| ==Phrack Inc.== |
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| Volume Three, Issue 26, File 10 of 11 |
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| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN |
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| PWN P h r a c k W o r l d N e w s PWN |
| PWN %%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%% %%%%%%% PWN |
| PWN Issue XXVI/Part 2 PWN |
| PWN PWN |
| PWN April 25, 1989 PWN |
| PWN PWN |
| PWN Created, Written, and Edited PWN |
| PWN by Knight Lightning PWN |
| PWN PWN |
| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN |
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| Reach Out And TAP Someone April 3, 1989 |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |
| Two former employees of Cincinnati Bell, who were fired by the company for |
| "good cause" according to Cincinnati Bell Chairman Dwight Hibbard are claiming |
| they installed more than 1200 illegal wiretaps over a 12 year period from 1972 |
| - 1984 at the request of their supervisors at the telco and the local police. |
|
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| Among the alleged targets of the snooping were past and present members of |
| Congress, federal judges, scores of the city's most prominent politicians, |
| business executives, lawyers and media personalities. |
|
|
| Leonard Gates and Robert Draise say they even wiretapped the hotel room where |
| President Gerald Ford stayed during two visits to Cincinnati; and this part of |
| their story, at least, has been verified by the now retired security chief at |
| the hotel. |
|
|
| As more details come out each day, people in Cincinnati are getting a rare look |
| at a Police Department that apparently spied on itself, and at a grand jury |
| probe that has prompted one former FBI official to suggest that the Justice |
| Department seems more interested in discrediting the accusers than in seeking |
| the truth. |
|
|
| Cincinnati Bell executives says Gates and Draise are just trying to "get even" |
| with the company for firing them. But disclosures thus far seem to indicate |
| there is at least some truth in what the two men are saying about the company |
| they used to work for. |
|
|
| According to Gates and Draise, they were just employees following the orders |
| given to them by their superiors at Cincinnati Bell. But Dwight Hibbard, |
| Chairman of the Board of Cincinnati Bell has called them both liars, and said |
| their only motive is to make trouble for the company. |
|
|
| Cincinnati Bell responded to allegations that the company had specifically |
| participated in illegal wiretapping by filing a libel suit against Gates and |
| Draise. The two men responded by filing a countersuit against the telco. |
| In addition to their suit, four of the people who were allegedly spied on have |
| filed a class action suit against the telco. |
|
|
| In the latest development, Cincinnati Bell has gone public with (according to |
| them) just recently discovered sordid details about an extramarital affair by |
| Gates. A federal grand jury in Cincinnati is now trying to straighten out the |
| tangled web of charges and countercharges, but so far no indictments have been |
| returned. |
|
|
| Almost daily, Gates and Draise tell further details about their exploits, |
| including taps they claim they placed on phones at the Cincinnati Stock |
| Exchange and the General Electric aircraft engine plant in suburban Evendale. |
|
|
| According to Draise, he began doing these "special assignments" in 1972, when |
| he was approached by a Cincinnati police officer from that city's clandestine |
| intelligence unit. The police officer wanted him to tap the lines of black |
| militants and suspected drug dealers, Draise said. |
|
|
| The police officer assured him the wiretapping would be legal, and that top |
| executives at the phone company had approved. Draise agreed, and suggested |
| recruiting Gates, a co-worker to help out. Soon, the two were setting several |
| wiretaps each week at the request of the Intelligence Unit of the Cincinnati |
| Police Department. |
|
|
| But by around 1975, the direction and scope of the operation changed, say the |
| men. The wiretap requests no longer came from the police; instead they came |
| from James West and Peter Gabor, supervisors in the Security Department at |
| Cincinnati Bell, who claimed *they were getting the orders from their |
| superiors*. |
|
|
| And the targets of the spying were no longer criminal elements; instead, Draise |
| and Gates say they were asked to tap the lines of politicians, business |
| executives and even the phone of the Chief of Police himself, and the personal |
| phone lines of some telephone company employees as well. |
|
|
| Draise said he "began to have doubts about the whole thing in 1979" when he was |
| told to tap the private phone of a newspaper columnist in town. "I told them I |
| wasn't going to do it anymore," he said in an interview during the week of |
| April 2, 1989. |
|
|
| Gates kept on doing these things until 1984, and he says he got cold feet late |
| that year when "the word came down through the grapevine" that he was to tap |
| the phone lines connected to the computers at General Electric's Evendale |
| plant. He backed out then, and said to leave him out of it in the future, and |
| he claims there were hints of retaliation directed at him at that time; threats |
| to "tell what we know about you..." |
|
|
| When Dwight Hibbard was contacted at his office at Cincinnati Bell and asked to |
| comment on the allegations of his former employees, he responded that they were |
| both liars. "The phone company would not do things like that," said Hibbard, |
| "and those two are both getting sued because they say we do." Hibbard has |
| refused to answer more specific questions asked by the local press and |
| government investigators. |
|
|
| In fact, Draise was fired in 1979, shortly after he claims he told his |
| superiors he would no longer place wiretaps on lines. Shortly after he quit |
| handling the "special assignments" given to him he was arrested, and charged |
| with a misdemeanor in connection with one wiretap -- which Draise says he set |
| for a friend who wanted to spy on his ex-girlfriend. Cincinnati Bell claims |
| they had nothing to do with his arrest and conviction on that charge; but they |
| "were forced to fire him" after he pleaded guilty. |
|
|
| Gates was fired in 1986 for insubordination. He claims Cincinnati Bell was |
| retaliating against him for taking the side of two employees who were suing the |
| company for sexual harassment; but his firing was upheld in court. |
|
|
| The story first started breaking when Gates and Draise went to see a reporter |
| at [Mount Washington Press], a small weekly newspaper in the Cincinnati |
| suburban area. The paper printed the allegations by the men, and angry |
| responses started coming in almost immediately. |
|
|
| At first, police denied the existence of the Intelligence Unit, let alone that |
| such an organization would use operatives at Cincinnati Bell to spy on people. |
| Later, when called before the federal grand jury, and warned against lying, |
| five retired police officers, including the former chief, took the Fifth |
| Amendment. Finally last month, the five issued a statement through their |
| attorney, admitting to 12 illegal wiretaps from 1972 - 1974, and implicated |
| unnamed operatives at Cincinnati Bell as their contacts to set the taps. |
|
|
| With the ice broken, and the formalities out of the way, others began coming |
| forward with similar stories. Howard Lucas, the former Director of Security |
| for Stouffer's Hotel in Cincinnati recalled a 1975 incident in which he stopped |
| Gates, West and several undercover police officers from going into the hotel's |
| phone room about a month before the visit by President Ford. |
|
|
| The phone room was kept locked, and employees working there were buzzed in by |
| someone already inside, recalled Lucas. In addition to the switchboards, the |
| room contained the wire distribution frames from which phone pairs ran |
| throughout the hotel. Lucas refused to let the police officers go inside |
| without a search warrant; and they never did return with one. |
|
|
| But Lucas said two days later he was tipped off by one of the operators to look |
| in one of the closets there. Lucas said he found a voice activated tape |
| recorder and "a couple of coils they used to make the tap." He said he told |
| the Police Department and Cincinnati Bell about his findings, but "...I could |
| not get anyone to claim it, so I just yanked it all out and threw it in the |
| dumpster..." |
|
|
| Executives at General Electric were prompted to meet with Draise and Gates |
| recently to learn the extent of the wiretapping that had been done at the |
| plant. According to Draise, GE attorney David Kindleberger expressed |
| astonishment when told the extent of the spying; and he linked it to the |
| apparent loss of proprietary information to Pratt & Whitney, a competing |
| manufacturer of aircraft engines. |
|
|
| Now all of a sudden, Kindleberger is clamming up. I wonder who got to him? He |
| admits meeting with Draise, but says he never discussed Pratt & Whitney or any |
| competitive situation with Draise. But an attorney who sat in on the meeting |
| supports Draise's version. |
|
|
| After an initial flurry of press releases denying all allegations of illegal |
| wiretapping, Cincinnati Bell has become very quiet, and is now unwilling to |
| discuss the matter at all except to tell anyone who asks that "Draise and Gates |
| are a couple of liars who want to get even with us..." And now, the telco |
| suddenly has discovered information about Gates' personal life. |
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| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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| FBI/Bell Wiretapping Network? April 3, 1989 |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |
| [Edited For This Presentation] |
|
|
| Bob Draise/WB8QCF was an employee of Cincinnati Bell Telephone between 1966 and |
| 1979. He, and others, are involved in a wiretapping scandal of monumental |
| proportions. They say they have installed more than 1,000 wiretaps on the |
| phones of judges, law enforcement officers, lawyers, television personalities, |
| newspaper columnists, labor unions, defense contractors, major corporations |
| (such as Proctor & Gamble and General Electric), politicians (even ex-President |
| Gerald Ford) at the request of Cincinnati police and Cincinnati Bell security |
| supervisors who said the taps were for the police. They were told that many of |
| the taps were for the FBI. |
|
|
| Another radio amateur, Vincent Clark/KB4MIT, a technician for South-Central |
| Bell from 1972 to 1981, said he placed illegal wiretaps similar to those done |
| by Bob Draise on orders from his supervisors -- and on request from local |
| policemen in Louisville, Kentucky. |
|
|
| When asked how he got started in the illegal wiretap business, Bob said that a |
| friend called and asked him to come down to meet with the Cincinnati police. An |
| intelligence sergeant asked Bob about wiretapping some Black Muslims. He also |
| told Bob that Cincinnati Bell security had approved the wiretap -- and that it |
| was for the FBI. The sergeant pointed to his Masonic ring which Bob also wore |
| -- in other words, he was telling the truth under the Masonic oath -- something |
| that Bob put a lot of stock in. |
|
|
| Most of the people first wiretapped were drug or criminal related. Later on, |
| however, it go out of hand -- and the FBI wanted taps on prominent citizens. |
| "We started doing people who had money. How this information was used, I |
| couldn't tell you." |
|
|
| The January 29th "Newsday" said Draise had told investigators that among the |
| taps he rigged from 1972 to 1979 were several on lines used by Wren Business |
| Communications, a Bell competitor. It seems that when Wren had arranged an |
| appointment with a potential customer, they found that Bell had just been there |
| without being called. Wren's president is a ham radio operator, David |
| Stoner/K8LMB. |
|
|
| When spoken with, Dave Stoner said the following; |
|
|
| "As far as I am concerned, the initial focus for all of this began |
| with the FBI. The FBI apparently set up a structure throughout the |
| United States using apparently the security chiefs of the different |
| Bell companies. They say that there have been other cases in the |
| United States like ours in Cincinnati but they have been localized |
| without the realization of an overall pattern being implicated." |
|
|
| "The things that ties this all together is if you go way back in |
| history to the Hoover period at the FBI, he apparently got together |
| with the AT&T security people. There is an organization that I |
| guess exists to this day with regular meetings of the security |
| people of the different Bell companies. This meant that the FBI |
| would be able to target a group of 20 or 30 people that represented |
| the security points for all of the Bell and AT&T connections in the |
| United States. I believe the key to all of this goes back to Hoover. |
| The FBI worked through that group who then created the activity at |
| the local level as a result of central planning." |
|
|
| "I believe that in spite of the fact that many people have indicated |
| that this is an early 70's problem -- that there is no disruption to |
| that work to this day. I am pretty much convinced that it is |
| continuing. It looks like a large surveillance effort that |
| Cincinnati was just a part of." |
|
|
| "The federal prosecutor Kathleen Brinkman is in a no-win situation. |
| If she successfully prosecutes this case she is going to bring |
| trouble down upon her own Justice Department. She can't |
| successfully prosecute the case." |
|
|
| About $200 million in lawsuits have already been filed against Cincinnati Bell |
| and the Police Department. Several members of the police department have taken |
| the Fifth Amendment before the grand jury rather than answer questions about |
| their roles in the wiretapping scheme. |
|
|
| Bob Draise/WB8QCF has filed a suit against Cincinnati Bell for $78 for |
| malicious prosecution and slander in response to a suit filed by Cincinnati |
| Bell against Bob for defamation. Right after they filed the suit, several |
| policemen came forward and admitted to doing illegal wiretaps with them. The |
| Cincinnati police said they stopped this is 1974 -- although another policeman |
| reportedly said they actually stopped the wiretapping in 1986. |
|
|
| Now the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" is interested in the Cincinnati goings-on |
| and has sent in a team of investigative reporters. Ed Bradley from "60 |
| Minutes" has already interviewed Bob Draise/WB8QCF and it is expected that |
| sometime during this month (April) April, we will see a "60 Minutes" report on |
| spying by the FBI. We also understand that CNN, Ted Turner's Cable News |
| Network, is also working up a "Bugging of America" expose. |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ |
|
|
| Crackdown On Hackers Urged April 9, 1989 |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |
| Taken From the Chicago Tribune (Section 7, Page 12b) |
|
|
| "Make Punishment Fit The Crime," computer leaders say. |
|
|
| DALLAS (AP) -- The legal system has failed to respond adequately to the threat |
| that hackers pose to the computer networks crucial to corporate America, a |
| computer expert says. |
|
|
| Many computer hackers "are given slaps on the wrist," Mark Leary, a senior |
| analyst with International Data Corp., said at a roundtable discussion last |
| week. |
|
|
| "The justice system has to step up...to the fact that these people are |
| malicious and are criminals and are robbing banks just as much as if they |
| walked up with a shotgun," he said. |
|
|
| Other panelists complained that hackers, because of their ability to break into |
| computer systems, even are given jobs, sometimes a security consultants. |
|
|
| The experts spoke at a roundtable sponsored by Network World magazine, a |
| publication for computer network users and managers. |
|
|
| Computer networks have become crucial to business, from transferring and |
| compiling information to overseeing and running manufacturing processes. |
|
|
| The public also is increasingly exposed to networks through such devices as |
| automatic teller machines at banks, airline reservation systems and computers |
| that store billing information. |
|
|
| Companies became more willing to spend money on computer security after last |
| year's celebrated invasion of a nationwide network by a virus allegedly |
| unleased by a graduate student [Robert Tappen Morris], the experts said. |
|
|
| "The incident caused us to reassess the priorities with which we look at |
| certain threats," said Dennis Steinaur, manager of the computer security |
| management group of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. |
|
|
| But computer security isn't only a matter of guarding against unauthorized |
| entry, said Max Hopper, senior vice president for information systems as |
| American Airlines. |
|
|
| Hopper said American has built a "a Cheyenne mountain-type" installation for |
| its computer systems to guard against a variety of problems, including |
| electrical failure and natural disaster. Referring to the Defense Department's |
| underground nerve center in a Colorado mountain, he said American's precautions |
| even include a three-day supply of food. |
|
|
| "We've done everything we can, we think, to protect the total environment," |
| Hopper said. |
|
|
| Hopper and Steinaur said that despite the high-tech image of computer |
| terrorism, it remains an administrative problem that should be approached as a |
| routine management issue. |
|
|
| But the experts agreed that the greatest danger to computer networks does not |
| come from outside hackers. Instead, they said, the biggest threat is from |
| disgruntled employees or others whose original access to systems was |
| legitimate. |
|
|
| Though employee screening is useful, Steinaur said, it is more important to |
| build into computer systems ways to track unauthorized use and to publicize |
| that hacking can be traced. |
|
|
| Steinaur said growing computer literacy, plus the activities of some |
| non-malicious hackers, help security managers in some respects. |
|
|
| Expanded knowledge "forces us as security managers not be dependent on |
| ignorance," Steinaur said. |
|
|
| "Security needs to be a part of the system, rather than a 'nuisance addition,'" |
| Steinaur said, "and we probably have not done a very good job of making |
| management realize that security is an integral part of the system." |
|
|
| IDC's Leary said the organization surveys of Fortune 1000 companies |
| surprisingly found a significant number of companies were doing little to |
| protect their systems. |
|
|
| The discussion, the first of three planned by Network World, was held because |
| computer sabotage "is a real problem that people aren't aware of," said editor |
| John Gallant. Many business people sophisticated networks." |
|
|
| It also is a problem that many industry vendors are reluctant to address, he |
| said, because it raises questions about a company's reliability. |
|
|
| Typed For PWN by Hatchet Molly |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ |
|
|
| Ex-Worker Charged In Virus Case -- Databases Were Alleged Target Apr 12, 1989 |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |
| by Jane M. Von Bergen (Philadelphia Inquirer) |
|
|
| A former employee was charged yesterday with infecting his company's computer |
| database in what is believed to be the first computer-virus arrest in the |
| Philadelphia area. |
|
|
| "We believe he was doing this as an act of revenge," said Camden County |
| Assistant Prosecutor Norman Muhlbaier said yesterday, commenting on a motive |
| for the employee who allegedly installed a program to erase databases at his |
| former company, Datacomp Corp. in Voorhees, New Jersey. |
|
|
| Chris Young, 21, of the 2000 block of Liberty Street, Trenton, was charged in |
| Camden County with one count of computer theft by altering a database. |
| Superior Court Judge E. Stevenson Fluharty released Young on his promise to pay |
| $10,000 if he failed to appear in court. If convicted, Young faces a 10-year |
| prison term and a $100,000 fine. Young could not be reached for comment. |
|
|
| "No damage was done," Muhlbaier said, because the company discovered the virus |
| before it could cause harm. Had the virus gone into effect, it could have |
| damaged databases worth several hundred thousand dollars, Muhlbaier said. |
|
|
| Datacomp Corp., in the Echelon Mall, is involved in telephone marketing. The |
| company, which has between 30 and 35 employees, had a contract with a major |
| telephone company to verify the contents of its white pages and try to sell |
| bold-faced or other special listings in the white pages, a Datacomp company |
| spokeswoman said. The database Young is accused of trying to destroy is the |
| list of names from the phone company, she said. |
|
|
| Muhlbaier said that the day Young resigned from the company, October 7, 1988 he |
| used fictitious passwords to obtain entry into the company computer, |
| programming the virus to begin its destruction December 7, 1988 -- Pearl Harbor |
| Day. Young, who had worked for the company on and off for two years -- most |
| recently as a supervisor -- was disgruntled because he had received some |
| unfavorable job-performance reviews, the prosecutor said. |
|
|
| Eventually, operators at the company picked up glitches in the computer system. |
| A programmer, called in to straighten out the mess, noticed that the program |
| had been altered and discovered the data-destroying virus, Muhlbaier said. |
| "What Mr. Young did not know was that the computer system has a lot of security |
| features so they could track it back to a particular date, time and terminal," |
| Muhlbaier said. "We were able to ... prove that he was at that terminal." |
| Young's virus, Muhlbaier said, is the type known as a "time bomb" because it is |
| programmed to go off at a specific time. In this case, the database would have |
| been sickened the first time someone switched on a computer December 7, he said |
|
|
| Norma Kraus, a vice president of Datacomp's parent company, Volt Information |
| Sciences Inc, said yesterday that the company's potential loss included not |
| only the databases, but also the time it took to find and cure the virus. "All |
| the work has to stop," causing delivery backups on contracts, she said. "We're |
| just fortunate that we have employees who can determine what's wrong and then |
| have the interest to do something. In this case, the employee didn't stop at |
| fixing the system, but continued on to determine what the problem was." The |
| Volt company, based in New York, does $500 million worth of business a year |
| with such services as telephone marketing, data processing and technical |
| support. It also arranges temporary workers, particularly in the |
| data-processing field, and installs telecommunication services, Kraus said. |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ |
|
|
| Mexico's Phone System Going Private? April 17, 1989 |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% |
| By Oryan QUEST (Special Hispanic Corespondent) |
|
|
| The Mexico Telephone Company, aka Telefonos de Mexico, aka Telmex, is likely to |
| go private in the next year or two. The Mexican government is giving serious |
| consideration to selling its controlling interest in that nation's |
| communications network, despite very stiff opposition from the local unions |
| which would prefer to see the existing bureaucracy stay in place. |
|
|
| The proposed sale, which is part of a move to upgrade the phone system there -- |
| and it *does* need upgrading -- by allowing more private investment, is part of |
| a growing trend in Mexico to privatize heretofore nationalized industries. |
|
|
| The Mexico Telephone Company has spent more than a year planning a $14 billion, |
| five-year restructuring plan which will probably give AT&T and the Bell |
| regional holding companies a role in the improvements. |
|
|
| One plan being discussed by the Mexican government is a complete break-up of |
| Telmex, similar to the court-ordered divestiture of AT&T a few years ago. |
| Under this plan, there would be one central long distance company in Mexico, |
| with the government retaining control of it, but privately owned regional firms |
| providing local and auxiliary services. |
|
|
| Representatives of the Mexican government have talked on more than one |
| occasion with some folks at Southwestern Bell about making a formal proposal. |
| Likewise, Pacific Bell has been making some overtures to the Mexicans. It will |
| be interesting to see what develops. |
|
|
| About two years ago, Teleconnect Magazine, in a humorous article on the |
| divestiture, presented a bogus map of the territories assigned to each BOC, |
| with Texas, New Mexico and Arizona grouped under an entity called "Taco Bell." |
|
|
| Any phone company which takes over the Mexican system will be an improvement |
| over the current operation, which has been slowly deteriorating for several |
| years. |
|
|
| PS: I *Demand* To Be Let Back On MSP! |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ |
|
|