Slashdot Mirror
Fermi Lab Compromised by Pirate
tttonyyy writes "The US Department of Energy sounded a full scale alert after machines were compromised at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, according to this BBC article. It turns out that the hacker was a student using the machines to download and store music and movies."
used to store MP3's and DIVX's.
...
:-D
Shock Horror
Now if he'd accessed the controls for particle accelerator and was able to spin it up then thats news.
Worst
The China Syndrome
re*ac*tor by Neil Young
Duke Nukem Platinum Edition
Christmas at Ground Zero by Weird Al
The Atomic Cafe
Everyone's favorite video clip of Janet Jackson's right breast
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Um. This happened in 2002 according to the article. I think we've missed the boat on this one... the actual new information is the sentence handed down to the culprit.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
The kid could have picked a less prominent host to save money on a hard drive.
Given that he probably did it for the self-boast rather than space, he should be roasted.
"Judge Andrew Goymer decided against sending McElroy behind bars as he had not accessed classified material on the network and had not intended to cause harm." This is quoted from the article, but in my opinion, I dont care what your intentions are, you hack into a place like that you should be thrown in jail even if its just to show everyone else how serious you are.
what kind of twit takes the space at a sensitive research facility for MP3s and divx stuff? he should also count himself lucky he wasn't in the US: he'd be halfway to [remote prison facility] within hours.
serves as proof that hackers aren't necessarily smart.
ed
This hacker could have inadvertaintly invented cold fusion just before Morgan Freeman destoyed chicago in an attempt to keep him from hooking up with Kate Winslet on his super-sonic 50cc Kawasaki.
I know for a fact this could have been worse. I saw it at the theater. Full price.
he gets 200 hours for hacking into a national laboratory, but will probably have to pay every last penny he owns to the RIAA and MPAA for having illegal copies of music. hrmm....
I wanted to see someone write "1 4m 1337" using an electron accelerator.
Arrr ... matey ... I reckon 'tis gold in dem particle collectors!
The national labs have done a good job at firewalling off the non-professionaly administered machines where feasible, but the academics really don't like anything that slows down collaboration. Thus there are lots of open machines, ftp and telnet still abound and give lots of opportunities to swipe usernames/passwords in the clear even though ssh and scp are available, etc.
Most (but not all) machines running the accelerator and the detectors are on their own mostly-private subnets.
In a surprise announcement from Fermi Labs, it would seem that the basic building blocks of matter, created from our accelerator tests is in fact, pr0n.
In fact there seemed to be quite a lot of it in our reports, as well as some indication that the sound of the big bang was in fact a Britney Spears mp3...
Not True. I work at IT another accelerator lab in the US, and the control network is on an entirely different network firewalled off, MAC restricted, etc. Even the software engineers responsible for the control system have to be wired behind the firewall.
On a not unrelated note, we have been hacked several times by people uploading movies, MP3s, etc. The system was never rebuilt and the files were simply deleted. In general accelerator labs are not staffed for the super-anal security that you would expect (to say nothing of the number of MP3s, etc. that legitimate users have on the server)...
The article isn't very specific about the level of access he had gained. I'm guessing the classified information was firewalled off from the network which he broken into for its internet bandwidth. At the very least, I'd expect (false hope?) that the actual particle accelerator controls aren't accessible from any internet-connected computer.
I've worked at Fermi National Accelerator Lab (fnal.gov) for 4 years, so perhaps I could troll a bit: since they have so many Linux machines (nearly all on Internet accessable IP) and no firewall (recently there are some firewalled ports) this is not a unique occurance, this happens *all* the time.
On the other hand, FermiLab does no defense/weapon work or any kind or any classified work as far as I know, a lot of people confuse it with Argonne National Lab (and be really glad Argonne wasn't named an Accelerator Lab, otherwise we'd have anal.gov)
-frin
Here's what really happened. Users in one of the labs are all given web space on a web server. Now, the IT staff is low on manpower, with government funding behind diverted to the war in Iraq. So, security (among other things) is kind of lax.
Basically, McElroy ran Jack the Ripper on the password file. We're using an SGI 1400L from 1997. He got the root password, and removed the limits of his disk quota. Then, he stored a bunch of ripped DVD's and MP3's in his webspace.
Now you ask, why isn't the government making a big deal about this? They know their security policy is weak, and they just ramped it up. The 'alert' is really just a few days for them to get things back they way they should be. If they said "well, we won't prosecute him because if people really know what happened, it'd make us look bad", what would the American public (and rest of the world) think?!
It could have been worse. He could have been caught smuggling atoms out of the place in his pockets.
"See? He's got atoms in his pockets! Call the local constabulary, Smithers!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It sounds like he was just a student who had access to those machines. Does knowing the root password make you a hacker?
How about a new headline: Student abuses Lab's computers.
heh, do you really think you can /. the bbc?
Have a look here to see their traffic. Totals are here. They can handle 2gb/sec. Thats some monster pipe, and it will take some severe slashdotting.
On the count of three, hit refresh like a mofo. If all 600,000 of us do it we might just create a tiny lump on that graph.
You deserve a head exam. Think here - how many people really believe that the control system for the collider is housed on a machine that was compromised (and is thus exposed to the internet at large)? Admittedly, there's a chance, but no moron would set up a network in this way. And who believes there aren't HARDWARE issues that would prevent an explosion - maybe even safeguards? What a freakin thought, considering this is a US DOE site. And what is this toxic material? The collider is basically a bunch of metal. Not sure what he'd overload, but usually heavy atoms or light atoms are slammed together to see what happens and measure particle/energy emissions. Where's the toxic material and explosive?
Oh, and what villages? They're 45 miles outside Chicago - not the smallest place. Don't worry though. Unless top quarks, CP violation experiments, and Boson experimentation threaten explosion, I think we're ok. Just try researching the subject. "fermilab" I'm feeling lucky gets you there.
That's not to say that massive damage/downtime can't be done by breaking into the right machines.
This happened last year, he's only just been sentenced (by the british, not the americans). And this had nothing to do with the Patriot act. The reason he chose Fermi Labs is that he mistakenly thought it was a academic facility and so would not pay bandwidth fees (unis etc in England don't pay for bandwidth)
I'm not condoning his actions, just trying to clear up some of the FUD
There are thousands of computers at Fermilab, the vast majority which are desktop workstations running linux (logins are through Kerberos). Being your typical office computers sitting on a desk, they are connected to the internet via fairly high bandwidth. As we know, the WWW was invented in order for high-energy physicists to share data throughout the world, so not only does it not make sense for these machines to be cut off from the internet, it is an essential part of scientific research. Any machine that actually controls an aspect of an experiment (connected to any sort of particle accelerator or detector) is not likely to be connected to the internet.
So, yes, physicists and other scientists do depend on flawed technology, mostly because its the easiest way to be able to keep connected when you're dealing with large collaborations stretched across the world. The downside may be the occasional kid (wrongfully) taking advantage of a desktop machine attached to a T1 line. Where security is more vital, it is present. But its simply impossible to insure that everyone's desktop machine is secure or not.
not always the case. the Muskegon Michigan water filtration plant has it's control computers on the network that has internet access so the paranoid supervisor can PC anywhere to spy on his employees. they have been infected several times with random viruses and trojans only because the idiot in charge of the plant wont listen to experts that that kind of stuff needs to be isolated.
one medium skilled cracker could easily cause insane damage/havoc by getting into those systems.
does the management care? nope. and if this is for a important thing like a water filtration plant, there is a very GOOD chance that their "critical" systems are just as open.
Important systems need to be disconnected completely. there is no reason to read your email or surf the net on the control Pc's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While we're on the topic of particle accelerators, mark your calendars for 2007 -- that's when the Large Hadron Collider will be completed in Switzerland, marking a significant step forward in particle physics.
Here's a brief description from the CERN website:
What is LHC? The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator which will probe deeper into matter than ever before. Due to switch on in 2007, it will ultimately collide beams of protons at an energy of 14 TeV . Beams of lead nuclei will be also accelerated, smashing together with a collision energy of 1150 TeV.
A TeV is a unit of energy used in particle physics. 1 TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito. What makes the LHC so extraordinary is that it squeezes energy into a space about a million million times smaller than a mosquito.
The LHC is the next step in a voyage of discovery which began a century ago. Back then, scientists had just discovered all kinds of mysterious rays, X-rays, cathode rays, alpha and beta rays. Where did they come from? Were they all made of the same thing, and if so what? These questions have now been answered, giving us a much greater understanding of the Universe. Along the way, the answers have changed our daily lives, giving us televisions, transistors, medical imaging devices and computers. On the threshold of the 21st century, we face new questions which the LHC is designed to address. Who can tell what new developments the answers may bring?
the people in charge of the security at the lab?
Which do you consider more dangerous:
#1 Script Kiddie being hacking server to store films on.
#2 Running a nuclear lab with so little security a script kiddie can break in.
As a Pirate-American, I take offense at the use of the term "pirate" for a simple hacker or cracker. Where are his sea legs, his parrot/monkey, his eye patch or pegleg?
I'm not defending that little hacker guy (erm, what kind of hacker is he anyway exploiting a known weakness to gain bandwidth and storage for MP3 and DivX files... I'd rather make him manually punch one of these files into punch tape instead of those 200 hours civil service which he might find even interesting), but if you run a high-security network infrastructure, then you better be up-to-date with the latest patches and countermeasures. It's not done with applying the latest IE "security update" every Tuesday...
Now calling for a more drastic punishment and considering the current (IMO fair) one as a green light, just shows what's wrong with some people: If hijacking company computers and networks for bandwidth and storage abuse becomes an increasingly common practice in the online world than those "security experts" should probably do their homework and fix the systems instead of calling the cops.
If you leave your car open and someone steals your car hifi, it's entirely your fault. (Go ask your insurance...) Whose car it is shouldn't play a role when sentencing the thief.
Why does everybody seem to think that Fermilab is some kind of sensitive facility? News flash: Fermilab is a basic research facility, not a top secret weapons lab. Their security is lax because they really don't have anything to hide. All their results are available to the public anyway. After all, that is sort of the whole point of basic research. And it's not like the compromised computer was part of the control system or anything. Fermilab has a lot of computers. The place is huge.
Besides which, if you actually read about the case you'd realize that this guy had access to the computers anyway and all he did was crack the root password to increase his disk quota. Now, I'm not saying that's a good thing but it's more like abuse of a computer lab than anything.
Physics is good
Have a look here to see their traffic. Totals are here. They can handle 2gb/sec.
McElroy's note to self: next time store music and video on BBC computers, not FermiLab.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
First of all, it is not possible to log into any service at Fermilab without a Kerberos principal. ftp and telnet are not permitted, and there is an active security eam that scans ports on a continuous basis and will shut down any offending machine. There is no firewall because all traffic must be either outgoing web and data services or kerberized if incoming.
I have personally seen Windows machines shut down within minutes and their wireless cards confiscated when brought onto the site if a virus is detected. These scans are not optional to the user and are automatically performed. The fact that this user was caught and security tightened to prevent recurrences is proof that there is good security there. The comments above are almost all completely uneducated.
Finally, as noted above by some (few) intelligent readers, the story is old and is really about sentencing. there has been no recent compromise.
Troll-prevention note and disclaimer: For those who think the above or the story itself is an invitation to hack, I can point out that several such attempts occur per day, keeping the security team busy and alert, but that essentially all of them fail and the rare successful ones earn the attention of the FBI.
Nothing.
Nothing, aside from the notoriety of this trial, which may not even follow him that far - a google search on his name (Joseph McElroy) doesn't even turn up stuff referring to him in the first page. (That what he gets for sharing his name with a famous author)
The judge decided against jail time because "he had not accessed classified material on the network and had not intended to cause harm". Also, the monetary claim for damages against him was waived on the grounds that he wouldn't be able to pay it.
"not intended to cause harm"? "not intended to cause harm"? Tell me, can I bypass the metal detectors at Heathrow simply because I'm not carrying any weapons, and even if I were, intend to cause no harm with them? What if I just want to drive to the store and back, but would rather hotwire your car instead of walking?
Sure, I understand that the US has some truly brutal criminal trespass laws that are probably way out of proportion to the act they supposedly punish, and that therefore a UK judge might be more lenient in this case than a US one would, but... nothing?