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Cracker Endangered Astronauts
DAldredge was one of a huge number of people that wrote in with the news that the BBC has
reported that a cracker(s) endangered the lives of astronauts in 1997 by "overloading NASA's communication system". Charming.
Big Brother says:
"Just another example of why we need stronger anti-hacker laws and more government control of the internet. We need to keep information about hacking from reaching our precious youth. In addition, we'll have to raise taxes to pay for this crackdown.
"We should also be using genetic screening and peer reporting to catch troubled teenagers early so they can be treated."
In retrospect that phrasing was poor. She was charged with felony murder, but the DA was pushing for the death penalty. The reasoning was that the gunman would have faced the death penalty, and since felony murder means all actors are equally guilty it follows that *she* should face the death penalty as well. So it was a capital "felony murder" case.
;-)
I find that reasoning dangerous... but I grew up in Florida (and had a HS classmate shot in the chest) during an era when the laws actually encouraged convenience store robbers to herd everyone into the freezer and execute them. Extending felony murder to include capital offenses for all is exceedingly dangerous - it means that instead of one person with nothing to lose you now have a carload of armed, desperate people with nothing to lose.
(My point stands, BTW. If the underlying felony was the burglary then the DA should have either charged all or charged none. To charge Lisl alone means that she and Mattheaus committed a felony that the others did not.)
Regarding "intent" - I don't disagree that intent is, and should be, irrelevant. My concern is the other half of the equation - casuality.
Nobody can dispute the causality of a death due to a stray bullet or fleeing (or pursuing) vehicle. I'm even willing to concede a causal connection between a bomb in a public space and a subsequent heart attack.
But I *don't* see a legally significant causal connection between someone helping to subdue a thief and a subsequent heart attack. I can't ignore the possibility that he was going to die that day regardless of what he did that morning, and that's enough to form reasonable doubt about the causal connection between the thief's acts and the subsequent death.
I might be willing to let this slide if the dead man was the victim -- but he wasn't. As I understand the situation he was a bystander who *choose* to get involved. He could have let the thief escape, or other men subdue the thief. What if he suffered a heart attack after chasing the thief (e.g., to get a description of his car?) What if he hopped into a car, pursued him, and died in an accident after blowing through a stop light or stop sign? At some point the victim *has* to bring on his own death by misadventure, instead of felony murder.
Finally, I know that suicide is *normally* an independent, intervening act that breaks liability... but that's not always the case. E.g., a recent case out of Orlando involved a woman who wanted to stop her daughter (IIRC) from refusing medical treatment (= a form of suicide) since the woman would then be charged with murder. (That also follows the ancient tradition that it's murder even if the victim survives, but dies from injuries within a given period - traditionally a year and a day.) My example was a bit more extreme, but that's the nature of slippery-slope arguments
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
But when reading that this poor bisquit actually managed to overload the communication system I was perplexed. A bisquit could cause a short-circuit perhaps, or more likely the opposite, small particles could find their way into electrical couplings, thereby making bad connections, but overloading...
I did't understand it untill I actually read the article. And I've been sitting in front of the computer programming all day. I'm scared, is this normal?
Jurisdiction is actually pretty straightforward - it is an American flagged aircraft in international airspace, with domestic departure and arrival points. It is no more exotic than a murder on a United Airlines 747 flying between LA and Hawaii.
(This, incidently, is a fscking big question with "Sea Haven." If it's truly sovereign, I can grab a helicopter, land there, shot everyone up, and get away clean because no civil authority exists to prosecute me.)
On an unrelated note, Federal land has historically either been a military base (and everyone was subject to military jurisdiction) or public lands where felonies were handled by the state. You couldn't get away with murder, but you could get away with most misdemeanors if you were off in a remote forest or beach. The car changed all of that, since you can now import blue-noses to be offended at the behavior of people who are deliberately trying to get away from the cookie-cutter norm.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
CNN has a story where NASA disputes this whole thing.
-k
It's probably too late for most readers, but I just saw the following update on CNN, in which NASA denies that the astronauts were ever in danger.
|_34R|\| T0 SP311, H|_||\/|P|_1cK
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
PLEASE DON'T USE SO MANY CAPS. USING CAPS IS LIKE YELLING!
Actually, I love brits so I'll rescind the above flame. Gormenghast kicked ASS, and the BBC miniseries wasn't too bad either. The final episode aired this weekend. got 'em all on tape. Rock on!
or do you think it was Zest? I got some Saltines on some wires once and they do indeed corrode them. I guess it's the salt? I can see how that would affect communications. :) -B
No 575?
He must be out fly-fishing;
I'll fill in today
Most say "hack," some crack.
People argue semantics;
Does anyone care?
Astronauts go up
Cracker breaks in for a thrill
News at eleven
NASA desk jockey
Surfs the net to pass the day
Brave men die for porn
It must have been a bloody big room if you could have got spacecraft into orbit in it!
Suddenly, everyone's a critic but doesn't seem to have thought about the basics of the situation. You're going to need to feed the telemetry from several base stations around the world in different countries. Like hell you're going to run a completely isolated network, unless its absolutely required, which in this case it appears not to have been.
Oh, i thought they meant the food!
Why won't slashdot let me change my terrible username
C'mon Moderator! Bring it on! Smack my Karma! I love it!
A thread full of trolls and you single out one silly little post. GET A LIFE!
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Say it with me everybody: IANAL.
Most states (Including Florida and Texas where the system is likely located) have Felony Murder statutes. Which state (in essence) that any death that occurs as a result of a commision of any Felony, regardless of whether that death is premeditated, or even intentional can be tried and punished as First Degree Murder.
If you rob a jewlery store and some old guy dies of a heart attack from the shock of the robbery, you're on the hook for First Degree Murder.
I have a feeling that if you're fiddling with systems that monitor an Astronaut's vitals and one of them dies up there you can damn well bet you're going to be tried for Felony Murder.
<Conspiracy theory mode on>
First off, I don't believe that the folks at NASA are actually stupid enough to run such critical systems "connected to the Internet", accessible to Joe Cracker. (I mean, thats asking for trouble, come on)
Secondly, I can't help but notice that the press currently has many extremely negative portrayals of hacking/cracking, sometimes going beyond the point of misinformation.
It seems that whenever the government wants to create new laws to invade the privacy of their citizens, they start throwing around the usual scary terms like "terrorists" and "paedophiles" - often with seemingly random news articles cropping up about some or other paedophile caught ensnaring kiddies on irc - normally it's enough to pacify the majority of sheeple. This looks similar to me.
When I see all the negative articles about destructive hacker/crackers, I wonder if it's just the usual media sensationalism, or if somehow these articles are merely preparing the public for the next set of sweeping laws that will destroy our rights in the name of protecting us from these evil crackers. (Consider the recent mess in the UK with the RIP bill wrt encryption etc)
<Conspiracy theory mode off>
Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid. But in general I think it's a good idea to take everything you see/hear/read (particularly from mainstream media) with a bucket of salt.
yep ;) you meant something like www.l337d00dz.com
Yeah, something like that.
Eh...
Whoa, now. If you ("you" being a nasty evil cracker and not you personally) hack into a hospital and access patient systems, and can recognize what you've hacked into, then you have knowledge of what you're doing. If patients die because you messed something up, you're liable for their deaths. You knew full well that such a result was possible, and a good prosecutor can pin murder on you.
The NASA thing is a little different. If the cracker recognized that the system he accessed had to do with astronauts' health, and his actions then later caused their deaths, you could probably jack it up to murder one, same as the hospital. Deaths while committing a crime, under many state and federal statutes, gets you at least murder 2, if not murder 1.
If the cracker didn't realize the full extent of his penetration or recognize what systems he accessed, then manslaughter or reckless homicide would probably be called for.
Of course, there's jurisdictional issues as well. Actions against U.S. astronauts would likely fall within federal jurisdiction. Actions against a hospital's patients, on the other hand, would likely result in two separate state charges _ one for the hospital and one for wherever the cracker was _ plus federal charges for interstate crimes.
Now, a cracker may not get the chair for these kind of crimes, but geez...if a cracker kills a ward full of people, there's got to be something more than a few years in prison for simple stupidity, no? We're talking about lives here.
Mike
Makes perfect sense to me that they'd have to have some form of larger-than-local area networking, even on the computers that communicate with the shuttle. Mission Control happens at at least two separate sites during any given mission: Takeoff and landing happen at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while the actual mission is controlled from Houston. The transition between the two sites has to be seamless... which means networked computers and communications. Not necessarily the internet, maybe even just private communications over phone lines... but that may be just enough for some wise guy looking to make his name by cracking a government system.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
What's more, notice how the AC said "so you know how to use a tracert"? That can only mean one thing...
:-)
This guy is a DOSalyte!!!
Only dos uses tracert due to its eight-character limit. All the Unixen instead use traceroute in its correct, spelling-enhanced form.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
In honor of the Fourth of July (even though I would probably have still posted this response on any other day of the year!)...
:-)
:-)
(rant on)
I am not a doctor, but I don't run to the doctor because I am totally incompetent in deciding my own care.
I am not a CPA, but I don't run to the accountant every month so he can pay my bills, deposit my paycheck, etc.
I am not a lawyer, only someone with a graduate-level technical education which included some (not much) coverage of legal issue and a strong layman's interest in Civil Liberties law. But I guess you're right - in this field, alone, I am a drolling idiot who has absolutely no opinions of value to any other person.
Tell you what... why don't you take my voter card and cast my vote for me as well. I'm obviously incompetent to use my franchise.
I'm not picking on you, really, but this post demonstrates the type of arrogance that makes lawyers one of the most despised professions around. The mere fact that you feel the need to tell intelligent, educated people that they must remain silent unless they are practicing lawyers (or why else would you feel the need to mention your insurance?) says volumes about just how screwed up this country is.
If someone was asking -- or offering -- specific advice about a specific problem I would back you 100% in any statement that the person needs to see a practicing lawyer. Likewise, if someone has a sucking chest wound I'll tell them that they need to see a doctor, not someone who knows just enough first aid to get by while hiking.
But the vast majority of the "IANAL" posts I have seen refer to general questions that should be comprehensible to the average citizen... or we do not have a democracy. What is felony murder? Are slashdot comments copyrighted? Usenet comments? Small source files without any copyright notice? Can I be fired from my job (or suspended from my public high school) for possessing a magazine I bought at Barnes & Nobel during lunch? Can a cop demand to see what files are on my laptop? Even in an airport? (Read the letters in the summer issue of 2600 if you think the last few questions seem silly.)
The alternative which you suggest, whether you realize it or not, is to formally give up the American Experiment and recognize a two-class society. The upper class is practicing lawyers, and everyone else is banned from filing any grievance with the government or seeking redress (you know, those forgotten bits from the First Amendment), from <i>pro se</i> representation before either court or government agency, etc.
(Hmm, another poster's comments about his right to use an archaic title of nobility, "esquire," suddenly take on a whole new meaning. Last time I checked *any* American could add Esq. to their name if they desired. Of course I know that some lawyers were starting to use it, but I thought it was considered a bit of silliness by the mainstream of the bar. But it now sounds like at least one state has changed that....)
Do I think <i>pro se</i> representation is smart? For any serious problem, no. In fact, the only thing dumber than <i>pro se</i> is getting legal advice from slashdot.
But for *routine* issues, I get *very* alarmed when a practicing lawyer tells me that the law has gotten so complex that only a lawyer can say anything about it. When I hear that, I don't want to shut up, I want to kick out every member of Congress and elect a bunch who will pass laws that can be understood by the people who are expected to live by them. You cannot have a meaningful democracy if the law is "too complex" for any but a handful of voters to understand.
(rant off)
An aside, since the last paragraph is often followed by a statement supporting direct democracy or citizen referendums - the initiative process terrifies me because it tends to *write* extremely bad laws. (With a few notable exceptions, the electorate generally doesn't *pass* those laws, which is more than I can say about our legislature.
However, I find myself constantly defending actions that expand the power of citizen initiatives because the alternative is worse - I would rather have the people propose, and pass, bad law than Our Benevolent Lords and Masters of the Legislature have sole say in what laws are even discussed.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
--
This space left intentionally blank.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/07/03/nasa.hack er.02/index.html
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
- Tasty crispy salty treat
- Hacker dude
- Racial slur for 'white guy'
- Mediocre early '90's alternative band
Or, it could have been all of the above... now THAT would be a story!Bloody well ought to be murder in my opinion...or at the very least(and I MEAN very least) it should be First Degree Manslaughter. Goddess forbid but can you imagine the hellstorm that would have spawned in the media if the Challenger disaster was discovered to have been caused by a script kiddie?
Personally if these jokers want to have fun cracking systems, why don't they get into teams and crack eachother's systems. Make it a contest. Is Billy's new firewall able to withstand Mollie's attacks? At least they'd learn a marketable skill of defending systems.
As for why the 'ell are these fscking morons are posting they mission critical systems on the 'net is simple...they are fscking morons. I'm half expecting to hear about the school that was nuked by some packet monkey not wanting to have to take that test.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Everyone who's sane knows that hackers:
While crackers do the opposite:
- Contributed in a mass effort to BREAK the Internet
- Revolve around exploiting everything and breaking security, causing problems from mild nuisances to outright disasters
- Are deeply involved in ActiveX trojans, Java exploits, BO2K, Netbus, and SubSeven, write software that not solves problems, but CREATES problems
- Are deeply involved in 0wn1ng p30pl3, ha><0ring non-31337, and other cracking rituals
Uhh now here's a quote: So listen up and use correct usage. Crackers Are Not Newbie Hackers. CANNH. One more quote:Oooooooh, if you thought that was misleading with the title cracker, then you are not a hacker, and you do not have any reason to be here. If you don't know standard /. usage of the word Cracker, which we all really know inside...means a person who compromises security. Duuh. Uhh just saying, I got it the first time. I knew that someone(s) allegedly cracked NASA Mission Control.
Keep in mind, these are the same folks who, just after I started working at DEC, had a major outtage of one of the Alpha / OSF/1 clusters that monitor MCC (Mission Control) while the shuttle was looking for a landing window. After working with them for 9hrs straight and then handing off the call to someone else, and eventually sending someone physically OUT there, the problem turneed out to be:
6mo before, they had the exact same problem. At that time they were instructed that their disk firmware on the shared SCSI bus were all horribly out of date, and needed updating, and the disks WOULD fall asleep if they didn't upgrade it. If they didn't, the side effect would be the cluster would take a bit longer to fail over. Oh, and it'd be nice if they upgraded to both a version of the OS still supported and put on the latest patches.
Needless to say, NONE of that was ever done and the big lash up was one of their monkies trying to FORCE a failover of NFS services and disks from node to node. In direct contravention to what they were told by DEC.
This was just the beginning of my disillusionment with every corporate group I've ever thought highly of.
-- Riding the Winds of Fires Lit in Ancient Days
First VaxPunx post!
Heh, Motive IS NOT a factor in proving guilt/innocence in America in a Murder case.
Movies will make you think that it is but no sadly you can be convicted guilty with 0 motive.
Manslaughter/second degree murder can be considered crimes of passion where the crime is commited on the spur of the moment, First degree murder is a pre-meditated act/
heh, when I first read this post, I thought that cracker of the edible variety (read: saltine) had endangered the astronauts by jamming an electronic gizmo.
I thought, well they won't be eating crackers in space anymore now.
Complete (physical) isolation is very hard to reach in such cases. You often need to make data from the spaceship available to the outside world (processed telemetry et al) or to connect the control center to other multipurpose LANs. As you said, partial isolation may be done using only outgoing connections and firewall devices, but if seeing how an active ftp connection is done, you can understand this is no panacea, especially if you are low on $ for your project.
;)
Oh, by the way, take a look at this GOA report. It states that using trust relations between hosts you can reach some of NASA's critical systems.
I don't want to be an astronaut anymore
--
gdon
...but...as you SHOULD have known as a juror (which of course you arn't told)...the Jury makes final decision. It does NOT matter what the law says...if the Jury says Not Guilty...then not Guilty it is.
The Jury doesn't have to answer to anyone (unless it can be shown the the jury was tampered with). This is the whole reason a jury exists...it is the FINAL Check on the system.
In fact the Jury can even find a person innocent simply because they believe the law itself is wrong. This is a tradition that goes back to the very beginnings of the Jury system.
The law is simply a set of rules...luckily the people who made those rules realised that no set of rules will ever be perfect (too bad they didn't also realise that rules are a figment of our collective overactive imagination...just like power and order and authority...) and they built in a saftey catch (unfortunaly one that doesn't always work...partially because Jurors are not informed about the true nature of their charge).
In fact, these days I am sorry that I found a way to get out of jury duty. I refuse to vote (don't believe in it) or take part in most things,...but I realise now that the Jury *IS* the final check and balance. Its the one place where ordinary people, without the delusions of grandure and "con-artist" personalities needed to hold public office, can actually make a difference.
The next time I am up for it...I will serve proudly....I think. Actually...I have moral objections to the entire concept of sending people to jail...I don't know if I could find a person guilty knowing what was in store for them...stripped of their freedom to satisfy vengence, done in the name of justice.....sigh.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
See, this is why they have to keep their food in those little plastic tubes; crackers are just too dangerous, they get caught up in the communications systems.
--
He did manage to land it safely.
t
I wonder what type of cracker caused this. Maybe one of those evil ritz with peanut butter ones.
Oh my god, its a saltene (sp?)! Kill it! Kill it!
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
Two recent examples from Colorado:
1) Group burglarizes an apartment (supposedly one member recently moved out and was "retrieving" personal possessions - I don't recall details). Couple in one car is seen by police, pursued. Woman refuses to pull over when cop flashes his lights; male passenger fires gun at pursuing officer. Later, the woman is in custody when male fatally shoots a cop, then takes his own life.
I'm not sure what the underlying felony was (I though refusal to pull over was a misdemeanor),
but she was charged with CAPITAL felony murder. She was ultimately sentenced to life-in-prison, no parole.
2) A man attempts to rob a grocery store. A group of patrons subdue him and hold him for police. A few hours later one of those men suffers a fatal heart attack.
The DA makes noises about charging the would-be thief with felony murder since the man suffered a fatal heart attack as a direct consequence of the excitement and exertion he experienced that day. (I don't recall if the DA actually filed the charges.)
These cases have opened up a local debate on the felony murder statutes. IANAL, but the second case seems excessive - people die from heart attacks every day, and this sets a dangerous precedence. Could someone be charged with felony murder if a TV viewer suffers a heart attack after watching live TV coverage? What if a distraught victim subsequently commits suicide?
The first case is more consistent with the intent of felony murder statutes... but was strangely incomplete. The woman claimed that she was unable to pull over because the gunman threatened to shoot her if she did - and she had no way of knowing he would ultimately kill a cop. All she was trying to do was get some distance between them and the cops so he would stop shooting.
On the other hand, she did willingly participate in the burglary. On the gripping hand, none of the other people involved in the burglary (who were in a separate car) were charged with felony murder.
I didn't follow the case closely, so there may have been a legitimate underlying felony that applied to her alone. I, and many other people, are disturbed by the prospect she might have faced a possible death sentence because she offered a ride to the wrong person.
As for the scenario in question, the biggest issue seems to be jurisdiction. If one astronaut flips out and murders another, where is the trial held?
(Hint: the same problem occurs with aircraft and ships in international waters... and this "hacker" would be no different than someone on shore interfering with navigational gear that affects a vessel in international waters.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This quote doesn't say that a "hacker" penetrated the monitoring equipment, it says that a "hacker" overloaded "our system"(possibly being any computer on or near a NASA campus), and that the actions of this "hacker" interfered with the monitoring system. That still leaves open the possibility that the interference was an indirect effect of an attack somewhere else in "their system".
<rant to the ignorant>
Not that anyone's going to notice this. Looks like the highest rated posts are a close second to "hot British breakfast cereal" posts. Oh, don't open
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
I'm so sick of this hacker/cracker bs.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So, out of wild speculation just because I'm interested, if a cracker really screwed something up and the astronaut died as a result, is it murder? Manslaughter?
Cracking is all fine and good for 14 year old packet monkeys when they're doing it with each other's systems, but this is freakin' nuts.
BTW, why the hell are these systems even accessible in any way through the internet? I thought most of the government's really important systems had gotten hip to the fact that the only way to really be secure on the internet is to not be connected. And I can't imagine that the astronauts need yahoo stock quotes....
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Jeez, you don't think much of astronauts, do you? I mean, I'm a fortyone-year-old lifelong coward with no more right stuff than my daughter's panda, but if the doctor tells me that he can't read my heart beat I'm not going to figure my heart has stopped. I'd put it down to a minor equipment failure and be grateful that the sensor up my rectum isn't overheating.
"Ah, Michael, we're having trouble with the coffee machine in the lobby right now, so..."
"OHMYGOD, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
(He flies shuttle into the Sun)
Remember, these guys know that sometimes NASA can't handle the metric system AND THEY GO UP ANYWAY.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Ok, will somebody who is familiar with NASA fill me in here. Do astronauts in space always communicate with the space center in Houston? Is Houston the standard one used for communications or something? The only reason I ask is that if that is not the case, it seems awfully stupid to me that movies depicting spacecraft which take off from some non-Houston center, say, Cape Canaveral, (*cough* Armageddon *cough*), always have everybody talking back to Houston. "Houston, this. Houston, that. Roger, Houston" It makes me want to hear Houston say back "Goddamnit, shut up!...you took off from Cape Canaveral idiot: talk to them damnit!".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Information wants to be free like speech wants to be free, not like we want beer to be free.
I heard on the television that, "So far this year, NASA has repelled 500,000 attacks against their computers." There's probably a DDoS effect of attackers. That's amazing.
Keeping
But isn't one of the requirements for a murder charge intent
(IANAL)well maybe if they can prove that he knew it could cause an accident and maybe death, and he still kept on, they can (try) to prove he intended to do it.(/IANAL)
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
See, reading this, I really thought that on the space shuttle, a rogue Ritz (or perhaps a Wheat Thin) had somehow gotten into the communications hardware and somehow messed stuff up. I envisioned shuttle astronauts trying desperately to pull out a Saltine that had gotten wedged into a radio transmitter. Hoo boy did I laugh!
Then I realized it was a 'cracker' in the slashbot-speek sense - someone who does naughty things with computers. Much less funny.
I really, really think that "cracker" is a stupid and confusing thing to call "evil hackers". Personally I think all news organizations should start calling such people "hax0rs".
You listening, New York Times? j00 b3tt3r b3!@$
WTF is NASA doing putting their communications between space shuttle and Earth on a network that is connected to the internet? For real security, they should have the boxes through a firewall or 50, or have the boxes not even connected at all...
Didn't you ever watch that move with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy?
Spookily enough... Yup saw it on Friday. (Wargames). Fair enough. I guess I can believe that there's still a modem somewhere buried in NASA's huge computer network. Although I'd also expect it to be 1200 bps tops.
NASA endangered the astronauts' life by hooking their critical systems up to a public network. That so called 'cracker' is just a silly excuse to focus the blaim on a certain 'bad guy', instead of on the real cause: NASA's lame attitude towards security, especially in these critical situations.
I hate to beat on the victem but...I think they got what they deserved. Noone was actually hurt...but it should have sent a nice shock through them.
If a system is so important as to be monitoring vital signs of crew and allowing crucial comminication to a shuttle mission...then what the hell is it doing connected to the internet?
What...did they just put up a chocolate wall and think they were safe? They should wise up and come up with a better way, before someone actually gets hurt or killed.
I mean hell...if you really NEED that data to be available on the net...then you setup an inbetween host that just gets data pushed to it through a serial line or something.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Just sayin' is all
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
Actually it would be murder. Any deaths directly caused by the commision of a crime are murder. Period. Working on the assumption that cracking the NASA computers would be trespass, a crime, and that this action directly resulted in death, this idiot would have been charged with murder.
Whether she/he/they could have been successfully prosecuted is up for debate.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Vax will never die, NO!
'Wargames'.. Broderick broke into the WOPR (War Operations Programmed Response).
Well, it wasn't totally his fault. The box was supposed to play war games, and come up with a winning outcome. It wasn't supposed to launch missiles, etc. Just like in the NASA situation, some shithead forgot the principle of airgapping.
I've always wondered how they would have managed to put the WOPR back to work after it had the realization that 'The only winning move is not to play'.
.sig: Now legally binding!
i dont think i'll ever understand why these little asspunks find it necessary to extend their penii by proving how "leet" they are to their kid brother's girlfriend's 12 year old sister. these kind of games make everyone who knows the least thing about computers in generally look bad, and endangering lives is scraping the bottom of the barrel of already poor form. malicious cracking is and always will be a pasttime for common criminals. enough said.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?
I watched the BBC Documentary where this revelation was made, and the feeling I got was this.
The hackers (Crakers?) overloaded other systems which swamped the comunication system for among other things the vital signs of the crew. Nasa have lots of backups and so they were able to continue working. I think it had little effect on the mission. I think the point the BBC (and NASA) were making was that it COULD of been worse.
The first thing I thought when I saw the article was that the white man was bringin' the shuttle down or something. I thought it was a slanderous satire type thing aimed at honkeys. Kill WHITEY! note: nothing klymacks says reflects his beliefs
Run on pure emotion, driven by true insanity.
... if a cracker really screwed something up and the astronaut died as a result, is it murder?
There's a name for it: "felony murder." If, while commiting certain felony crimes, someone dies, the perpetrator is considered criminally responsible for that death. (Example: Some idiot with a gun holds up a convenience store. No shots are fired. The clerk has a heart attack and later dies.)
Details vary from (U.S.) state to state. I don't know where the crime would be considered to have occured; probably where the hacked server was physically located.
IANAL, but I was a juror in a trial where the charges were "assault and felony murder."
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
at NASA that said "Hey, lets allow remote access to operational systems!"
There are just some things that DON'T need access to the 'Net. This would be a prime example.
"Duh" about sums it up, wouldn't you say?
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
if you go to a wal-mart or target or something, you might be able to find it for about two rental charges worth. I found it for $7 and snagged it, and i think it was worth it, if only cause MB took more than a few minutes of typing to hack into their system.
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Here is a corresponding cnn story
Hackers that dot his type of shit is completely lame. You guys have no fuckin time on your hands.
Anybody who puts the sentence "Period." after a legal statement doesn't know shit about the law.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
about 5 minutes before this story hit the bbc news site, it was displaying 'Slicks Bikini Page' with some content I'm sure they didn't want, however despite having been cracked themselves they thought it would be better to post some story that happened years and years ago. Its actually annoying because now I'll never know exactly what happened since they're keeping quiet about the whole thing.
---
that's a pretty good viewpoint. - remind me to meta-moderate this comment up when i get some mod points.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Nice troll! I especially liked the liberal use of hyphens.
They aren't dangerous.
Saltines, now, those are deadly weapons. They've got sharp corners you could put an eye out with. Saltine manufacturers should be charged as a party to any cracker murder cases.
Their feeble pretence of producing a simple food product is almost as ridiculous as pointy Bic pens being simple writing implements. Who do you think started that saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword!"? It was their original ad campaign, when they first came out with their dirt cheap 99% plastic (undetectable by any metal detector) pointy stabbing weapons.
What do you mean "we"? Some of us are perfectly able to understand the meaning of hacker through the context, and apply the word to both computer criminal/vandal types and enthusiastic, adept computer users.
If NASA switches its astronauts to low-fat, low-salt crackers, then maybe their life functions won't be jeopardized.
The public outcry over this kind of negligence would be so great, the hacker would feel safer behind bars.
but when i read that the first time i was mentally picturing a saltine. i was wondering if maybe crumbs were falling into the controls or something like that....
just because it was cracked doesn't mean it was on the internet.. it could have been a dialup, or it could have been an insider. I would like to give NASA more credit than to put a system like that on the net.
I wonder if the cracker knew exactly what he was messing with.. someone who didn't want the americans to dock with the russians? Or just an accident that they decided to crack this system at this time..
wish
---
For example, if you shoot someone in the toe, and they end up bleeding to death, it will be murder provided you intentionally shot at them.
t
Sorry to disagree, but the hackers would be charged with 1st-degree murder, Party to a Crime. I was the head juror on a murder case where a guy arranged to rob his drug dealer, and in the process, killed him. The law read that if you intend to commit a crime, and another crime is committed as a result of your actions, you are responsible for both crimes. Since hacking into a government agency is considered a crime, if an astronaut died as a result of the hacking, the hacker would be liable for the death(s) of the astronauts.
It just goes to show that television courtroom shows are very inaccurate when it comes to the actual judicial system.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
is that the article says that only the vital signs monitoring communications were overloaded. I'm assuming when those are received, they are forwarded over the network to the NASA medical teams and that's where the cracker came into play, by consuming a lot of bandwidth. Other communications including telemetry are probably not sent over the same communication channels, so there was no danger of the cracker taking control of the shuttle like many people above speculate.
My God! even WIRED got it wrong. What is this world coming to? The Hackers' existence in literature and such preceded the popularization of the term in the wrong context by 20 years, yet we still see this bullshit.
I propose that we begin to use the word "reporter" to mean a spreader of unfounded gossip and lies, and "astronaut" to describe porn stars. Maybe a little of their own medicine will help them learn proper reporting.
Or Ally McBeal ;)
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
hehe. when i first scanned the headline i was thinking that a little square of grain had overwhelmed the system or something stupid like that.
This could be old-school cracking where people were actually attacking telco switching stations. It could interfere with just voice calls, ISDN or some sort of T1 or fiber optic that (although possibly handled by the telco) doesn't hit the backbone. For all we know it could have been someone scanning their voice mail system trying to find a way to make free long distance calls.
Even then, I strongly doubt that they have a "land line" hooked up to the shuttle. They go by radio wave / whatever-wave . So if someone managed to "overload" the system, they must have used something to screw with the radio signal (HERF gun maybe ?)
This article gives no useful information, and here we are getting all hot and bothered with something that could have been just another solar storm or what not.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Before you rip my television education I just want to point out that Law & Order had an episode where somebody died while they intended to commit another crime. The law they outlined was the same law that you outlined.
I'm also a qualified naval aviator (I watch Jag), a lifeguard (yeah Baywatch), and a witch (Charmed).
:-)
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
that this is in the slight bit true. They expect us to believe that a hacker or someone broke into these systems HAHA BULL-FUCKING-SHIT.
I just wanted to clarify what First Degree Murder actually is. It is murder with mallace and forethought. If you take a gun to your ex-wife's house with the intent to scare the shit out of her and wind up killing her, this is not first degree muder. Same with the mugging case. - Both of those, however would probably wind up in the second degree category. First Degree murder is reserved for people who kill with intent. They know they want to kill you, because they fucking hate you! and they'll get you if it's the last thing they ever do - sort of thing.
/etc/inetd.conf before getting on the internet with his freshly installed RedHat 6.0 distro, allowing some dickhead to use his box as one of 20 or so hops before breaking NASA's famously weak security.
Manslaughter is when someone dies as a direct consequence of your actions, although you had no intent, even at the time, of killing them. i.e. - drunk driving, and the cracking case this discussion is about. Fortunately for the cracker, it would be very easy to put reasonable doubt into the minds of a jury that most likely knows nothing about the logistics of cracking. Or - on the flip side - they could send some @home user to prison because he forgot to edit
But then again, that's life.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
...and first of all, the question is jurisdiction.
_ _
/popular/. Please note that I am posting as an Anonymous Coward so as to *not* be a Karma Whore.
Who has *criminal* jurisdiction in space?
There are a number of international treaties, to many of which the US is a signatory. Since the Shuttle is an American vessel, let's use U.S. jurisdiction as a first approximation, although the Hague Courts could also be involved in the unlikely event that the U.S. federal courts declined jurisdiction. In other words, two days after Hell freezes over. On board Mir, the law of the Confederation of Independent States (Russia etc) would apply. The Space Station has its own agreement.
....second of all, what *criminal code* governs?
Well, in the U.S., criminal law is a matter for each state. There is also federal law for denial of constitutional rights (the basis for charging the murderers of the three kids killed in the 1960's in Mississipi, of which the film "Mississipi Burning" was a ferocious distortion), such as denial of life and liberty or the regulation of interstate commerce. It's why crimes across state lines involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Certain international terrorism provisions would also attract federal jurisdiction.
... thirdly, which state's criminal code governs?
Well, that would probably be Florida, since that's where the Shuttle Orbiters launch from, unless it's from Vandenberg, in which case California gets first dibs. Yes, Johnnie Cochran could be hired to say "if it doesn't link, they're in the sink!" But I'm betting the feds would want to prosecute first and let the state prosecutors get sloppy seconds.
So, in summary, bet on federal jurisdiction using a combination of international treaties on terrorism, including hijacking and cyberterrorism, as well as federal constitutional law including denial of life. And once the feds have had a hundred year sentence imposed, expect either the Florida or California state prosecutors to pile on with another century or two of criminal convictions for re-election purposes of the local state prosecutor. In other words, Good Night, Irene.
_______________________________________________
BTW, folks, I am not an expert on Open Source, software in general or the inner workings of internal registries in Intel microprocessors. I promise not to post on those topics as long as the legal equivalent of "script kiddies" promise not to post messages starting with "IANAL, but in my utterly uninformed opinion...." Please, people. Know and post or shut up and learn.
Like all lawyers, I have to pay for malpractice insurance as part of my mandatory obligations as counsel. God Bless you all for Linux (proud user of Red Hat Linux since May, 1999), but if you don't know what you're talking about legally, *guessing* is not acceptable.
And please don't moderate up some well meaning ignoramus just because s/he says something legal that you like if you yourself don't know or care about the law. It's *not* "informative", just
I just got an e-mail from NASA that sort of retracts the news from BBC. I believe this more than BBC. The press release can be found at:
NASA Today/A>
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
This could be old-school cracking where people were actually attacking telco switching stations. It could interfere with just voice calls, ISDN or some sort of T1 or fiber optic that (although possibly handled by the telco) doesn't hit the backbone. For all we know it could have been someone scanning their voice mail system trying to find a way to make free long distance calls.
Scanning voice mail is probably the only one of the above actions that was likely in 1997. Running through some sort of call out service is not only free, it adds one more level of indirection when people try and track you down. I'm sure there are some more that don't involve the internet.
- My password is slashdot
excellent post. Thanks for informing us :)
the real at&t mix
Most trolls do not have a +1 posting bonus!
Absolutely true! Many of us have +2!
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
You can curently pick it up at half.com for $4.75(+ ~$1 shipping).
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
But isn't one of the requirements for a murder charge intent (at least under US law)? Assuming the cracker didn't intend to cause harm to the astronauts, I'd say you'd be stuck with manslaughter.
I like the previous posters suggestions: I Am Not A Lawyer, But I Watch Cop Shows. Sort of like, I Am Not A Technician, But My Son Knows About Computers.
Not that NASA shouldn't be concerned - any denial of service is always a concern, particularly for anything related to flight control - but claiming this was an "emergency" is debasing the term.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A simple traceroute confirms two of my suspicions!
a. My ISP is far far away
b. NASA has definitely not isolated their systems!
1 gateway.cec.wustl.edu (128.252.21.249) 2.246 ms 2.006 ms 1.168 ms
2 border2-verio.wustl.edu (128.252.5.254) 15.746 ms 156.419 ms 200.945 ms
3 spaceship.nasa.gov (xxx.xxx.xx.xxx) 5.46 ms 16.41 ms 20.45 ms
4 controlcenter.nasa.gov (xx.xxx.xx.xxx) 3.27 ms 6.08 ms 3.12 ms
5 lifesupport.apollo13.nasa.gov (xxx.xxx.x.xxx) 15.746 ms 156.419 ms 200.945 ms
6 galileo.jupiter.nasa.gov (xxx.xxx.xx.xxx) 2.246 ms 2.006 ms 1.168 ms
7 206.220.243.49 (206.220.243.49) 16.222 ms 14.125 ms 16.237 ms
8 fullnet.okcity.good.net (209.140.161.2) 32.884 ms 34.316 ms *
9 edug.gadwale.com (216.226.24.76) 35.227 ms 60.082 ms 63.112 ms
Goodness. I bet that those kids feel really 1337 too. "Look ma, I downloaded a script and killed some astronauts." "I learned all of my 1337 hacking from www.scriptkiddie.com, I downloaded this program and..."
*Dungeon Dweller smacks the script kiddie population*
Eh...
Call me a sceptic, but doesn't this whole thing smack just a little (just a real little) of FUD?
...
The next time they go to raid a script kiddie or a packet monkey, they can turn around and say "hey, remember our brave astronauts?"
NASA employ some of the best programmers working on some of the most amazingly designed systems, systems that we can all be looking to in awe, I'm just guessing that this is not the whole story
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
Murder: The unlawful killing of another human being that is premeditated (planned in advance) or is with malice aforethought (see that word). Most states divide murder into first and second degrees. First degree murder usually involves a willful and deliberate killing, such as by torture or lying in wait, or killing during the commission of another felony such as arson, rape, robbery, and kidnapping. Second degree murder is less serious, but still worse than manslaughter."
I believe that hacking into a government agency is a felony, so applying your definition of murder means the hacker would be charged with...MURDER!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Where Homer opens a bag of chips and they end up all over the Command Module. It could have happened with a Box of Ritz. Well, that's the first thought I had when I saw the headline...
Oh riiiight! WarGames, how could I have forgot!
:-)
Cheesy movie, but at the time (late 70's - early 80? ) it seemed really cool (hell, I had an acoustic coupler just like that! Probably around the same age too).
That's right -- the WOPR was dialing him back to play a game. 'Global ThremoNuclear War, anyone?'
Have to stop by the local video rental hole on the way home and see if I can pick it up. A bowl of popcorn, 3 or 18 beers and Ally Sheedy might just make my night!
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Panorama used to be good - or at least, I remember it being good, perhaps I just didn't have the web to compare it against in those days. Nowadays it's been largely dumbed down and become increasingly sensationalist, along with the rest of their (domestic terrestrial) output.
BBC News 24 (reputedly) and the World Service (from personal experience) are still good, though.
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I can just see the authorities rounding up linus torvalds as we speak
Officer:"FREEZE! Boy you in a heap of trouble!
Torvalds: "What are you talking about?!?!"
Office: (sternly) "We have evidence that you're a known HACKER!!!!!!!"
Torvalds: "Yes, that's right. I created....aaaaahhhh!"
Linus falls to the ground as several FBI attack dogs wrestle with his legs...He's sent up to San Quentin to spend the rest of his days bartering for pudding. Thanks to the good work of all our law enforcement officials for rounding up all of the sinister and evil HACKERS, lest one of them be allowed to roam free, creating things like Linux and the UBL.
Can someone send AP a copy of the Hacker Jargon File please!?!?!?!?!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Yes, it is. All the data systems within Mission Control are isolated within a LAN that has only a couple of connection points to the outside world. These connection points are guarded by firewall hardware. The firewalls allow only outgoing connections, and only then on a couple of ports. The machines connected to the outside of the firewalls only have a couple of services enabled, and only allow connections out to a limited set of IP addresses.
Furthermore, all connections to the outside world -- both voice and data -- can be physically disconnected at the throw of a switch.
A couple of years ago, a group I work with wanted to enable a new "tap" into the MCC telemetry systems. We wanted to allow outcoming data only, and proposed the same kind of firewall protection used by existing connection points. It still took nearly an act of Congress to get our tap installed.
I've talked with NASA's information-security people, and they're nothing if not overcautious. They're not all technical geniouses, but they do employ some. For example, I know that they employ "white-hat" crackers to perform penetration tests of their systems.
So, are NASA's security arrangements foolproof? Certainly not, but I have a hard time taking that article at face value. The suggestion that a cracker from somewhere out on the net penetrated NASA's systems doesn't seem as likely as other explanations: That the reporter got the story wrong -- that the problem wasn't actually within MCC. Or that there was a problem, but NASA's technical people, unable to come up with the real explanation, invented a cracker to blame. Or even that the cracker existed, but came from within the MCC.
--Jim
More likely it just doesn't always make sense to inform the astronauts that their life signs can't be read. Once they are able to establish some kind of verbal communication (which I think they did via mir) they should be able to make sure everything is ok wo/ asking questions. If they wen't ahead and told them straight out that they can't measure their heart beat, the astronauts may panic unnecessarily.
I can't skake the awful feeling that Space Oddity is coming true, though.
Ground control to Major Tom your circuit's dead...there's something wrong, can you hear me Major Tom...Can you hear me Major Tom?...
Information wants Coq
It's really not that hard to figure out, come on. I highly doubt that the space shuttle was directly linked to the internet, so stop saying that =p The "Crackers" as they're called were attacking NASA's base computers, which in turn could have dropped their systems and their communication with the shuttle. May seem a little redundant, but I think a few people may have said close to the same thing. The space shuttle comm. stuff should be put on a completely different network.
"Stop saying 'Don't quote me' because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying" -KMFDM
This has just popped out on the NASA Press Release mailing list. It sounds more plausible then the BBC who sound like they're in the middle of one of those "The Evil Hackers are going to destroy us all" fits that journalists are often prone to:
begin-----
COMPUTER HACKER NEVER ENDANGERED SHUTTLE ASTRONAUTS
News reports that a computer hacker endangered the lives of Space Shuttle
astronauts during a 1997 mission are wrong. A report from the British
Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) said a hacker compromised NASA computers, endangering the
lives of
American astronauts.
NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in
September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly
delayed
due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.
At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised.
The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer
systems.
There has never been an interruption of communication service with the
Shuttle due
to computer hacker attacks. The command and control communications links between
Mission Control and a Space Shuttle in orbit are extremely well insulated.
The 1997 incident is currently under investigation by NASA Inspector
General's
office.
end--
uh... my comment was supposed to be a joke.
Amazing magic tricks
This really depends on what state the crime was committed in. For example, in Washington, the so-called "felony murder rule" applies only when the crime being committed is burglary, arson, robbery, rape, or kidnapping (all in either the first or second degree, except for burglary which must be in the first). Here's the kicker: if you and a buddy are engaging in first degree burglary, robbery, or whatever, and your buddy pulls out a gun and kills someone during the crime, you will also be charged with first degree murder along with your friend (even if you didn't know your friend had the gun). So the specific intent of killing someone is not necessarily required. Even if the cracker doesn't qualify for the felony murder rule, he still might be nailed for first degree murder in some states. In WA, first degree murder may result when someone, under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life, engages in conduct that creates a grave risk of death and a death results from the conduct. Did this activity rise to that level? Who knows. We let juries decide such questions. What I would like to know is where the crime would be considered to have taken place if a death did result. I assume that the location of the hacker would be the logical place. However, if someone did die and the computer that was hacked into happened to be located in Houston, the answer to this question is more than trivial for the killer, what with Texas' death penalty happy courts. Which brings up an even weirder question: I wonder what will happen when a civilian kills someone in space, such as if two civies who buy a week on Mir decide they can't tolerate one another until landing. What court would have jurisdiction? Your safest bet is to stay on Earth and not hack into Space Shuttle life support computers.
Despite the original posters intentions I'm sure.
I couldn't for the life of me figure out why traceroute was an invalid command on my 98 box.
- My password is slashdot
It's scarry enough that people think cop shows are an accurate study of law :)
:) :)
:)
:)
IANAL but I real law books
and I think that just makes me dangerous.. not informmed
On a side note.... I rember a Tv soap actor (he PLAYS a doctor) accually comment that people think he is qualifyed to give medical advice.
That probably lead to a TV doctor saying on TV ads "I am not a doctor but I play one on TV" becouse apparently playing a doctor on TV gives him medical credability.
Just as watching cop shows seems to give people legal credability
I play a doctor on TV I watch cop shows and I have a high score on doom...
I guess that makes me a psyco-path with medical skill and legal knowladge...
Ok I lied... I don't watch TV or play anything on TV....
and I havn't played Doom in a long time...
I don't actually exist.
You've made a point I didn't think about (and I'm not sure if anyone else has either).... We are all assuming that the attack occured through the internet. (Again, this is IF the attack actually occured, something which I still don't believe is so). It could have been someone on the inside that did it, why does it have to be someone on the outside? What if it was some crazy college intern they hired.... who knows.
---
If cracking offense is considered a felony, then the cracker would face a murder charge. Otherwise, it would probably be manslaughter. From Oran's Dictionary of the Law-- Felony-murder rule The principle that if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a felony, then the killing is murder. The misdemeanor-manslaughter rule is similar: if one (even accidently) kills another while committing a misdemeanor, then the killing is at least manslaughter.
Reporters always blow things out of porportion - especially when they're British and they're talking about something American.
-----------------------
Subject: COMPUTER HACKER NEVER ENDANGERED SHUTTLE ASTRONAUTS
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 16:10:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Bob Jacobs/Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington, DC July 3, 2000
(Phone: 202/358-1600)
Ed Campion/Eileen Hawley
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(Phone: 281/483-5111)
RELEASE: 00-102
COMPUTER HACKER NEVER ENDANGERED SHUTTLE ASTRONAUTS
News reports that a computer hacker endangered the lives of Space Shuttle astronauts during a 1997 mission are wrong. A report from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said a hacker compromised NASA computers, endangering the lives of American astronauts.
NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.
At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems.
There has never been an interruption of communication service with the Shuttle due to computer hacker attacks. The command and control communications links between Mission Control and a Space Shuttle in orbit are extremely well insulated.
The 1997 incident is currently under investigation by NASA Inspector General's
office.
-end-
* * *
NASA press releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to domo@hq.nasa.gov. In the body of the message (not the subject line) sers should type the words "subscribe press-release" (no quotes). The system will reply with a confirmation via E-mail of each subscription. A second automatic message will include additional information on the service. NASA releases also are available via CompuServe using the command GO NASA. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, address an E-mail message to domo@hq.nasa.gov, leave the subject blank, and type only "unsubscribe press-release" (no quotes) in the body of the message.
-- Richard Finn http://www.random-seed.com/
> I'd like to see the first guy who gets the
.you realize, of course, that would require a space shuttle crashing first. And you'd like to see this?
> death-sentence for cracking because he
> somehow manages to make a space shuttle
> crash.
Uh. .
--
--
What? WHAT?!! Oh.
and script kiddies! We're smarter than you, we can bring austronauts to their knees. Just because we no degree, no source code, no hobbies or any social skills doesn't mean you have to look down on us, too! Just leave us alone and leave us Mafiaboy wanna-bes to our goofy sp3ll1ng and xml spoofs, aiyeet yo?
I thought you meant that somehow a Nabisco(tm) product had endangered them or something. The title of the Slashdot article is very misleading. When I read the CNet article, it made much more sense.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
A crime, less severe than murder, involving the wrongful but non-malicious (see malice) killing of another person. There are various categories of manslaughter. In some states voluntary manslaughter is a killing in a sudden rage such as occurs during a quarrel and fight, and involuntary manslaughter is a killing with no intention to cause serious bodily harm, such as by acting without proper caution.
However, I think you could make a case for "reckless homocide," as "reckless" is defined:
"Reckless" can mean anything from "careless and inattentive" or "indifferent to consequences" to a "willful disregard for danger to the life or safety of others."
So of which one the cracker would be guilty depends on the circumstances and/or intent of the cracker. Murder doesn't seem to apply, given the definition:
"Murder: The unlawful killing of another human being that is premeditated (planned in advance) or is with malice aforethought (see that word). Most states divide murder into first and second degrees. First degree murder usually involves a willful and deliberate killing, such as by torture or lying in wait, or killing during the commission of another felony such as arson, rape, robbery, and kidnapping. Second degree murder is less serious, but still worse than manslaughter."
Unless the cracker intended to kill the astronaut, and either premeditated the killing or had prior malicious intent, which seems unlikely in this case.
www.poak.net
I am refuring to slashdot got it right
(IANAL)
It depends on how the perpetrator was charged. If charged with a felony (which is the likely scenario), then the "felony murder" rule is invoked. This states that any death which occurs as a result of the commission of a felony is automatically murder, not manslaughter. Examples:
Where does it say in the article that the hacker got to the system through the internet? I didn't see that. Are you assuming that's the only possible way?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
So what's the difference between cracking something and making it useless - and unplugging it, or bashing it with a sledgehammer?
What I want to know is if these irresponsible brats would have physically broken that same computer if presented with the opportunity and the same anonymity they have when they're online. Do you think they would? I don't. There's a certain level of non-reality that goes with dealing with something that's not physical. It's the same reason we'll blow up our friends in Quake, but we wouldn't dream of doing that in real life (at least, I hope not).
In some ways, I think that our virtualizing so many things about us (and becoming accustomed to it and dependent on it) has begat criminals who otherwise wouldn't be criminals. That makes this place a little more dangerous to live in, doesn't it?
Be nice to your friends. If it weren't for them, you'd be a complete stranger.
Yes, it would, and if the story is true, then I'm absolutely stunned. When I worked for the MoD, we had one machine connected to the Internet, and it was in it's own room, required clearance to even use it, and it wasn't connected to any other machines. The concept that the main servers would be even physically connected to the Internet was laughable. It just doesn't happen. I guess NASA doesn't have the same standards as the military...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
good. thing they aren't using NT...
Actually, per N etcraft they're running just about every OS you can name on at least one of their 456 publicly accessible webservers. A quick check of a few of them showed NT, Solaris, IRIX, and Linux.
When you put the sheer number of webservers they are running in perspective with 500k cyberattacks in a year, it means they are only getting about 3 attacks per day per webserver.
With all the possible points of entry, and inconsistent OS usage, I don't think it's surprising that a few backdoors were found.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
>I've always wondered how they would have managed to put the WOPR back to work after it had the realization that 'The only winning move is not to play'.
CTRL+ALT+DEL
...Katz is going to be writing an article now on how we should be sending monkeys into space instead of people.
Atleast we'll have something else to bitch about.
"Stop saying 'Don't quote me' because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying" -KMFDM
Nope, I immediately think redneck when I see cracker too.
We've actually sufered from a 'cracker' attack; some hick in Georgia managed to take out a UUnet backbone with a shotgun about 2 months ago.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
The wording disagreement you found is a result of the same kind of editorial style decision. news.com chooses to call someone who illegally breaks into computer systems a "hacker;" for various reasons too involved to go into here, Slashdot calls the same person a "cracker." The decision to change wording to fit editorial style doesn't change the import of the story.
Call me crazy, but a quote from the Gross guy said something like "it shows the potential hackers have to do damage to nasa systems." Okay, now comes the CRAZY idea. Don't hook the vital systems to the internet.
Now, since I'm sure that statement is over simplified, why not make sure systems can't be traced back to the internet.
Somehow I doubt this ACTUALLY happened. Why would NASA have its shuttle monitoring systems networked in a way that an outside connection could be made to them? even if it meant getting into one system, then another, then another, and finially whatever this article is claiming they interfered with.....how many people know how those systems are networked?
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Someone should tell Nabisco to make less dangerous crackers before they make
their next delivery to NASA.
-Joe
Wouldn't making sure the network was totally isolated from all other networks prevent this sort of thing from happening? I just don't see how this was possible in the forst place.
I know the space shuttle doesn't have a land line:)
My thinking was that there are probably a few people who stay in touch with the space shuttle, and higher-ups that go through them, instead of whoever feels like it just calling up the space shuttle. If these two different people are in another room, building, or another site, and they can't communicate with each other any more, then communications with the space shuttle are effectively cut off.
- My password is slashdot
Killing an astronaut accidentally via hacking would probably be manslaughter or some other variety of negligent homicide. However, if the intrusion were a felony (likely) the penalty could be quite stiff. I want to echo the other posters, though: Why in god's name is this stuff Internet-accessible anyway?
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Look: I know that a lot of people are on a fool's quest to preserve the ancient meaning of the word 'hacker', but the word cracker is a terrible substitute. I honestly thought that a Saltine had wedged itself into the shuttle's computers.
The mass media has changed the meaning of the word hacker into something negative. What's the big problem with that? Words have changed meaning throughout history. 'Awful' used to mean about the same thing as 'awesome', and 'gay' used to mean 'happy', but they really aren't used that way anymore. The world has moved on.
The Hacker Dictionary can deny this fact all it wants and claim that the negative meaning is deprecated, but the truth of the matter is, most of the English speaking world thinks of hackers as guys who break into NASA. And everybody understands what "hacker" means when used in an article like this. Give it up.
I wish this concept was taught to more people. When in the court, the judge (and whichever side is more conservatively interpreting the laws) hammer the jury with admonitions that they are ONLY supposed to decide whether the person violated the law or not, and are not supposed to judge the law itself. The jury rarely gets instruction from lawyers that they are also responsible to judge the law itself.
I think it's also part of the lawyer's game, that if they think they'll get a more favorable ruling through strict interpretation of the law (by technicalities, for instance), that they'll try to get a trial by judge instead of jury, since the judge is honor-bound to pay more attention to the laws than to the ethics.
NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission +in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.
At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts +compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems.
There has never been an interruption of communication service with the Shuttle due to computer hacker attacks. The command and control communications links between Mission Control and a Space Shuttle in orbit are extremely well insulated.
The 1997 incident is currently under investigation by NASA Inspector General's office.
> LONDON--A computer hacker endangered shuttle astronauts in 1997 by overloading
...
...
> NASA's communication system, according to a report.
From _LONDON_, "according to a report."
Of course, London newspapers, known the world over for their journalistic integrity, have a direct line to NASA insiders in the USA.
> The report was released ahead of the premiere of "Cyber Attack,"
Ahh, the real reason this rumor is being mongered: publicity for a new publication.
We in the "free world" really need to learn to read between the lines.
Astronaut Michael Foale, who was part of the 1997 mission, told the BBC he was not informed of the problems at the time but found the revelations intriguing.
You would think that the astronauts would be notified if there were sudden anomalies with their vital signs. At least an inquiry as to their status and a mention of the bad readings would be expected. I wonder if this is not just more PR designed to encourage stricter computer crime legislation and get NASA more funding for IT security.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Of course, you'd never be chosen to serve on a jury because of your moral objections. We can't have free thinkers deciding people's fates!
I was under the impression it had to be a felony.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Putting a bunch of astronauts in a pressurised, pure oxygen environment with unshielded electrical equipment and lots of highly flammable material seems pretty dangerous too.
Changing the design of the door so it can't be opened to coincide with this 'test' seems pretty dangerous as well.
Deliberately fitting under-engineered seals to booster rockets, assuming they would fail but hoping you'd be lucky is pretty damn dangerous too.
So if NASA have problems with 'crackers', then i'd say thats the least of their problems.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
You can be charged with anything up to and including "improper use of a food processor" but that does not mean that the judge's instructions will bear that out when you head into the jury room.
Just curious, if you don't mind answering--How did that case come out? Was the verdict in fact guilty of 1st degree murder?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
And they say that the Mars Lander got "lost", shyeah right!
It's busy digging giant ditches on Mars that will spell out "j00 g0t 0wn3d!"
Ham on rye, hold the mayo please.
thelocust[dot]org
and perform all of those tests they were afraid to with real astronauts. "What happens if we run out of fuel and are in low earth orbit?"
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Interestingly enough, there is a group that proclaims a phone number, 1-800-TEL-JURY which prescribes the same thing. One important point made: if a jury believes the law to be unjust or unjustly applied, they can reach a not guilty verdict even if they believe without a doubt that the person in question committed the act.
Of course, juries are often instructed otherwise by judges and lawyers, and since they are often uneducated and rarely if ever legally educated, they are apt to listen. And for people with 1-800-TEL-JURY signs to be outside the courthouse has been counted as jury tampering in the past, and invalidated their rulings.
However, if you "in the act of commiting a felony" kill someone as a result of that crime, its murder, wether or not you intended on even killing.
Anyway, if you tamper with a life support system, its pretty intentional.
"Ground control to Major Tom, your circuits dead, theres something wrong."
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
Nah, probably too subtle. :-)
--
not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
Firecrackers can not possiblely reach the shuttle!
It's just the ugly head of the 'Hacker/Cracker' debate rearing into view.. We know that the fellow was a cracker, but either AP doesn't know or doesn't care. 'Hackers' are evil, scary guys to be persecuted in the media, doncha know?
He's correcting their grammar, nothing more..
Hemos might also have started a Holy war with his correction, but the trolls and instigators have yet to notice, so we'll see..
.sig: Now legally binding!
They're doing their best to make a crew of rabid slashdotters happy - you know, the ones that always seems to find something to complain about?
If hemos had left the term as hacker, in the interest of journalistic integrity as you suggest, he'd be getting persecuted for propogating the misusage of the terms in the media.
Lighten up folks, and give these guys a break.
I personally, would just like to advocate giving up on the hacker/cracker debate. My initial reaction when seeing the headline was wondering how Saltine's could have gotten into the equipment.
Once a word, such as hackers, has made it's way into the lexicon so deeply, you can't reverse it.
Take politically correct words, which have social stigma attached to the incorrect words. How many of us take the time to say Native American instead of Indian? Or African-American instead of black? Why should John Q. Public or Jane P. Media take the time to care about hacker vs. cracker? Especially when everyone knows what a hacker is, right?
And cracker already has two definitions, does it need more? It's already a slang term for a white redneck, as well as a tasty high-carb treat.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I was thinking along the lines of a Saltine. Oh well.
--------------------------
But /. often gets it right.
Eh...
God dammit, that was supposed to be a charicature of the governmental spin on this kind of report, not an attempt at trolling. That's why it says "big brother says:" and is in quotes and is utterly ridiculous but just a little bit scary. Most trolls do not have a +1 posting bonus!
Ok, if hacking into a government agency is a felony (certainly), then it would be murder charge. I stand corrected -- I must have glanced over that part.
www.poak.net
If not, isn't it more than a little frightening if that were able to provide such a threat my just screwing around with general attacks ?
Chicken little may be right !
Lurking in the desert
Everyone, pick your favorite NASA official, and send him a little gift of "Firewalls for Dummies." Or "for Complete Idiots" -- did that come out yet?
// zyqqh
The CNET version was the AP story. Wired has Reuters coverage of this.
I dunno - I bet Jack McCoy would go for Murder 2 on the grounds of "depraved indifference to human life." (Disclaimer - Like you, the bulk of my legal knowledge comes from Law & Order reruns.)
;-)
Wonder who would get jurisdiction - the state where the hacker/cracker lived or the state where the hacked computer lives? Or would it be federal? If Mir or the ISS were involved, jurisdiction could get real hairy. Oh well, we'll just have to wait for the Law & Order episode and all our complex legal questions will be answered
I ain't a lawyer but i think that if he actually killed an astronaut they could probably charge him with treason! Actually, if anyone was killed by a lapse in communication it would probably be in a collision. In this case, it would be Mir & the shuttle. That's at least a few billion dollars worth of damage and around 10 dead astronauts from a few different countries. The only obstacle to a charge of treason is that there would have to be 2 witnesses to the crime. But wheather or not they could make treason stick, he wouldn't get any pity from anybody and would probably get max sentances on every little thing they could hit him with. Of course it's all hypothetical and it's unlikely a comm break would cause any problem at all. The shuttle could probably dock with Mir without any contact with earth at all. In fact, I believe that the story said that all they lost contact with were the life sign monitors and other NASA stations on earth. But I digress, the point is: Kids, don't blow up anything worth more than a billion dollars or people won't want to be your friends anymore.
I will rise from the ashes like a Tuscon!
My guess, being a careful student of Law & Order and NYPD Blue (which makes me a legal expert, you know), is that he/she would be charged with Involuntary Manslaughter. The cracker didn't mean to kill the astronauts, but his actions caused their deaths. For it to be Murder the cracker would to have had the intention of killing the astronauts.
mr.nobody
--Don't you wanna go where nobody knows your name?
Heh, I'm surprised that you left out the obvious parallel with the time Homer caused havoc by bringing potato chips into space with him.
:)
Where's that Inanimate Carbon Rod when you need it?
With systems as sencitive as the ones used in the shultel they would not be conected to a open network at all. Maybe I am wrong but if you remove such sensitive systems from an open network you make it much harder get into it.
ALSO it is nice to see a news source get it right, damn it they were crackers not hackers (also for those of you in the Pittsburgh region, the City Paper got it right in an artical "the 8 things hackers hate about you" where they tell the lay-people what the diff between a hacker and a cracker is.
The BBC seems to have exagerated the incident a fair amount. There was no real communications disruption and the shuttle crew was never in danger. This article at CNN clarifies it a bit. Scytle
I think this shows how it is a good thing to isolate certain systems from one another, and to take the next person that says you need total interconnectivity and kick him right in the ass. "But we need the shuttle communications system on-line to the personnel database's dial-up system! Otherwise how will teleworking personnel administrators be able to compute billable hours for the astronauts?" Feh.
--
This is not my sandwich.
I just watched the panorama programme. The NASA incident was a fairly small item near the end. Most of the show was about how easy it is to break into Microsoft programs. They interviewed Cult of the Dead Cow, had a demo of Back Orifice, interviewed the guy who runs AntiOnline, and had someone from a British computer security company say that things will remain bad while Microsoft is driven by features, not security.
On the whole it was not as bad as some of the stuff that gets broadcast.
Christ, they write 50 billon books and movies on the subject and you still got a few hundred weenies who write code that want the glory term for themselves and can't deal with the fact that immature teenagers with nothing better to do can get so much more publicity.
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
This smells of FUD. (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) There is no description of what methods the supposed attacker used, no explanation of what systems were exploited. All they say is that a "hacker" overloaded one of their systems. That sounds like a DoS attack, but they don't elaborate. Without more information I'd say this is just NASA covering up one of their numerous blunders with some good sounding jargon. If there really was an attacker that was able to do this, why was NASA stupid enough to connect these systems to the internet. They shouldn't have any contact whatsoever with it! A few people have mentioned firewalls etc.. but the real solution is to disconnect these systems completely from the net. Firewalls can be compromised, disabled, or simply misconfigured by the administrator. They simply don't provide a reliable layer of security in a life-critical operating environment. Also, if a hacker/cracker (whatever) is able to so easily break into NASA's systems, it just goes to show that they aren't putting enough effort into maintaining information security.
The title was a bit misleading. It sounded like someone had opened a pack of saltines and all hell broke lose. Homer would have been proud. Bit disappointing. I think a pack of crackers instead of a hacker would have been great!
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
I think a bit of a background perspective would help a lot in considering the "truth" to this story.
Let's make our first assumption in that the center being discussed in Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control. JSC has become one of the more network security aware centers within the NASA environment in recent years. That's not to say there aren't problems. JSC is one of the few that is at least aware of a network security clue train and occasionally buys a ticket and takes a ride. When they'll actually begin buying monthly passes is another question.
JSC confronts many of the same technical vulnerability issues other research institutions face. This means that much of JSC is ultimately vulnerable (hint to Joe Scriptkiddy - taking a NASA engineer's under-administered Linux test box is neither proof of any real skill, nor is it particularly enlightening to NASA officials). JSC is aware of this and treats Mission Control with extra precautions. Truly mission critical hardware is not going to be manipulated directly by Internet traffic. That's not to say that a network attack of some kind can't have some effect on a mission. And here's a key point. Even a minor effect provides a politician with plenty of fuel to fan the fires of hysteria. And don't expect it all from our elected officials. NASA is ran by politicians.
NASA (and ultimately JSC) network vulnerability is due to more than technical issues. There's a cultural clash within the security framework internal to JSC, NASA, and very likely many other Governmental institutions. Network security policy is being formed by old-guard "physical security" personnel. Network security is a fast-changing and alien environment to many of these officials. The technical targets shift at a rapid rate, and new ways of thinking often challenge old standbys (IE: debunking security through obscurity). Unfortunately, many physical security concepts do not transfer well to the new network security environment. There are occasional flashes of insight... and many more attempts to cling to the old, better-known environment.
One example of this is the penchant for prosecution. Its amazing to watch an organization bemoan a lack of funding to support security administration of an environment, then light up at the opportunity to pull production equipment offline and spend untold amounts of money and man hours to track down a script kiddy for defacing a minor internal web site. Spending funding on preventing the incident in the first place seems to get lost somewhere in the upper echelons.
So if today's mission control is safe from Joe Scriptkiddy, where'd this incident come from? 1997. In my experience, the mid 90's were way before the network security clue train - there wasn't even tracks laid down. It wasn't until the end of the decade that network security began to show up as a serious issue and positive steps were being made to do something about the situation. 1997? History.
So sure, NASA could use some improvement of their network security environment. And they certainly could use the funding. But to say there's lives on the line - that's political kindling to pass legislation and cook up some National Infrastructure Protection Center funding.
You know what I mean.
Eh...
Rich
seanmeister
Could it have been chips? Ruffles in particular? If so, I think we know who to blame: Homer.
Freedom! Horrible horrible freedom!
--
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Am I the only one who finds these articles so devoid of actual information that they are pretty much worthless in terms of determining if these events actually happened?
For one thing, how did the cracker manage to penetrate NASA's communications system in the first place? I imagine they aren't stupid enough to give it any connection to the Internet - in fact, I'd hope all connections to and from the shuttle, and any computers and networks vital to the shuttle missions, are sealed from the 'net by an airwall. This would mean the cracker somehow found another way in, got past (hopefully) some sort of security...I don't know. I don't give this story much credibility. I wonder if perhaps NASA's just trying to cover up Yet Another Systems Failure.
My $0.02 Cdn, so it's not worth that much...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
If he linked to a story that read "capitalist pigs abuse workers", would it be okay for him to change the heading to "Microsoft Accused to Illegal Labor Practices"?
Obviously, he made these names up as a joke. They're not real. Relax there dude.
-- Erv Walter
The mainstream press is doubly off with this one, Slashdot only singly off.
None of the stories have said anything about infiltration of NASA systems -- they simply say that the server was overloaded.
I bet it was a boring old ping flood. That doesn't even rank you as a script kiddie.
Keith "blah, who needs raw sockets?" Tyler
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
MISSION CONTROL: Say again?
FOALE: We have a problem. I've got a Main Bus B undervoltage and Hotmail comes back "404 Not Found".
MISSION CONTROL: Okay, stand by while we try to work out a procedure here.
FOALE: Standing by.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I don't know, but I always liked hacker better. Though it is usually the name (umong geek circles anyway) to computer code hackers, it saves me from problems like this. Being, as it is, July 3rd, I thought that the "cracker" he was reffering to was actually a fire cracker. I thought that somehow fire crackers were set off near NASA headquarters, thus damaging equiptment... Anyway, I think that this latest cracking is reprehensible. C'mon, these guys are doing life-threatening things anway, and there is no need to escalate their problems anymore. I'd like to see the first guy who gets the death-sentence for cracking because he somehow manages to make a space shuttle crash. (Now there's a Supreme Court case for you.) Also, NASA really ought to beef up security. It is a sad thing, that it takes something to go really wrong before government agencies change security or safty characteristics (like Los Alamos lab.) I hope we don't have to have 4.5 million pounds of space shuttle crash down 5 seconds after launch because some basterd decided to flex his cracker muscles.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
tell them that those .vbs email attachments should not be opened.
OK, after reading the headline 'Cracker Endagers Astronauts' who didn't think it was about some redneck parking his trailer on the shuttle landing strip? Ok maybe it was just me.
--
mr.nobody
--Don't you wanna go where nobody knows your name?
No where in the article do they mention that it was a system connected to the internet.
"We had an activity at NASA center where a hacker was overloading our system...to such an extent that it interfered with communications between the NASA center
They dont even seem to know _where_ it came from. From previous reading, these kind of system are/should be totally isolated from the outside world, relying on sneaker net to transfer data, and have a direct uplink with the shuttle.
This really sounds like and inside job, or poor engineering, but to save face, they blame it on the nasty hackers. Not to sure about this, but any system ran at NASA on which lifes rely should at least conform to B1 security specs. I know I would not want anything less if I was the poor Joe stuck in space.
july 3rd, still looking for my shoes.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Here's an update
http://www.msnbc.com/news/428610.asp
Interesting that Hemos changed the word "Hacker" to "Cracker". The article does not containg the word "Cracker". Are you guys shaping the news or reporting it?