[Moderator: This article will be going on the Errata site soon. This contains a wide variety of errors regarding the role and actions of John Vranesevich and AntiOnline. Mr. Richtel chose to believe JV at face value, and apparently did not challenge anything he said.] http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/mo/biztech/articles/02hack.html June 2, 1999 Federal Cybercrime Unit Hunts for Hackers By MATT RICHTEL Raids by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week against several suspected computer hackers are part of a new Government cybercrime unit's crackdown against illegal tampering with computer networks and Web sites, a Federal prosecutor said Tuesday. The raids prompted a counteroffensive in which disparate hacker groups took responsibility for bringing down additional corporate and Government sites, including the F.B.I.'s public information site. The events escalated a longstanding game of tit-for-tat between pranksters using personal computers and a newly galvanized Federal police force stung by recent attacks on some of the Government's high-level Web sites. Paul E. Coggins, the United States Attorney in Dallas who is overseeing the effort, said yesterday that Federal prosecutors had issued 16 warrants in 12 jurisdictions after a yearlong investigation, but had not yet charged anyone with a crime. The investigation is part of the Government's new, Dallas-based cybercrime task force, which includes the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the United States Attorney's Office and the Defense Department, Coggins said. "It's probably the most far-reaching investigation of its kind," he said. "It's an investigation with national and international implications." Coggins declined to elaborate or to say whether the targets of the investigation were considered to be part of a conspiracy. Don K. Clark, a special F.B.I. agent in Houston, said the activities under investigation included stealing and misusing credit card numbers and computer passwords. Two of those who were raided by the bureau's agents last Wednesday said one connection between some of the targets was that they knew one another from various discussion groups in an Internet chat forum called Internet Relay Chat. The participants said that the talk sometimes revolved around hacking techniques but that they were not involved in any general hacking conspiracy with other members of the discussion groups. "I have never defaced any Web pages or taken out any major sites," said Paul Maidman, 18, of Waldwick, N.J., one of those who were raided. Referring to proprietary computer systems, he said: "I got into other servers. I'd look around, read some E-mail, and that would be it." Maidman said he was awakened last Wednesday morning by five or six armed F.B.I. agents surrounding a living room couch where he slept. He said the agents confiscated a computer, some diskettes, CD-ROM's and other computer paraphernalia. Two Internet service providers have also received requests for documentation in connection with the case. The requests, parts of which have been posted on the Internet, seek information about dozens of hackers, hacker groups and software used by hackers. John Vranesevich, who operates the Anti-Online Web site, which chronicles hacker activity, said the information requested from Internet service providers involved software tools, computer files and aliases pertaining to hacker activities. Vranesevich said several of the aliases actually represented software programs called "bots," which are posted in chat rooms as automated monitors but may have been mistaken by F.B.I. agents for human participants. "Anything that has to do with hackers they're going after," he said. "I'm not going to call this a witch hunt, but it's an uninformed investigation." Meanwhile, hacker groups continued attacks on corporate and Government computers, in some cases making sites inaccessible and, in others, taking over sites with their own messages, some of them profane. The F.B.I. site, taken down last week, remained inaccessible yesterday. One hacker group, which calls itself F0rpaxe, says it is based in Portugal and takes responsibility for "massive attacks" on various Web sites, sent a statement to Anti-Online saying, "If the F.B.I. doesn't stop we won't, and we can start destroying." -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: OSAll [www.aviary-mag.com]
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