Hacker Raises Stakes in DOD Attacks

by James Glave

3:18pm 4.Mar.98.PST

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/03/10713

An 18-year-old hacker living somewhere outside the United States claims to have high-level access to as many as 400 unclassified government and military computer systems, and also claims to be the tutor of the two California teenagers implicated in recent attacks against federal networks.

[..]

Analyzer said that when he compromises a site's security, he always leaves a "trojan horse," or back door, that will allow him to return. He establishes this trojan by leaving a "sniffer" program running. Such programs capture the keystrokes of a legitimate user, who may enter passwords or other information for later retrieval by Analyzer.

[A trojan is a program that appears to do one thing, but does something completely different. A back door is typically a modification of an existing program which is given an additional 'feature' that allows future access. These mods are typically as low key as possible, and are not advertised when the modified program runs. A sniffer does capture the login and password information of users (as well as all keystrokes sometimes), but typically logs that information to the local system. So to get to that information, one must have another way back on to the system. Mr. Glave is confusing his terms.]

[..]

Vranesevich said that he attempted to trace Analyzer in his own chat, which was going on at the same time as the one between Analyzer and Wired News, but that the hacker had telnetted, or tunneled, through 13 different servers, and covered his tracks by deleting log files at each of those boxes.

[There is no way Vranesevich had the authority to legally backtrack through those 13+ systems. If he did so illegally, are we to believe that he is such an accomplished hacker that he can target 13 specific sites like that, and compromise each in a 90 minute time frame? No. So the claim of '13' is completely fabricated.]

[..]


main page ATTRITION feedback