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Tolmes News Service 09
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# <Tolmes News Service> #
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# > Written by Dr. Hugo P. Tolmes < #
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Issue Number: 09
Release Date: November 19, 1987
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TITLE: The National Guards
FROM: Omni
DATE: August 1987
If you liked 1984, you're gonna love what the military has planed.
Americans get much of their information through forms of electronic
communications, from the telephone, television and radio, and information
printed in many newspapers. Banks send important financial data, businesses
their spreadsheets, and stockbrokers their investment portfolios, all over
the same channels, from satelite signals to computer hookups carried on
long-distance telephone lines. To make sure that the federal government helped
promote and protect the efficient use of this advancing technology, Congress
pass the massive Communications Act of 1934. It outlined the role and laws of
communications structure in the United States.
The powers of the president are set out in Section 606 of that
law;basically it states that he has the authority to take control of ANY
communications facilities that he believes "essential to national
defense."
In the language of the trade this is known as a 606 emergency. On the
second floor of the DCA's four-story headquarters is a new addition called
the National Coordinating Center (NCC). Operated by the Pentagon, it is
virtually unknown outside of a handful of the industry and government
officials. The NCC is staffed around the clock by representatives of a dozen
of the nation's largest commercial communications companies- the so-called
"common carriers"- including AT&T, MCI, GTE, Comsat, and ITT. Also on hand
are officials from the State Department, the CIA, the FAA, and a
number of other agencies. During a 606 Emergency the Pentagon can order the
companies that make up the National Coordinating Center to turn over their
satellite, fiberoptic, and land-line facilities to the government.
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NOTA:
Big Brother is coming. In the event of a national emergency, all communications
would be controlled by the government. Long-distance companies would hand over
telecommunications control to the government.
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TITLE: The Caller that Isn't Long-Winded
FROM: The Chicago Tribune
DATE: August 20, 1987
You may remember our story last month about Kathy and John Riedy of
Raleigh, who received a long-distance bill for $24,129.99. The Riedys never
were unduly alarmed. "It's easy to prove you dls," Kathy Riedy said, "but imagin
e the trouble we would have had if the
bill had been for $200."
Lorraine Gregory of Glenview a US Sprint customer, does not have to
imagine. "Needless to say, when I saw my phone bill I was in total shock,"
Gregory said in a letter to the company last January about her bill for
$293.30. "On my call to Boise, Idaho, on 11/15/86, you show that I talked a
total of 1,441 minutes. If you divide that by 60 you get exactly 24 hours and
1 minute. I don't remember exactly how long I talked, but it was apporximately
2 1/2 hours."
Gregory inquired again on March 9: "I would like to know when you are
going to get my previous unpaid balance of $293.90 corrected." And again May
21: "Until I get a corrected statement, I do not intend to pay this bill." And
yet again on Aug. 6: "In January of this year I wrote a letter to you, and
to date I have not yet received an answer from someone at US Sprint."
"Each month when I received my bill," Gregory said, "I would send a check for
my current charges with a copy of my letter(s) and still no response from
anyone at US Sprint acknowledging my letters.... "Just recently I received a
letter from US Sprint to call 1-700-555-4141 from each of my phones
to make sure I was connected with US Sprint's Dial "1" Service. I have been
connected to Dial "1" service for almost a year now." "Of course, I don't
know what they're talking about; so I call Customer Service availiable '24
hours a day, 7 days a week' at 1-800-531-4646. Ha,ha,ha. All you get
is busy, busy, busy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
We attempted to call the number in Gregory's behalf. It was, as she said,
busy, busy, busy.
-Clarence Peterson
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NOTA:
The earlier article that was mentioned can be read in TNS Issue #2. This error
seems to be due to the people at Sprint.
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TITLE: A Call to Stop Long-Distace Scam
FROM: The Ann Landers Syndicated Advice Column
DATE:
Dear Ann Landers:
Please suggest to your readers to memorize their long-distance
charge-card numbers and make sure that they are alone when making such calls.
Anyone who gets hold of a charge-card number can call anywhere in the world.
When my son was in Korea on field duty, someone broke into his locker and
stole his wallet. Although the wallet was returned with his calling card
intact, someone copied the code number. The phone company took note of the
large amount charged to our phone and alerted me. When I told the woman at
AT&T that my son's wallet had been stolen, she canceled the card
immediately. At that time the charges amounted to $485. When the bill arrived
10 days later, it was $3,594. Almost all the calls were placed within 13
days. Whoever stole my son's wallet had either given out the code or sold it.
Calls had been made from Korea to all over the United States. There were also
calls from Brooklyn and the Bronx to Florida and Californleans and one from Nash
ville to Korea. Isn't it sad that someone
would do this to a young man who is serving his country?
C.M. in Lancaster
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NOTA:
A standard case of phone fraud... just something I had.
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TITLE: Online Junkies- Artificial Intelligence
FROM: Omni
DATE:
Artifical intelligence guru Marvin Minsky recently wasted three CO-2
cartidges before taking apart the seltzer bottle he was trying to
recharge and finding that the culprint was a faulty O-ring, a discovery that
turned his thoughts toward the space shuttle. I know this because Minsky
told me about it one night, though he was probably already asleep at the
time. Minsky's thoughts about O-rings, as well as his detailed message about
the design of space telescopes, were carried across the continent to my home
computer terminal courtesy of the Department of Defense (DoD).
Conceptualized at MIT in the late Sixties and put online in the early
Seventies, DoD's computer network ARPAnet (for Advanced Research Projects
Agency) was created to provide electronic mail service between the
universities and research centers that received department funding for
computer science, robotics, and other high-technology projects. But over the
years it has been linked to a series of other online services and is now,
according to many of its users, almost as addictive as it is informative. DoD
could hardly have imagined what would happen when some of the finest minds in
the country's most prestigious universities and research labs began
conversing with one another on ARPAnet.
When a technicalquestion is raised on one of its bulletin boards, you can
sit back and watch the responses pour in from the science departments of
schools like MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, Cornell, Yale, and Caltech
and from research centers such as NASA's Ames Research Center, the Jet
Propulsions Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Bell Labs.
Almost always intriguing, the postings are exceedingly well researched and
carefully presented.
In part this is because the jury of peers reading tthe boards is highly
critical and well-informed. A posting about a new theory of technology might
bring a correction or rebuttal from the scientist who did the work under
discussion. "You can't just gush blood all over the network," says one user.
"It will come back to haunt you." But there is room for irreverence.
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NOTA:
The actual article went on for several pages... it has been edited for the more
interesting parts.
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TITLE: Hacking Through NASA: A threat- or only an embarrassment
FROM: Newsweek
DATE:
In late July computer specialists at NASA headquarters in Washington
noticed signs of tampering with their system's software. S
computer hackers had penetrated the hub of a worldwide network known as the
Space Physics Analysis Network, or SPAN. NASA tightened its security and
kept the incidents quiet. But last week in Hamburg, West Germany, the culprits
themselves came forward.
A band of hackers affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg
claimed to have tapped into 135 computers around the world, extracting
a wealth of sensitive information about the space shuttle, Star Wars and other
topics.
"The whole system was open to our friends," said Wau Holland, a spokesman
for the club. "They found such explosive material that we had to go
[public]." It was an empty boast, according to NASA. The space agency
acknowledged the break-ins but said the hackers uncovered no classified
information: "It really wasn't a very important system," said spokesman
William Marshall. NASA said the network, one of several it operates,
did not contain secrets about Star Wars or anything else; it was simply a
"worldwide library" of space-related information available to perhaps 4,000
authorized researchers on various NASA projects. SPAN is also an electronic
medium for scientific discussion. Classified information about the
shuttle and military launches, Marshal says, is restricted to more secure
computers not linked to SPAN.
The SPAN system proved an easy target. The machines at NASA
headquarters were Digital Equipments Corp.'s VAX computers, which use
software known by the initials VMS-an operating system that has become a
hacker favorite because of its wide use at universities and scientific-research
centers.
One veteran American hackers has even written a series of tutorials
entitled "Hacking VMS". The West German group-which reportedly included two
computer maintenance workers at major European research centers that belonged
to the SPAN network-apparently exploited a flaw in the VMS system,
which DEC has subsequently fixed. The hackers gained entry in Europe, then
"network-hopped" their way to the VAX 11/785 computer system at the NASA hub.
The group was able to roam through the system at will for nearly three
months before their initial discovery by systems manager Roy Omund at the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelburg, West Germany. By then
they had surreptitiously planted a "Trojan horse" software program, which
subtly overrode the computer's operating instructions and made it
easier for others to gain access.
The Trojan horse multiplied, as one computer after another on the
network automatically copied the profram. (NASA says it defused the
program once it was discovered, but last week the OSUNY computer bulletin
board in New York was carrying instructions for breaking into SPAN.)
The group also discovered that many of the passwords used to restricted access
on SPAN were easy to figure out; some could even be found in the
manufacturer's instruction manual. The casual attitude toward security is not
surprising.
Like many networks that essentially function as data banks and
bulletin boards, SPAN was desig and communication. "Because
the data is not sensitive, you always sacrifice security for ease of use,"
says U.S. computer-security consultant Robert Courtney.
While some managers of large computer centers worry about hackers
and have tightened security, most consider them an unavoidable nuisance.
Authorized computer users -not hackers- still commit most of the theft and
other computer crimes. "[The hackers] haven't done real damage to anything,"
he says. "The harm is embarrassment, but that's all."
- WILLIAM D. MARBACH with ANDREW NAGORSKI in Bonn and RICHARD SANDZA in
Washington
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NOTA:
As noted by the credits at the end of the article, Richard Sandza was one of
the writers. For those who do not know of Mr. Sandza, in the past he has
written several articles for Newsweek that are on the subject of phone fraud
and hackers. He is best known for an article entitled: "The Night of the
Hackers." Another article on hackers was "Revenge of the Hackers" which
detailed the living hell that he was put through for writing the first
article.
It should be noted that the German hackers were not arrested. They turned
themselves in. They most likely came forward for one of the following reasons:
- they were afraid that sooner or later they would get busted
But why didn't they just quit then? Why come forward?
- they wanted to be K-rad d00dz and get their names in the papers
This could be a possibility. They said that they found such "explosive
material".. but in reality their boast is believed to be empty.
- they wanted to warn NASA about their break-in
Another possibility. They thought that they had "explosive material" and they
might have decided to be nice.
- they thought that if they came forward, NASA wouldn't prosecute them
They were on the SPAN network for several months. Perhaps they knew that
someone would eventually find out and they wanted to be nice.
Richard Sandza mentioned a file entitled "Hacking VMS." Actually, there
are probably many such files out there. One of the most well-known is a series
by Lex Luthor (I think?).
The OSUNY bulletin board was also
mentioned. This BBS was mentioned in another article by Richard Sandza
