[ISN] Computer sleuths ply Internet

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 00:26:46 PST

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    http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/12/22/2003122221417.htm
    
    By Ron Barnett
    STAFF WRITER
    rbarnett@private
    December 22, 2003 
    
    COLUMBIA - A 13-year-old girl sat at a computer in Orangeburg, making
    arrangements to have sex with an older man from Charleston.  At least
    that's what the man thought.
    
    When he arrived at the appointed place in Orangeburg, it was not a
    young girl who met him.
    
    It was the law.
    
    The "girl" was actually an agent at the South Carolina Computer Crime
    Center. The center, which brings together state and federal cyber
    crime experts, is one-year-old this month.
    
    And business is booming.
    
    "It is just growing exponentially, said Neal Dolan, the state's top
    Secret Service officer. "We bring guys in from around the country for
    a week at a time to catch us up."
    
    The center had worked 263 cases through November, said Lt. Chip
    Johnson, supervisory special agent for the State Law Enforcement
    Division, who oversees day-to-day operations. In the process,
    investigators sorted through 5.8 terabytes of information, he said, or
    the equivalent of 5,800 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
    
    But for all the vast amount of data searched, the number of cases
    cracked can be counted without a calculator.
    
    The Computer Crime Center, which was established using more than $5.6
    million in federal grants and infused with another $2.2 million this
    fall, has made 20 arrests, according to SLED spokeswoman Kathryn
    Richardson. That doesn't include arrests other law enforcement
    agencies made with assistance from the center, she said.
    
    But locking up criminals isn't the only thrust of the center, which
    FBI Director Robert Muller called the first computer crime unit that
    combines efforts of state and federal agencies.
    
    The center, which operates discretely out of the third floor of a
    mirrored-glass and brick building at a corporate office park off
    Interstate 26, also trains law enforcement officers across the state
    and is opening communication between high tech industry and law
    enforcement that hasn't existed in the past, authorities said.
    
    The center also has erased some of the barriers that have made
    computer crime investigations difficult, by combining state and
    federal efforts, experts said.
    
    "In the past people have actually had their own territories and areas
    where other people could not encroach on," said Majid Hassan,
    president of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association, a
    California-based public service organization of law enforcement and
    private security firms.
    
    The South Carolina Computer Crime Center, he said, is "a vast
    improvement over what we had previously."
    
    Jack Wiles, founder of a security training firm in Rock Hill that runs
    a high tech crime conference that draws experts from around the world,
    said the state's computer crime center leads the nation "by far" with
    the quality of its operation.
    
    "There's nothing like it in the country," he said.
    
    Bigger things are yet to come, Johnson says.
    
    Evidence from some "major crimes" in the Upstate has been submitted
    that the center is working with local authorities on, Johnson said.
    
    Several big high tech crime cases are still in the investigative
    stage, and details can't be released until arrests are made, he said.
    
    The center, which has eight agents from SLED, three from the FBI and
    four from the Secret Service, has taken a more aggressive approach
    over the last couple of months in cracking down on child exploitation
    cases, which make up nearly 2/3 of its caseload, Johnson said.
    
    "We have agents that go undercover on the Internet, posing as a child,
    or whatever it necessitates, for these pedophiles to approach," he
    said.
    
    In another type case, an Horry County man, disgruntled with his cell
    phone provider, allegedly programmed a computer to broadcast text
    messages to hundreds of thousands of cell phones, "basically telling
    all their customers how bad their provider was."
    
    The number of complaints from customers shut the company's call center
    down before the authorities, through subpoena, were able to trace it
    to the suspect.
    
    But it's not as though "Big Brother" is watching the Internet, the
    officers said.
    
    Investigators have to go through the same legal procedures to spy on
    private Internet communications as they would to make a phone tap,
    Dolan said. "We can only do what you can do unless we get a court
    order," he said.
    
    Most of the time, they don't have to. They log into chat rooms, like
    anyone can, and go to Web sites available to the public. Usually, the
    evidence to make a charge is stored on the suspect's hard drive, Dolan
    said.
    
    That's where the center's computer forensic lab comes into play.
    
    In a workshop lined with powerful computers, specially trained agents
    make an exact copy of all the data on a seized hard drive, so
    investigators never have to touch the original. They have to be
    careful to make sure they don't lose any of the digital information,
    which is considered very "fragile."
    
    "There's always the potential for something to happen, and then you
    couldn't retrieve it again," Johnson said.
    
    The computer specialists crack the encryption, overcome password
    protection and search for the information needed to make a case before
    handing it over to an investigator.
    
    The lab is installing a powerful server that will allow agents remote
    access information copied from a suspect's hard drive, Johnson said.
    
    Then there are the hackers of the world, who are just as likely to hit
    a corporate computer system in South Carolina as anywhere, with their
    indiscriminate attack methods.
    
    But setting up shop as a hacker is much easier than tracking down
    those who would sneak into other people's computers, Johnson said.
    
    "I don't want to take anything away from it because there's some smart
    people that hack," he said. "But it doesn't take a doctorate degree in
    computer science to do this type thing and set this up. A lot of it is
    just imagination, connectivity and a machine that has the power to do
    it."
    
    The center recently established the South Carolina Electronic Crimes
    Task Force, which includes members from business, telecommunications,
    hospitals, government and law enforcement. It's one of 13 task forces
    designated by the Secret Service and the only one not operated
    directly by the Secret Service, Dolan said.
    
    
    
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