Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05at_private> Withdrawal ordered for U.S. Pentagon hackers 06-11-1998 01:13 SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5 (Reuters) - Two California teenagers who mounted one of the most systematic hack attacks ever on U.S. military computers have received their official sentence from a federal judge: no more computers. U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ordered the two, aged 16 and 17, to keep their cybernoses clean during their three-year probation, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced on Thursday. "The defendants will attend school and make their grades," the office said, reporting the conditions of probation imposed during Wednesday's closed sentencing session. The judge forbade the hackers from possessing or using a computer modem, from acting as computer consultants, or having any contact with computers out of sight of "a school teacher, a librarian, an employer, or other person approved by the probation officer." Chris Andrian, a lawyer for one of the boys, said Thursday the judge had been wise to pull the plug. "That is the punishment aspect; it is like taking their toy away from them," Andrian said. "But I think (the order) should stick. They have been sufficiently frightened and humiliated that they don't want to run back into the arms of the law." The two hackers, who have not been officially identified, pleaded guilty in July to charges of juvenile delinquency stemming from a string of cyber-attacks in February which set alarm bells ringing over the state of U.S. computer security. After an intensive investigation by the FBI, the Defence Department and NASA, all alarmed over hacker assaults on sensitive military and institutional computers, the boys were cornered on Feb. 25, when FBI agents descended on Cloverdale, about 75 miles (120 km) north of San Francisco, searched their homes and seized computers, software and printers. Although officials said no classified networks were penetrated, the ease with which the hackers accessed computers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force and other organisations clearly demonstrated how vulnerable the U.S. computer system had become. Deputy Defence Secretary John Hamre told reporters the barrage was "the most organised and systematic attack the Pentagon has seen to date," and officials said later the boys' activities had "had the potential to disrupt military communications throughout the world." The teenagers, who went by the codenames "Makaveli" and "TooShort," pleaded guilty to illegally accessing restricted computers, using "sniffer" programmes to intercept computer passwords, and reprogramming computers to allow complete access to all of their files. They also pleaded guilty to inserting "backdoor" programmes in the computers to allow themselves to reenter at will. Beginning with a local Internet service provider, which eventually raised the alarm over possible intrusion, the boys leapfrogged into other systems, including the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, national laboratories, numerous military computers and two sites in Mexico. Each of the two teenagers could have been put into custody until his 21st birthday. But Chesney's sentence was the result of plea agreements which included the "no computer" provision. The two boys were also ordered to serve 100 hours of community service and to pay $4,330 and $1,195 respectively in restitution to institutions and companies damaged by their intrusions. Andrian, the lawyer for one of the boys, said most of the money would go to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He added that he felt the teenage hackers had no malicious intentions, but were simply trying to probe the country's most advanced computer systems. "I call it the Mount Everest effect," Andrian said. "They did it to prove they could." -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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