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US Busts Military Network Hacker
yorgasor writes " KATU has an article announcing the case of a mysterious hacker who has broken into roughly 100 military networks has been solved. The hacker is a British citizen and authorities were considering extradition for the case. Although no networks containing classified information were compromised, they do consider the hacker to be a professional rather than recreational due to the large number of networks he hacked."
Huh? Something must have been left out of the blurb. If I wank 100 times a day to porn, does that mean I'm a professional wanker?
[o]_O
Wow! It took'em 100 or more tries to notice something was not quite right?
They probably had to bait and switch to catch him...
Obviously a pro, anyone who bats higher than 100 hacks is destined for the pros. Is there sponsorship for this wonderful sport of hacking?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I know the military is a big target and all but 1 GUY, 100 NETWORKS? Those military network security folks must be pretty lame. Seems like the could have tracked him down a lot sooner if they knew what they were doing.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Does that come with a 401k plan and a good dental plan? It still probably has a better retirement plan than Enron :P
Here's a link to the story on Yahoo!
/ 20021111/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/hacker_investigation_1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap
He must have been pretty damn good to evade capture and continue to crack 100 sites. Makes me wonder home they caught him. If you are a professional and can break into 100 US military sites, what's to stop you? I figure if you are good enough to crack 10 or twenty without messing up, they are probably not going to catch you.
Anybody have any good stories of catching elusive hackers, or insights into how they might have got him?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
They're a bunch of computers connected together with "cat-5" cable. We run high tech programs like "MS Outlook" and "Microsoft Office" coordinated by a really fucking slow "Exchange Server." Pretty trippy huh?
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All your bases are belong to us...
Tournament Management Online &
It will be interesting to see if the US are actually able to extradite a Brit for having commited cyber crimes. Wouldn't the penalties be a fair bit harsher over the pond than in Europe?
ISO certified == THX certified
You're right. It couldn't have been anything "THAT" serious.
Want to know why? Do a google search on SIPRNET.
There's a nice, safe air-gap between your local Internet connection and anything "THAT" serious on military networks.
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
Why not just extradite them? The US has a extrdition treaty with Russia I'm sure. Now I'm not saying that arresting them was "wrong", but why resort to deceptive law enforcement tactics like this?
Throw some military sysadmins to a court-martial for dereliction of duty!
Ok, don't be that harsh on them. Scare em a little, then let the go with a warning. But national western militaries cannot continue to run their networks like this. It's dangerously irresponsible.
For a national military to assume they can use police arrests (force of arms) to secure their networks is folly. Armed force only works against attacks that are perpetrated from inside your range of military dominance. For the US that's a big area, but there's still many places where they can neither call in a SWAT team, nor direct an unmanned plane to assasinate the target.
If this fellow had been a professional (earning money from these hacks), then he'd be living in a secret compound provided by his employers in Iraq/Korea/China. True, the internet bandwidth isn't that great there, but a good hacker doesn't need it. He can just compromise some broadband PCs in the US or UK (possibly with the help of an agent on scene- a retailer who sells trojaned machines for instance) and use that to leapfrog to the real targets.
(If this guy was any good, we'll find out that this British suspect was just a patsy)
One big argument against more stringent computer-crime laws in the US is that they permit businesses and the military to postpone installing real network security. Why bother defending yourself, if the FBI just busts the punks for you?
This sets us up for disaster in 20 years, when the economy really needs the internet to survive day-to-day, and China has caught up to our 2005-era connectivity levels. If President Bush the 3rd angers China and they set 200 top computer professionals at making mischief, the damage could be real.
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Run by volunteers at each polling place.
Kinda makes you wonder if you really did/will vote, eh?
If this guy does get extradited to the US, I bet he'll be working for someone in a five-sided building real soon.
The article was vague. Maybe he made a mistake and gave the investigators something that identified him. Equally likely, maybe the infosec guys decided the payoff for letting him continue hacking for a while (firm up the evidence for a conviction, be able to convict him for more serious offences, and most importantly figure out what his motives and techniques were) was more important than having him arrested immediately.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
No, it isn't. Terrorism is the use of violence and/or threats to frighten a civilian population, to coerce or punish them.
They should just scrap the term hacker and call him a terrorist, because thats what breaking into the US millitary is, terrorism.
Would breaking into British Military also be terrorism? How about Iraq?
There is a difference between breaking into a companies network out of curiosity and breaking into a millitary network. At worst, it could be considered an act of war from the country where the hacker originated against the country that was hacked. This would be bad for britain as they are totally dependant on America for support and are controlled by America's millitary policy.
Britian is dependent on the US? Tony Blair certainly is Bush's Yes Man, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are dependent on us, or controlled by our policy.
100 successful hacks is quite impressive, and it's good to see that America's war on terrorism is paying off and this man was caught before he could have caused serious damage to the western world.
Yes. The war on terrorism is paying off, just like the war on drugs. We prevented this guy from breaking into *every* military network, just like we've taught kids to 'Just Say No' and quelled the importation of millions of dollars of coke and dope.
Thank you Geoilrge Bush, and God Bless Amerika!
Yes, I know, IHBT,IHL,HAND - I just wanted to practice my italics and paragraph tags.
So, a guy from Iran who breaks into just one military computer is a recreational terrorist, right?
They should just scrap the term hacker and call him a terrorist, because thats what breaking into the US millitary is, terrorism.
Wow, that's a pretty extreme definition of terrorism.
There is a difference between breaking into a companies network out of curiosity and breaking into a millitary network.
hmmm... Are you saying that morality can be judged as a function of whether or not a particular act is committed against the state or a private company? I agree that if info. had been stolen that it would be a very bad thing, but since nothing broken into was classified ??? I'm not sure we know that he did anything other than make some web/sys admins look bad.
I can tell you right now I would not be amused if someone hacked into my systems because they were curious. I wouldn't take any legal action unless someone actually took intellectual property, but I'd probably 'hack' my sysadmin a new one!
All of that being said, I say hang him upside-down for 20 years and then turn him rightside-up for another 20.
porn*! - hanging upside-down for almost 20 minutes now!
There's a nice, safe air-gap between your local Internet connection and anything "THAT" serious on military networks.
Of course there is a safe-air gap, but unless every machine allowed to connect to those networks is physically locked down, every IO port disabled, and every removable media drive locked with a physical device, you're going to have people downloading sensitive material and moving it on to unsecured networks.
Granted it's been a few years, but I have seen young underpaid geeks walk up to such systems wearing paper badges with "NO CLEARANCE" stamped in red ink on them, and proceed to insert floppy disks into said systems in order to defragment drives or install drivers.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
military cyber-guards.
.mil and *all* of it was easily readable by the viewer....
I was watching this discovery channel documentary and there was this military type, jar-head cyber guard guy. He was standing there talking about how they monitor all the traffic on their networks, and keep a close eye out for any signatures of attack.
He was stressing how secret they keep all their information about their networks - that they dont let anyone know even their IP sets assigned to different networks, and that this information could help an attacker find out the machines they would need to attack.
The whole time he was talking about this - he was standing in front of a bunch of monitors, and the ones to the left of him was scrolling some sort of log and it was showing IPs to hostname mappings and some traceroutes as well. They were all in the really low IPs - and their hostnames were all
and i do not think it was something that was done on purpose and made to look like an accident. Not by the way these people were acting.
especially since they avoided filming any of the screens that people were working on.
So I am not too surprised.
Sleeping with a lot of men/women makes someone a slut; it requires getting paid for it to be considered a professional.
They should just scrap the term hacker and call him a terrorist, because thats what breaking into the US millitary is, terrorism.
The term "terrorist" has certainly been overused in the past year or so, but what many people don't realize is that it actually has a strict legal definition. (Well, actually several strict legal definitions, depending on the jurisdiction you're paying attention to at the time.)
Way back in 1937, the League of Nations defined terrorism as, "All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public." So under that definition, an act is terrorism only if it's specifically intended to create a state of terror. September 11, yes. This guy, no.
In 1999, the UN defined terrorism this way: "Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them." So here to we have the idea that the act must be specifically intended to invoke a feeling of terror. So by that definition, too, this incident is not terrorism.
The USDOD defines terrorism to be, "The calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." Once again we have the idea that the act must be calculated to cause fear. If an act merely incidentally causes fear or terror, it's not strictly terrorism.
Since 9/11, laws have sprung up in several US jurisdictions making it a crime to plan, enact, or carry out any act designed to produce a fear response in the population. In fact, the DC sniper suspects are being indicted in Maryland under just such a law. But all of these also have the same basic thread: that the act must have been done with the specific and deliberate intent of causing fear.
So no, what this loser did isn't technically terrorism.
At worst, it could be considered an act of war from the country where the hacker originated against the country that was hacked.
Not really. In order to make the leap from crime to act of war, there has to be an element of direct or indirect state sponsorship. An individual acting on his own to carry out a criminal act-- even a horrible or devastating one-- in another country does not automatically constitute an act of war. But if another government sponsors the act, that's a different story. The basic idea here is that war is a state of armed conflict between nations, not between groups or individuals. Rhetorical shorthand aside, the United States could never be in a state of war against al Qaeda, or against Osama bin Laden personally. The concept of war can't be applied to those sorts of conflicts in any meaningful way.
I write in my journal
Hrm, "they do consider the hacker to be a professional rather than recreational due to the large number of networks he hacked."
/. reader? This is so cool! I thought I was unemployed, but no, here I am, practicing my profession *right now!* Rawk!
Wow, I guess I'm a professional
Because it's gauranteed to elicit responses like yours, followed by more page views, followed by more ad revenue. Frankly, I'm surprised I had to scroll this far down to read this post, which I anticipated as soon as I read the headline.
Do you think the /. editors aren't aware of this little linguistic duel? This, BTW, is also the same reason they don't really care about polishing the stories, and may in fact be intentionally putting little grammar and spelling gaffes into them--more page views, more ad revenue. I put forth that theory many posts ago; though I don't claim to be the originator of it.
At any rate, "cracker" is already reserved for crazy people, a racial slur used against Whites by Blacks, and most commonly a crunchy snack food. Overloading it any further just didn't make sense. Hacker can be used exclusively for those who break into computers as far as I'm concerned. We already have many thesaurus entries with less sinister connotations: geek, nerd, guru, and hobbiest, all of which may be modified with "computer" as an adjective when the context is unclear (which it usually isn't). Speaking of context, when modified with the name of something (e.g., Linux hacker, assembly hacker) the word regains its positive connotation; but you still need to be careful when using it in the company of laymen.
At any rate, I seem to recall a time when the /. editors were on the side of the purists; but that time has passed. Some may choose to look back to a time before /. "sold out". I prefer to think that the battle is over and the "cracker" advocates lost.
However, I will give you guys something in your favor. Use of the term "safe cracker" persists so we have introduced yet another context-sensitive rule into the English language, making it that much harder for people to learn the language.
Could it be simply that "computer cracker" is too aliterative and just doesn't sound right? Also, a safe cracker may literally have to crack (break) something to get in, whereas a hacker (a good one anyway) usually doesn't break anything.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You can bet your sweet ass that was sanitized screens you where looking at. When I worked in the navy command center we where frequently visited by the press and if they had camera's we threw bogus stuff on the screens to sanitize the area before entry. So what you see is completely bogus smoke and mirrors.
Got Code?
They should just scrap the term hacker and call him a terrorist, because thats what breaking into the US millitary is, terrorism.
No, it is not. Terrorism is the use of terror tactics against a civilian population (which presumably isn't able to defend itself). Attacking military targets is perfectly legitimate acts of guerilla warfare, and the perpertrators of such are entitled to be treated as prisoners of war, and not this "enemy combatant" category that Bush invented.
So:
* attacking that supertanker the other month - terrorism.
* ramming the Cole - legit.
* blowing up the WTC - terrorism.
* blowing up the Pentagon - legit.
* shooting off-duty US marines in Yemen - legit.
* hacking military bases - legit act of war, or civil crime. Definitely not terrorism.
* dropping a 2000 pound bomb on a wedding party - a regretable accident.
Essentially, any act against a government office or military base would be a legitimate act of war.
And I've seen sysadmins with twelve years experience on "classified" systems accidentally break their security systems... or deliberately break their systems... for the sake of convenience.
It makes me sick.
[signature]
Professional (adj) - practicing for a livelihood.
Either this person was making his money from this (which I doubt) or this is another case of "they don't know the what they are saying".
Just like the abuse of the words "theft" and "pirate" in relation to software when no one is permenantly deprived of anything.
These terms are being misused, not out of ignorance (although the ignorance is obvious) but out of a desire to create a false impression and make the crime seem worse than it is.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Basically what he did was sit at a keyboard typing and looking at a screen in, presumably, the UK. At what point was the crime committed? When he hit the return key, or when he viewed the resulting data? I would suggest that is the case, and any prosecution should take place in the UK - there is plenty of existing legislation.
I am sure that someone will start bleating on about the theft of CPU cycles, or whatever. But this is extremely abstract. If the sites were non-secure, then presumably they had public access. If we are going to pass laws that people can only view websites as the designer intended, it may suit the kind of Government idiots that once threatened someone with prosecution for telling them they had an open SQL port with anonymous login on a military server, but is hardly going to promote good design (or be enforceable).
This is exactly the kind of case that makes the notion of a World Court reasonable. But I can just imagine his lawyers going to the EU Courts to argue that (a) the US is refusing to allow its citizens to be subject to the ICC, thus demonstrating that US law is not even-handed, (b) in the present climate of hysteria he could in any case not get a fair trial, (c) that US law is in conflict with EU human rights legislation.
It seems to me we have more to fear from the kind of idiots that go in for the kneejerk "This guy looked at a Govt. site! He is a terrorist!" reaction. The word for them is Stalinists, and the last thing we want is for the delightful security and political policies of the former Soviet Union to gain a foothold in the Republican Party.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Q: How can you tell a professional hacker has hacked into your network?
A: You can't. That's why he's a professional.
..about this story, is that noone of slashdotters objected this time to use of word 'hacker' as a label to 'cracker'.
Oh well...
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Classified networks are air-gapped from unclassified networks, which the Internet is by definition.
I love it when some U.S. gov't computer getting hacked makes headlines....The most sensitive info a hacker could ever get would be HR type info.
So let me see if I have this right.
The US Military want to prosecute somebody for doing something they've been doing for years ?
He must've been looking for the secret blueprints for the prevention of tooth decay...
Just be thankful that the geniuses at MIT invented the elasticated waist and made America safe for Truth, Justice and the Chicken Parm Sub.
The present US govt. will not allow the extradition of US citizens by the ICC for the most serious crimes, war crimes, mass murder etc. So why should anyone allow extradition to the US for lesser crimes committed outside its jurisdiction? Either the Bush government recognises that all states and citizens have legitimate cross-border security interests, or it doesn't. At the moment, it recognises them in a very one-sided way (You can prosecute Milosevic, but not Kissinger.) It also has a habit of tearing up international treaties. So why should other states recognise treaties with the US? This is a no-brainer. If Bush wants to be isolationist, fine. If he wants to be internationalist, better. But saying "I can be isolationist in my interests but internationalist when I want something from you" - Tony Soprano government.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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