http://www.boston.com/dailynews/352/region/Conn_hacker_indicted_in_attack:.shtml By Seth Hettena Associated Press 12/18/2001 SAN DIEGO (AP) A Connecticut computer hacker has been indicted on federal charges for allegedly breaking into a Website for car enthusiasts and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, authorities and company officials said Tuesday. Stephen L. Suplita III was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego on a charge of intentionally damaging computers at Enjoya. FBI agents arrested him Monday at his home in Manchester, Conn. The 21-year-old, who works at Alice Technologies in Holyoke, Mass., has been released on bond and is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in San Diego next month. Messages left Tuesday at Suplita's home were not returned. Suplita hacked into Enjoya's Website between July and October of last year and left a trail that investigators traced back to computers linked to him, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Skerlos. ''He would be middle-of-the-road in terms of sophistication,'' Skerlos said. Fallbrook-based Enjoya was at the time the fourth-largest site for auto enthusiasts, but the attacks dealt a setback to that side of the business, said Richard Hudgins, the company's chief executive officer. ''Now we're not pushing that end of the business that hard,'' Hudgins said. ''The reason we're not pushing it hard is because of the hacking.'' The attacks cost Enjoya four accounts worth $45,000 a month. The company also spent about $35,000 to fix the damage left by the hacker, who deleted key files and posted pornography in bulletin boards. Prosecutors declined to discuss why Suplita targeted Enjoya. Hudgins said the attacks might have something to do with a dispute over a magazine for Mazda Miata enthusiasts. The initial attack, which targeted a Miata discussion group on the Enjoya site, occurred in the midst of a controversy over Miata magazine's distribution rights and funding. At the time, Enjoya was the Web host for the magazine, but the company lost the account and three others due to the attacks, Hudgins said. Suplita is himself a car buff. He operates German Performance Group, a Website frequented by Connecticut-area Audi and Volkswagen enthusiasts. On the site, he carefully details each modification to his 1985 Volkswagen Cabriolet, down to the carbon fiber steering wheel. Enjoya traced the initial attack back to a Farmington, Conn.-based company that sells pharmaceuticals over the Web. Company officials told Hudgins they had fired the employee responsible, but declined to provide his name. In October 2000, a hacker broke into Enjoya's Website again in what Hudgins called the more damaging of the two attacks. Dialing in from a personal account, the hacker entered the site through a security loophole and downloaded a database of 115,000 names of site users, including about 45,000 credit card accounts, he said. Enjoya had to notify every user who provided credit card numbers of the attack. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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