[ISN] Police on the lookout for cyber crimes

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Mon Feb 23 2004 - 09:14:42 PST

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    http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=1656871&nav=9TahKyMs
    
    Rich Van Wyk/Eyewitness News
    
    Indianapolis, Feb. 20 - Hamilton County sheriff's deputies accustomed
    to looking for burglars and speeders are now being trained to spot
    roving cyber thieves, so called war drivers.
    
    They roam neighborhoods with laptop computers searching for unsecured
    home computers and Internet connections.
    
    Hamilton County Sheriff's Captain Jim Jowitt believes, "they are a
    potential huge financial threat."
    
    Eyewitness News showed you how many homeowners don't bother installing
    the security features on their home computer wireless networks. How
    easy it is to hijack Internet connections or rummage through personal
    computers.
    
    Accessing someone's computer system without their permission, under
    Indiana law, is trespassing.
    
    "And that is just accessing. If you do things with the information
    there can be other crimes involved. We are going to take this
    seriously."
    
    In Greenwood, police say they are just as serious about enforcing the
    computer trespassing law. Detective Eric Klinkowski adds, "We know
    several businesses that were targeted and denoted on war chalking web
    sites."
    
    War drivers use something as simple as chalk or as sophisticated as
    satellite global positioning systems to mark businesses with open
    wireless computer systems so other war drivers can find them.
    
    They even put a so-called wireless hot spot on the Internet.
    
    Klinkowski, who investigates crimes committed using computers, can't
    understand why people who lock their doors would leave their computers
    open to anyone. "It's just a matter of time before we have to
    investigate one of these things."
    
    Neither police department has arrested anyone for computer
    trespassing. However in Hamilton County, in two separate financial
    fraud cases, the suspect either admitted or had the equipment
    necessary to commit crimes using someone else's wireless computer
    system.
    
    
    
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