assault, attackers took over computers around the world by remote control and used them to bombard victims' sites with so much data that legitimate users could not get through. The hacking community is skeptical that the Canadian Royal Mounted Police have nabbed the real perpetrator of February’s highly publicized denial of service attacks."I’m highly skeptical," said B.K. DeLong, a member of Attrition.org, an Internet security group that monitors and archives website cracks and defacement. "I don't think they've found the person who did the attacks. I think law enforcement is stalling the press and public to keep them off their backs while they find the real person," DeLong said. DeLong said his skepticism was based on what appears to be a paucity of evidence linking "Mafiaboy" to the attacks.DeLong said law enforcement had already blundered in the case with the arrest of Coolio, a.k.a. Dennis Moran, who was detained by New Hampshire police in March in relation to the attacks, but later was charged with the unrelated defacement of a Los Angeles Police Department anti-drug site. "I think they should show some definite evidence how they got this guy," said Scully, editor of Cipherwar, a technology and politics site. "Chat list logs are not enough." Scully said that law enforcement agencies have a poor record of finding and charging cyber-criminals, as evidenced by the four years notorious computer hacker Kevin Mitnick was incarcerated awaiting trial.

A'Hacking the Military Will Go:

2000 JANUARY; In a move to enlist hackers as part of the nation's defense,the US military is drafting a plan to penetrate and disrupt the computers of enemy nations, officials said Wednesday. "If you can degrade the air defense network of an adversary through manipulating 1s and 0s, that might be an elegant way to do it," said General which is coordinating the effort.Myers told reporters that Pentagon planners are currently devising general hacker-war procedures, which must be approved by the Secretary of Defense and should be complete by October. In October 1999, the Space Command took over the job of protecting Defense Department computers from hacker attacks. But its new roles raise some knotty questions. For instance, should the military be involved in defending vital military communications when they travel over commercial networks? Should online attacks on an enemy's infrastructure be viewed as an act of war, and should such attacks be approved by the president, Congress, or the Pentagon? Myers admitted the answers are still unknown. "A very big part of what we do is to work through the policy and legal parts." One option -- in a kind of unilateral arms-control agreement -- is for the US to pledge not to launch electronic attacks in hopes that international law will follow. It's seems to be what China which last year asked the UN General Assembly to investigate the issue and Russia both want. But for now, the Pentagon is readying its platoons of hackers. "The services are trying to attract the best and the brightest to come into this area," Myers said. "We think we can do that because we are going to be working on leading-edge technology, we'll give them the right tools, and they'll be doing something for their country." The Pentagon's announcement, which has been quietly discussed for nearly a year, comes at a time when military worries about hackers are at an all-time high.Officials had fretted that attacks would increase on Y2K eve, though government sources say only one minor incident took place.Military networks reportedly experienced over 18,500 intrusions last year, compared to 5,844 in 1998, though some critics have questioned the methodology used to determine those figures. Back in 1997, a war-game exercise named Eligible Receiver reportedly showed that enemy hackers in this case, ones playing the part from the National Security Agency -- could bring down 911 phone service and power grids in some cities. The military's NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network) carries non-secret information, while the SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) handles more sensitive data. The Pentagon plans to make cyber blitzes on a foe’s computer networks astandard war tactic, the incoming number two U.S. military officer said Wednesday.‘If you can degrade an air defense network of an adversary through manipulating ones and zeros, that might be a very it as opposed todropping 2,000-pound bombs on radars.’ — AIR FORCE GEN. RICHARD MYERS The formal establishment of a cyberwar-fighting doctrine will build on covert military and intelligence capabilities that have been scattered in “black” programs in the past.Critics have warned that the United States is opening a Pandora’s box in moving to integrate “information warfare” tools into military doctrine. “Those same tools would likely be a bigger threat to our systems than to those of any potential opponent,” said Kawika Dagui of the Financial Information Protection Center, a Washington-based industry trade group.

FBI Computer Expert Accused of Hacking

2000 Friday, March 24,:Max Ray Butler seemed to be at the top of his game. For two years, the computer expert was a confidential source for an elite FBI computer crime squad, helping to ferret out scofflaws on theInternet.Butler, also known as Max Vision, was also a self-described ``ethical hacker'' from the Silicon Valley who boasted that he could test the security of any computer system by penetrating it.But Butler's cyber activity went too far, federal authorities say. Butler, 27, of Berkeley appeared in federal court in San Jose yesterday on a 15-count federal indictment charging him with hacking into computers used by the University of California at Berkeley, national laboratories, federal departments, air force bases across the country and a NASA flight center.The indictment, handed down March 15, said Butler caused ``reckless damage'' as a result of intrusions in May 1998. Butler was also charged with possession, with intent to defraud, of 477 passwords belonging to customers of a Santa Clara- based Internet service provider. The case underscores the potential risks involved when law-enforcement agencies use confidential informants with access to sensitive information.``Sources are often very close to criminal activity, and sometimes they cross the line,'' said Special Agent George Grotz, an FBI spokesman in San Francisco.Grotz declined to say how Butler became an FBI informant and whether he was a federal source at the time of the alleged crimes. Grotz said Butler is no longer associated with the agency. Friends of the suspect told the Associated Press that Butler was caught possibly violating the law several years ago and began working with the FBI to avoid charges. Seth Alves, 27, told the news agency that Butler was unfairly targeted after refusing to comply with an FBI request.

The Kevin Metnick Saga
The famous San Francisco defense lawyer Tony Serra doesn't use a computer.It's no surprise then,that Serra has never defended anyone accused of a computer crime.He hasn't even come close in his 37-year legal career. "I do dope and murder, man," he says."That's all I've done my entire life." As in defending the likes of Proposition 215, BlackPanther Huey Newton and Ellie Nesler, the woman convicted of gunning down her child's molester.Serra once offered to defend Ted Kaczynski. The Unabomber readily accepted the offer but a judge wouldn't allow it.But all of that was before Kevin Mitnick, the mostrevered martyr of hackerdom.Mitnick is the most notorious member of an emerging class of cybercriminals. Over the last decade, he has faced three federal prosecutions for hacking into other people's computers and related charges, and is now facing a case in state court.Now even the 64-year-old Serra, who knows far more about Tibetan prayer flags and Native American rituals than he does about HTML and encryption, says he's looking forward to going to trial. "I view this as a political case," he says.Indeed, political cases are Serra's specialty, and he is the poet laureate of defense attorneys who successfully cast their clients as victims of oppressive government forces.

Mr. Mitnick Goes to Washington
March,2000 WASHINGTON -- Kevin Mitnick, a convicted computer cracker deemed so dangerous that he must remain unplugged for now, urged Congress on Thursday to beef up information security practices throughout the U.S. government to prevent people like him from breaking in. "I have gained unauthorized access to computer systems at some of the largest corporations on the planet, and have successfully penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed," he said.To thwart such exploits, Mitnick -- whose story was the basis for the best-selling books "Cyberpunk" and "Takedown" and a coming Hollywood movie -- suggested each U.S. government agency assess the risk to its systems and do a cost-benefit analysis on protecting them. "Implement policies, procedures,standards, and guidelines consistent with the risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses," he said in testimony to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.Mitnick, 36, told senators he pierced security at one victim company, Motorola, by persuading employees to cough up passwords on the assumption he was one of them. Mitnick walked out of a federal prison in Lompoc, California, on 21 January. He had been behind bars for nearly five years on an indictment alleging, among other things, violating probation from an earlier conviction and illegal possession of computer files stolen from such companies as Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc., and Sun Microsystems Inc. Mitnick pleaded guilty on 16 March 1999, to five counts of wire fraud and computer fraud. Under a plea deal he was given credit for about four years served while awaiting trial.

Hacker Kevin Mitnick Back Online
JULY 2000:LOS ANGELES A computer hacker who led the FBI on a three-year manhunt while allegedly causing millions of dollars in damage to technology companies now has federal permission to pursue work as a computer consultant or online writer. It's a "180 degree change" in the restrictions previously enforced by Kevin Mitnick's probation officer, Mitnick attorney Donald Randolph said Wednesday. Under terms of his 1995 plea agreement, Mitnick had been barred from any contact with computers, cellular phones or any other technology capable of online access. After his release from prison in January 2000, his probation officer also barred him from speaking publicly or writing about technology-related issues and from taking any job that might give him access to a computer. Mitnick, 36, challenged the limitations, and a federal judge last month ruled such blanket decisions were unacceptable without consideration of the specific offers. His federal probation officer informed him this week that he could pursue some computer-related work, Randolph said. Among the jobs approved: writing for Steven Brill's online magazine Contentville, speaking in Los Angeles on computer security, consulting on computer security and consulting for a computer-related television show. Randolph said he believes Mitnick is considering taking advantage of all opportunities, though he remains barred from leaving Southern California. "We are pleased with the decision because we think it lends itself to the rehabilitation of Kevin," said attorney Sherman Ellison, who also represents Mitnick. "It's also constructive for the community to use this man's brain for the benefit of the community." Mitnick spent five years in prison after FBI investigators traced his electronic footprints to a Raleigh, N.C., apartment in 1995. He is said to have cost companies millions of dollars by stealing their software and altering computer information. The victims included Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems, and the University of Southern California. (Said but not completely proven.)

FBI charges teen with defacing anti-drug site
2000 March; CONCORD, N.H.--A 17-year-old computer hacker questioned by FBI agents about February's crippling attacks on big Internet sites was charged yesterday with defacing an anti-drug Web page months before the spree. Dennis Moran surrendered without incident at his home in Wolfeboro and was charged as an adult with two counts of unauthorized access to a computer system. Each charge carries up to 15 years in prison. He was released on $5,000 bail, and no arraignment was set. Moran, a high school dropout who lives at home, is charged with hacking a Los Angeles Police Department anti-drug Web site in November. He allegedly used the Internet name "Coolio" and defaced the site with pro-drug slogans and images, including one depicting Donald Duck with a hypodermic syringe in his arm.

Teen Hacker's Home Raided
2000 January; The home of a 16-year-old Norwegian hacker, who has become the Helen of Troy of the hacking world, was raided Monday.Police entered Jon Johansen's Larvik home and confiscated two personal computers, a mobile phone, and several computer disks, Norwegian newspapers reported. The National Authority of Fraud Investigation, the agency responsible for enviromental, computer, and economic crime in Norway, was apparently responding to the two federal lawsuits filed in the United States by the Motion Picture Association of America against several hackers who posted a code that breaks through the encryption code of DVDs. Johansen is co-founder of a group called MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), and it was there, he told Wired News, that he worked with others in developing the code. He has never named those authors publicly. Johansen says he posted the code because he wanted to help make a DVD player available for the Linux OS.

YEAR 2001

Anna Kournikova Virus 2001
FEB 2001 : "OnTheFly," the 20 year old man from the Netherlands who claims to have created the Anna Kournikova worm that hammered e-mail servers around the world on Monday, February 13, 2001 surrendered to Dutch police on Wednesday. "I went to the police this morning, together with my parents. They have got my computer and my CDs and stuff., I really screwed up," he said in an e-mail sent early Wednesday. In over a dozen e-mails, OnTheFly's reaction to the rapid spread of the worm he had written quickly changed from smug pride to shock and then to sorrow." I never dreamed it would spread so fast, It only took me one minute to write it. When I started seeing the news reports about how fast it was spreading all I could think was Oh GOD!! So many infections? How could this happen?" OnTheFly apparently was close to being apprehended when he turned himself in. A partner of security firm F-Secure said they had tracked him down and informed the FBI where he could be found. OnTheFly created the Anna Kournikova worm using one of the many virus building kits that are available for download over the Internet. He said he decided to write and release the virus partly out of admiration for Kournikova, a 19 year old Russian tennis star, and a desire to test his theory that Internet users were not taking measures to protect themselves from viruses.
I think they are elite? No, I don't. I think they are petty criminals."

Hackers Are Now Terrorists in England

Of Course this Excludes Big Brother From Hacking You
2001 FEB: Under British law, cyber terrorists, known to you and me as hackers, are now to be treated the same as terrorists such as the IRA. The Terrorism Act 2000, which became law in February 2001, has broadened the definition of terrorist organizations to include those who plan violent protests in the UK (even if the protest takes place abroad). Members of, and fundraisers for, such organizations will be subject to the law. But under the banner of cyber crime, hackers have also been written into the definition of a terrorist. Anyone who tries to "seriously disrupt an electronic system" with the intention of threatening or influencing the government or the public, and they do it to advance "a political, religious or ideological cause", then they're a terrorist. This sounds like an impossibly vague law and critics are split on whether it will simply be unworkable or whether mild offenders will be treated as dangerous criminals. The scariest aspect to this is the combination of Acts that Friend of the People Jack Straw has seen fit to make law. A whole range of nightmare scenarios are easily visible. The fact is that it is right to prepare strong laws against cyber crime as it will inevitably become a large problem very quickly as more and more of the world is networked together. Getting laws in before it kicks off would also prevent the current legislative mess where the Internet has overridden copyright and country specific laws. However, it would be good to remember that the Act replaces the 1973 Prevention of Terrorism Act which was brought in to help the police and secret services deal with the situation in Northern Ireland. That gave the police special powers to stop, search, arrest and detain anyone suspected of terrorist activity. I repeat the word suspected.