| #### PHRACK PRESENTS ISSUE 16 #### |
| ^*^*^*^Phrack World News, Part 1^*^*^*^ |
| **** File 8 of 12 **** |
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| >From the 9/16 San Francisco Chronicle, page A19: |
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| GERMAN HACKERS BREAK INTO NASA NETWORK (excerpted) |
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| Bonn |
| A group of West German computer hobbyists broke into an international |
| computer network of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and |
| rummaged freely among the data for at least three months before they were |
| discovered, computer enthusiasts and network users said yesterday. |
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| An organization in Hamburg called the Chaos Computer Club, which |
| claimed to be speaking for an anonymous group that broke into the network, |
| said the illicit users managed to install a "Trojan horse," and gain entry |
| into 135 computers on the European network. |
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| A "Trojan Horse" is a term for a permanent program that enables |
| amateur computer enthusiasts [as opposed to professionals?], or "hackers," |
| to use a password to bypass all the security procedures of a system and gain |
| access to all the data in a target computer. |
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| [Actually, this type of program is a 'back door' or a 'trap door.' The group |
| may very well have *used* a Trojan horse to enable them to create the back |
| door, but it probably wasn't a Trojan horse per se. A Trojan horse is a |
| program that does something illicit and unknown to the user in addition to its |
| expected task. See Phrack xx-x, "Unix Trojan Horses," for info on how to |
| create a Trojan horse which in turn creates a trap door into someone's |
| account.] |
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| The NASA network that was broken into is called the Space Physics |
| Analysis Network [ooh!] and is chiefly designed to provide authorized |
| scientists and organizations with access to NASA data. The security system in |
| the network was supplied by an American company, the Digital Equipment Corp. |
| [Probably DECNET. Serves them right.] Users said the network is widely used |
| by scientists in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Japan and five |
| other countries and does not carry classified information. |
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| A Chaos club spokesman, Wau Holland, denied that any data had been |
| changed. This, he said, went against "hacker ethics." |
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| West German television reports said that computer piracy carries a |
| penalty of three years in prison in West Germany. The government has not said |
| what it plans to do. |
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| The Chaos club clearly views its break-in as a major coup. Holland, |
| reached by telephone in Hamburg, said it was "the most successful running of a |
| Trojan horse" to his knowledge, and the club sent a lengthy telex message to |
| news organizations. |
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| It said the "Trojan horse" was spotted by a user in August, and the |
| infiltrating group then decided to go public because "they feared that they |
| had entered the dangerous field of industry espionage, economic crime, East- |
| West conflict...and the legitimate security interests of high-tech |
| institutions." |
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| The weekly magazine Stern carried an interview with several anonymous |
| hobbyists who showed how they gained access to the network. One described his |
| excitement when for the first time he saw on his screen, "Welcome to the NASA |
| headquarters VAX installation." |
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| According to Chaos, the hobbyists discovered a gap in the Digital VAX |
| systems 4.4 and 4.5 and used it to install their "Trojan Horse." |
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| [Excerpted and Typed by Shooting Shark. Comments by same.] |
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