Kuji Media Corporation Ltd.

Foreign hackers working from overseas via the Internet penetrated sensitive U.S. Government computer systems.

Hacking U.S. Government Computers from Overseas

Foreign-based hacker groups working via the Internet have had substantial success breaking into U.S. Government and defense contractor computer systems holding sensitive but not classified information. There is one publicly known case in which computer break-ins from overseas were sponsored by a foreign intelligence service.

Three Germans in Bremen, West Germany were hired by the Soviet KGB during 1986- 1989 to hack into U.S. Government systems. They penetrated Pentagon systems, NASA networks, Los Alamos National Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. They were detected by Clifford Stoll, at Berkeley, when he checked out minor discrepancies in the account billings. Stoll later wrote the popular book, The Cuckoo’s Egg, about the case. The three hackers were arrested and convicted of espionage.

The following three cases also show the ability of hackers overseas to penetrate protected domestic U.S. systems via the Internet. In these three cases there was some suspicion of possible foreign intelligence involvement. This could not be confirmed, but also could not be ruled out. Enterprising foreign hackers could collect this information on their own and then sell it to a foreign intelligence service, or a foreign service could sponsor the same kind of operation itself.

Argentine Hacker Intrusion Into Navy Systems

In July 1995 computers in several states and Mexico reported intrusions originating from Harvard University. The hacker apparently lifted user IDs and password information from accounts on a system administered by the university. The U.S. government became concerned in August when an intrusion was detected on a network operated by the U.S. Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center (NCCOSC). The intruder broke into the NCCOSC computer and installed sniffer programs to capture the IDs and passwords of legitimate users, and other software that would allow him to alter or destroy network files or to make them inaccessible to users.

After attacking a site in Taiwan, the intruder was monitored while “chatting” on the Internet, using the name Griton. Griton was traced back to Argentina where the moniker was known by Argentine authorities as a computer pirate who specialized in hacking, cracking and phreaking. The subject was soon traced to Buenos Aires and identified as Julio Cesar Ardita, then a 21-year-old student in Buenos Aires at the University of Argentina.

According to news reports, this hacker gained access to a host computer at the Army Research Lab in Edgewood, Maryland; the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington; the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California; and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Victim sites include 62 U.S. government, 136 U.S. educational, and 31 U.S. commercial facilities. The U.S. Navy, NASA, and Department of Energy’s National Laboratories were high on the list of frequency of penetration.

Ardita was served a warrant and his computer was seized. He admitted responsibility, but claimed he was guilty only of mischief. He was arraigned in December, 1995. The U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Ardita. Prosecution in the U.S. was initially frustrated by the fact that computer crime is not covered by international agreements for extradition. In December 1997, Ardita agreed to come voluntarily to the United States and plead guilty to unlawfully intercepting electronic communications over a military computer and damaging files on a military computer. In return for Ardita’s agreement to come voluntarily to the United States, he is being sentenced to only three years probation and fined $5,000.1

Although he hacked into important and sensitive government research files on satellites, radiation, and energy-related engineering, Ardita is not accused of obtaining classified information related to national security. To counterintelligence analysts, the hacker’s selection of targets and subject matter suggested a well-defined intelligence collection tasking, but foreign intelligence involvement has not been established. If a foreign intelligence service was involved, it is impossible to know which one, as many countries might have been interested in the information Ardita collected.

The Ardita case was the first time a court-ordered wire tap was used for real-time monitoring of an unknown subject to catch a computer criminal. It demonstrates the ability to chase and identify an international hacker on-line.1

Air Force Rome Development Center Break-In

Two young British hackers, Richard Pryce, age 16, and Mathew Bevan, age 21, broke into U.S. military computer systems. Pryce, who was identified and charged in 1995, allegedly obtained access to files on ballistic weapons research and messages from U.S. agents in North Korea during a 1994 crisis over inspection of nuclear facilities in North Korea. The penetrations were carried out over a period of several months.

Bevan, an information technology technician, was charged in 1996 with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. Pryce used the on-line nickname of “Datastream Cowboy” while Bevan identified himself as “Kuji.” Kuji was tutoring Datastream in his attempts to break into specific systems. According to news reports, investigators suspected the older culprit of being a foreign agent.

Pryce and Bevan broke into the Rome Air Development Center, Griffiss Air Force Base, NY, and before authorities became aware of their presence (five days later) they had penetrated seven systems, copied files including sensitive battlefield simulations, and installed devices to read passwords of everyone entering the systems. Rome Air Development Center was used as a launching pad for more than 150 intrusions into military, government and other systems including NASA and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Large volumes of data were downloaded from penetrated systems. One such data transfer (which was being monitored) involved the downloading of files from the Goddard Space Flight Center to an Internet provider in Latvia. In order to prevent the loss of sensitive data, the monitoring team broke the connection.

In one of these break-ins, Pryce used Rome to access a Korean facility. According to media reports, “For several anxious hours [U.S. authorities] didn’t know whether the intrusion was into a North or South Korean system. The concern was that the North Koreans would trace an intrusion coming from the U.S. and perceive it as an aggressive act of war.” The penetrated system turned out to be the South Korean Atomic Research Institute. The two were arrested after a long investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigation and New Scotland Yard.2

Dutch Teen Hackers

A group of Dutch teenagers penetrated computer systems at 34 U.S. military installations during 1990-91. They gained access to information on personnel performance reports, weapons development, and descriptions of movement of equipment and personnel. The systems penetrated included the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Army’s readiness system at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and the Army missile research lab at Aberdeen, Maryland.

At least one penetrated system directly supported U.S. military operations in Operation Desert Storm prior to the Gulf War. They copied or altered unclassified data and changed software to permit future access. The hackers were also looking for information about nuclear weapons. Their activities were first disclosed by Dutch television when camera crews filmed a hacker tapping into what was said to be U.S. military test information.

According to an ABC News report, the Dutch hackers had been operating for at least a year reading sensitive information about military plans and operations. Documents obtained by ABC indicate that hackers got so much information about the Patriot Missile that they had to break into several other computers just to find a place to store the data. At one point the intruders shut down computers in Wisconsin and Virginia which were later used to mobilize troops for Desert Storm. Information was gathered on the Patriot rocket launching system, the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile, and on the call up of military reserves for the Gulf War. The search words the hackers were particularly interested in were “military,” “nuclear” and “Desert Storm” or “Desert Shield.”

Many of the computer penetrations originated in Geldrop, Holland. At the time, investigators suspected the hackers could have been freelance spies looking for information to sell to the KGB or Iraqi intelligence, but no evidence of foreign intelligence service involvement has been found.

12Aug98 NEW ZEALAND: HACKERS PAY NO HEED TO CHAOS THEY MIGHT CAUSE.
By SUSAN JENNISON.

Kuji hacked computer systems for the same intellectual kick others get
from completing cryptic crosswords or solving mind teasers. For hackers
it is a numbers game with no thought to the possible enormity of the
consequences. The dangers are not real and do not equate to physical
things; cars, buildings or disasters.

Kuji – the codename used by Mathew Bevan when he was active – and the
Datastream Cowboy (Richard Pryce) managed to provoke an investigation by
the United States Air Force and Scotland Yard’s computer crime unit after
hacking into the Pentagon computer in 1993. Their inspiration then was to
learn more about UFOs.

Despite more sophisticated security systems, the talented amateurs still
get in.

The hackers who hit India’s national security computer system at the
Bhabba Atomic Research Centre had political motives. All aged between 15
and 18 and codenamed the MilwOrm Group, they claimed to be protesting
against the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May this
year.

Team Jajis threatened the New York Times and CyberTimes and in April an
Israeli teenager broke into the Pentagon’s computer system, a repeat
performance of Mathew Bevan who breached that system when he was 18. The
costs for computer security can be awesome.

United States industry estimates the costs of keeping the intruders at bay
at $US10 billion ($19.68 billion) while the Pentagon alone had 25,000
hacker attacks last year.

Bevan, now employed to test computer security for private firms, says
hackers are not out to cause chaos, they are looking for acceptance, kudos
and fame amongst their peers. Frequently it is just an amusing game of
breaking codes and challenging authority.

The unauthorised access or trespassing and vandalism to software are often
secondary to their considerations.

Mathew Bevan’s view is that hackers are generally the tinkerers, the
people who at school, wanted to ask the questions the teachers could never
answer. Meta-hackers have other aims: they are commissioned to steal
information. This information is then res

04/04/98 THE SCHOOLBOY SPY.

By Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas

The Americans called him their No 1 enemy, but he was only 16. Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas reveals one of the strangest stories of the cyber-age. On the evening of April 15, 1994, six American special agents sat in a concrete basement at a secret air force base patiently waiting for an attack. Their unseen and unknown enemy had for weeks been rampaging across the Pentagon network of computers, cracking security codes and downloading secret files.

Defence officials feared the infiltrator was a foreign agent. They were monitoring his movements in a desperate effort to trace him to his lair. He had first been spotted by a systems manager at the Rome Laboratory at the Griffiss air base in New York state, the premier command and control research facility in the United States. He had breached the security system and was using assumed computer identities from the air base to attack other sites, including Nasa, Wright-Patterson air force base – which monitors UFO sightings – and Hanscom air force base in Massachusetts. He was also planting “sniffer files” to pick up every password used in the system. This was a new type of warfare, a “cyber attack” at the heart of the most powerful military machine on earth. But the American military had been preparing for “cyber war” and it had a new breed of agent ready to fight back against the infiltrator. Computer specialists from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and the Air Force Information Warfare Centre in San Antonio, Texas, were dispatched to Rome Laboratory to catch the attacker.

By the end of the second week of their attempt to outwit him, their windowless basement room was a mess of food wrappers, sleeping bags and empty Coca-Cola cans. Sitting among the debris, the American cyber agents saw a silent alarm throb on one of the many terminals packed into the 30ft by 30ft room. Datastream Cowboy, as he called himself, was online again. They carefully tracked him on a computer screen as he used the access code of a high-ranking Pentagon employee to sign on. This gave him the power to delete files, copy secret information and even crash the system. As he sifted through battlefield simulation data, artificial intelligence files and reports on Gulf war weaponry, the agents worked frantically at their terminals, trying yet again to establish who he was and where he had come from. It was futile. Datastream Cowboy always bounced around the world before launching an attack and it was impossible even to establish in which country he was sitting.

Suddenly he left the Pentagon system. The agents rapidly checked the computer address of his new target and were chilled by the result: he was trying to get access to a nuclear facility somewhere in Korea. The shocked agents saw a terrible crisis coming. The United States was embroiled in tense negotiations with North Korea about its suspected nuclear weapons programme. The Clinton administration was publicly split between a faction that wanted to punish the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang for attempting to develop a nuclear bomb and State Department diplomats who insisted on a gentler approach.

If the paranoid North Koreans detected a computer attack on their nuclear facility from an American air base – because Datastream Cowboy had assumed an American military identity by routeing his assault through the Griffiss computer – they would be bound to believe that the hawks had won and this was an act of war. Senior defence officials were hurriedly briefed as the agents attempted to establish the exact location in Korea of the computer that Datastream Cowboy was trying to crack.

After several tense hours, they had their answer. His target was in South Korea, not North. The security alert was over, but the damage meted out by Datastream Cowboy was not. In the space of a few weeks he had caused more harm than the KGB, in the view of the American military, and was the “No 1 threat to US security”.

What made Datastream Cowboy so dangerous, in the view of the Americans, was that he was not alone; he was working with a more sophisticated hacker who used the “handle” of Kuji. The agents repeatedly watched Datastream Cowboy unsuccessfully attack a military site and retreat for an e-mail briefing from Kuji. He would then return and successfully hack into the site. Both Datastream Cowboy and Kuji were untraceable. They were weaving a path through computer systems in South Africa, Mexico and Europe before launching their attacks. Over 26 days, Datastream Cowboy and Kuji broke into the Rome Laboratory more than 150 times. Kuji was also monitored attempting an assault on the computers at Nato headquarters near Brussels. It was only three years after the final collapse of Soviet communism, but there was already a strong fear within the American government that the United States had become vulnerable to a new military threat: electronic and computer warfare.

Both America’s superpower military arsenal and its huge civilian economy had become reliant on microchips and in the words of Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney-general: “Some day we will wake up to find that the electronic equivalent of Pearl Harbor has crippled our computer networks and caused more chaos than a well placed nuclear strike. We do not want to wait for that wake-up call.”

What made the American military so vulnerable was that the Internet – the computer communications system that had been developed by Pentagon scientists as a tool for survival after nuclear war – was opening up in 1994 to anyone in the world who had access to a cheap and powerful personal computer.

The Internet automatically brought hackers to the very gates of the Pentagon’s most secret files – and it could not be policed, as it had been deliberately set up without controls to ensure ease of access for nuclear survivors.

According to official American figures, the Pentagon’s military computers are now suffering cyber attacks at the rate of 250,000 a year and it is retaliating with a $3.6bn programme of computer protection to key systems. THE attacks by Datastream Cowboy and Kuji were the opening shots in this barrage, and the Pentagon generals insisted that they had to be found and put out of action. It would have been relatively simple to shut them out of the Pentagon network, but they would survive to attack again – and their identities and the information they had already stolen would have remained unknown. The American cyber agents were ordered to continue chasing them through the electronic maze.

But how? They used a process called “fingering” in which they tried to detect every computer that Datastream Cowboy had used as stepping stones before attacking them. A computer on the Internet gives its own address in the first few bytes of any communication and the agents tried to trace Datastream Cowboy’s path backwards. The process can often be hit and miss because of the vast amount of traffic on the Internet and the hacker’s path was simply too long and circuitous to follow to its end. The agents almost gave up hope. Then old-fashioned police work was brought to bear. In the cyber age, where do hackers hang out? On the Internet, of course. They “chat” with each other through their screens.

The agents had informants who cruised the Internet and one of these made the breakthrough. He found that Datastream Cowboy hung out at Cyberspace, an Internet “service provider” based in Seattle. Moreover, he was a particularly chatty individual who was eager to engage other hackers in e-mail conversation. Naive, too. Before long, the informant had established that Datastream Cowboy lived in the United Kingdom. He even gave out his home telephone number.

Jubilant, a senior AFOSI agent contacted the computer crime unit in Scotland Yard for assistance. Datastream Cowboy’s number was traced to a house in a cul-de-sac in Colindale, part of the anonymous north London suburbs. In cold war days it would have been a classic address for a spy’s hideaway.

Telephone line checks revealed that the hacker was first dialling into Bogota, the Colombian capital, and then using a free phone line from there to hack his way into the sensitive military sites.

American agents flew to London and staked out the address with British police officers. Detectives were cautious, however, about making an immediate arrest because they wanted Datastream Cowboy to be online when they entered the house, so that he would be caught in the act.

At 8pm on May 12, 1994, four unmarked cars were parked outside the Colindale house. Inside one of them, a detective’s mobile phone rang. An agent from the Rome Laboratory was on the other end: Datastream Cowboy was online. Officers made a second call to British Telecom in Milton Keynes and established that a free phone call was being made to South America. Posing as a courier, one of the officers knocked on the door. As it was opened by a middle-aged man, eight policemen silently appeared and swept into the house. The officers quietly searched the downstairs and first floor. Then, creeping up the stairs to a loft-room, they saw a teenager hunched in his chair tapping frantically away on the keyboard of his ?700 PC World computer. They had found Datastream Cowboy.

One of the detectives walked up silently behind the young suspect and gently removed his hands from the computer. For 16-year-old Richard Pryce, a music student, it was the shock of his life. He looked at the policemen as they prepared to arrest him and collapsed on the floor in tears.

“They thought they were going to find a super-criminal and they just found me, a teenager playing around on his computer,” says Pryce now. “My mother had noticed people sitting outside our house for a few days beforehand, but I didn’t think much of it. I never thought I would get caught and it was very disturbing when I did.

“It had just been a game or a challenge from which I had got a real buzz. It was unbelievable because the computers were so easy to hack, like painting by numbers.”

Pryce, who was then a pupil at The Purcell School in Harrow, Middlesex, was arrested at his home but released on police bail the same evening. Five stolen files, including a battle simulation program, were discovered on the hard disk of his computer. Another stolen file, which dealt with artificial intelligence and the American Air Order of Battle, was too large to fit on to his desktop computer. So he had placed it in his own storage space at an Internet service provider that he used in New York, accessing it with a personal password.

During the subsequent police interviews, one pressing question remained unanswered: who was Kuji? Pryce claimed he had only talked with his hacking mentor on the Internet and did not know where he lived. American investigators regarded Kuji as a far more sophisticated hacker than Datastream. He would only stay on a telephone for a short time, not long enough to be traced successfully. “Kuji assisted and mentored Datastream and in return received from Datastream stolen information…Nobody knows what Kuji did with this information or why it was being collected,” agents reported.

Mark Morris, who was then a detective sergeant with Scotland Yard’s computer crime unit, was one of the investigating officers on the case. “It was awesome that Pryce, who was just one teenager with a computer, could cause so much havoc, but the greater worry in the US was about Kuji,” says Morris. “The fear was that he could be a spy working for a hostile foreign power. The job was then to find him.”

Pryce did give detectives one telephone number, but it was a red herring: a school library in Surrey. During the next two years of compiling evidence in Britain and America in the case against Pryce, British detectives and American agents failed to turn up any evidence that might lead to Kuji. Their break finally came in June 1996 when the computer crime unit decided to sift once again through the mass of information on the hard disk of Pryce’s computer.

Morris took on the job. “I was at home with my laptop and went through every bit of that hard disk, which was a huge task.” It took him three weeks. If all the files had been printed out they would have filled 40 filing cabinets.

At last he found what he wanted. “At the bottom of a file in the DOS directory I saw the name Kuji. Next to the name was a telephone number. Pryce might not have even known it was on his system because he downloaded so much information.”

For American agents hoping to catch a superspy, Kuji’s telephone number was a grave disappointment. He was based in Cardiff. A team of officers drove up to his address, a terraced house, and finally discovered Kuji’s identity. He was 21-year-old Mathew Bevan, a soft-spoken computer worker with a fascination for science fiction. His bedroom wall was covered with posters from The X Files and one of his consuming interests was the Roswell incident, the alleged crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. He was arrested on June 21, 1996, at the offices of Admiral Insurance where he worked.

“I would never have been caught if it wasn’t for Pryce and even then they took two years to find me,” Bevan says now. “And the only reason Pryce got caught was that he gave his number to a secret service informant.” Bevan, the son of a police officer, said he had not even been alarmed when Datastream Cowboy disappeared from the Internet. “Everyone was joking with me on the e-mail that he must have been arrested, but I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t until a year later that a friend phoned me and said: ‘Have you seen the papers? They think you’re a spy’.”

However, Bevan became confident that he had escaped detection and was stunned when he was arrested. “I was told to go and check the managing director’s computer. I went in and there were seven or eight of them in suits and I was arrested.” He was charged the next day with two counts of conspiracy under the Criminal Law Act 1997. He was later charged with three offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Pryce had been charged in June 1995, about 13 months after his arrest, with 12 offences under Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. He was also charged with conspiracy three days before Bevan’s arrest. At the culmination of one of the biggest ever international computer crime investigations and after a massive security scare in the United States, law enforcers were left with a meagre and faintly embarrassing prize: two young hackers who in their spare time, from the comfort of their bedrooms, had penetrated what should have been the most secure defence network in the world. To rub salt into the wounds, their credentials were hardly impressive. Pryce had scraped a D grade in computer studies at A-level and Bevan had dropped out of an HND course in computer science.

Pryce’s father, Nick, who restores musical instruments, said: “They said Richard was a No 1 security threat and I think that was just rubbish. They had overreacted and when they found out it was just a teenager, they still wanted to try to make an example of him. I never knew what he was doing at the time; I just thought he was in his bedroom playing on his computer. When I found out, I never thought he had done anything particularly wrong and neither did our friends. He just showed how bad security was on those computers.”

But how did two rather ordinary young men manage to penetrate the Pentagon computer system and spark such a massive security alert? Both were bright and articulate, but there was nothing in their backgrounds to suggest a computer wizardry that would outwit the American military. Their success was based on a mixture of persistence and good luck, which was abetted by crude security mistakes in the Pentagon computer system. Pryce had had a musical upbringing with his two sisters, Sally and Katie, and had a passion for playing the double bass. He was bought his computer when he was 15 to help him in his studies. He would spend his spare time linked up to a bulletin board on the Internet, where computer users traded information and chatted. It was here that he got his first introduction to hacking.

“I used to get software off the bulletin boards and from one of them I got a ‘bluebox’, which could recreate the various frequencies to get free phonecalls,” he said. “I would phone South America and this software would make noises which would make the operator think I had hung up. I could then make calls anywhere in the world for free.”

Now 20 and in his third year at the Royal College of Music in London, Pryce said: “I would get on to the Internet and there would be hackers’ forums where I learnt the techniques and picked up the software I needed. You also get text files explaining what you can do to different types of computer. “It was just a game, a challenge. I was amazed at how good I got at it. It escalated very quickly from being able to hack a low-profile computer like a university to being able to hack a military system. The name Datastream Cowboy just came to me in a flash of inspiration.”

The attack on Rome Laboratory, his greatest success, relied on a ferret called Carmen. Pryce easily gained low-level security access to the Rome computer using a default guest password. Once inside the system, he retrieved the password file and downloaded it on to his computer. He then set up a program to bombard the password file with 50,000 words a second. “I just left the computer running overnight until it cracked it,” he explained.

If all the air force officers with access to the computer had followed orders and used passwords with a mixture of numerals and letters, his attack would have been foiled; but luck was on his side.

Morris, who has since left Scotland Yard’s computer crime unit and now works in London for Computer Forensic Investigations, a private company, revealed: “He managed to crack the file because a lieutenant in the USAF had used the password Carmen. It was the name of his pet ferret. Once Pryce had got that, he was free to roam the system. There was information there that was deemed classified and highly confidential and he was able to see it.”

Once he was in the system, Pryce kept getting access to higher levels in his aim to become a “root user”, which gives the hacker total control of the computer with the power to shut out other users and command the entire system.

“I was interested in Rome Labs because I knew they developed stuff for the military. I just wanted to find out what they were doing. I read that UFO material was being kept at Wright Patterson base and I thought it would also be a laugh to get in there. I also hacked into a Nasa site,” he said. “Rome Labs was my main project. I got the programming code for an artificial intelligence project. I downloaded files so I could view them at leisure at home.

“I know there was a big fuss when I tried to hack into a computer in Korea, but there was nothing sinister about it. I just fancied having a go at a different sort of computer and I happened to be on the Rome Laboratory computer. I just tapped in the address for the Korean research computer, but I didn’t hack into it. It never went further than that.” During an intensive three months of hacking, Pryce sent e- mails at least twice a week to the fellow hacker he knew as Kuji, without knowing his real name was Mathew Bevan.

Bevan, who is now 23, was more of a loner than Pryce and would spend up to 30 hours without a break on his computer. He claims the fraternity of hackers gave him the friendship that he had failed to find during his childhood. “I was bullied at school and I found my little community and interaction through my computer,” he said. “The hackers would all egg each other on. There wasn’t anything malicious about it. If there was, I could have downed as many computer systems as I wanted. I was just really looking for anything about UFOs. It was like war games; I just couldn’t believe what we could get into. I wasn’t tutoring Pryce, but the Americans made out I was because they thought I was some kind of east European masterspy.” Pryce agrees: “We embarrassed them by showing how lax their security was and that’s why they made out we had been a huge security threat. I’m now amazed by what I did, but I wasn’t surprised at the time. It was just my hobby. Some people watched television for six hours a day, I hacked computers.”

The first time Pryce and Bevan met in person was in July 1996 when they appeared at Bow Street magistrates court jointly charged with conspiracy and offences under the Computer Misuse Act. “He was at the back of the court when I went in and his mother said: ‘You’d better say hello’, which he did. We didn’t even have a chat,” said Bevan.

Conspiracy charges against both Pryce and Bevan were later dropped, but in March last year Pryce was fined ?1,200 after admitting 12 offences under the Computer Misuse Act. His lawyers said in mitigation that there had been some exaggeration when the Senate armed services committee had been told in 1996 that the Datastream Cowboy had caused more harm than the KGB and was the “No 1 threat to US security”. The remaining charges against Bevan were dropped in November after the Crown Prosecution Service decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the case.

Nevertheless, the case of Datastream Cowboy and Kuji remains one of the most notorious in American cyber history. The two young men are living this down in different ways. Pryce’s computer was confiscated, to his initial dismay. “After I had my computer taken away it was quite difficult because I had been doing it every night for a year,” he said. “If they hadn’t caught me, I would have carried on.” Now he thinks hacking was a waste of time and insists he will never do it again. He does not even own a computer any more.

Bevan, however, has put his notoriety to good use: he is now employed testing the computer security of private companies.Targeting the Pentagon United States defence computers have for years been one of the most covetedtargets for hacking addicts inspired by the film War Games, which showed a boy cracking an American defence network and nearly starting the third world war.

One of the pioneers of this craze was Kevin Mitnick, who repeatedly hacked into Pentagon computers in the mid-1980s. He was jailed in 1989 but continued his exploits on his release and was arrested again after a two-year hunt by the FBI. The number of cyber attacks on the Pentagon is estimated by Washington officials as 250,000 annually, but the incidents the public hears about are only the few where hackers get caught. In 1996 six Danes who hacked into Pentagon computers were given sentences of up to three months. The same year, special agents tracked down three teenage hackers in Croatia who had also succeeded in penetrating Pentagon computers.

They were never identified or charged, however, as there is no law against computer hacking in Croatia. Last month there was a spectacular example of the hackers’ work when American defence officials revealed that the Pentagon computer network had been subjected to a relentless two-month attack. CIA agents were reportedly anxious that the hackers might be the agents of Saddam Hussein.

FBI agents blamed a secret convention of hackers believed to be held in New York. A few days ago, the real culprit gave himself up. Ehud Tenenbaum, an Israeli teenager who dubbed himself The Analyser, had worked with two young hackers in California. Under house arrest in Tel Aviv, he said the attacks were not malicious. He had concentrated on American government sites because he hated organisations. “Chaos, I think it is a nice idea,” he said.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 1998.

SUNDAY TIMES 29/03/98

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O1 Apr 97 HACKER PAYS THE PIPER: AGE (MELBORNE) Reuter Textline

Music student RICHARD PRYCE, was only 16 when he first appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court in London in 1994, charged with hacking into the US Air Force computer system using the PC in his bedroom. Last week his case was finally concluded. He pleaded guilty to 12 charges under Britain’s Computer Misuse Act, 1990, and was fined 1200 (Dollars A2400).

Reuter Textline
Copyright (C) Reuters Limited 1980-1997

HACKER FINED FOR UNAUTHORISED ACCESS

LOVELL WHITE DURRANT recently represented Richard Pryce at Bow Street Magistrates Court, UK charged with 12 offences of gaining unauthorised access to computer systems. Pryce was sixteen years old when in 1994 he hacked into computer systems in the USA, including those of the US Air Force. Pryce pleaded guilty in respect of the 12 offences and Lovell White Durrant made a plea in mitigation which stressed that Pryce had since been punished by substantial disruption to his career, was of good character and had only acted through curiosity and had not exploited the vulnerabilities of the computer systems. Pryce was fined GBP1,200.

Copyright: 1997 M2 Communications, Ltd., All Rights Reserved.

HACKER FINED FOR UNAUTHORISED ACCESS., Telecomworldwire, 03-25-1997.

LOVELL WHITE DURRANT: Richard Pryce fined GBP 1,200 for offences under the computer misuse act 1990

Mr Bartle, a magistrate at Bow Street Magistrates Court, today accepted Richard Pryce’s plea of guilty
in respect of 12 offences of gaining unauthorised access to computer systems under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 when, aged 16, he “hacked” into computer systems in the United States of America, including those of the US Air Force, from a personal computer installed at his home. Following a plea in mitigation which stressed that Richard had been motivated by the curiosity of a teenager, had since been punished by substantial disruption to his career over a three year period and was of good character, the magistrate fined him GBP 1,200. Mr Pryce was represented by international law firm Lovell White Durrant.

The charges against Richard Pryce Richard was arrested at his parents’ home on 12 May
1994, when he was 16, by members of the Computer Crime Unit of New Scotland Yard, who were executing a search warrant. He had been traced by the US authorities to England after an informant provided them with a copy of an on-line conversation which had occurred several months earlier in which Richard disclosed that he was 16, from England and interested in US military systems. He had also provided the informant with his home telephone number. Following his arrest, Richard was released the same day on police bail. On 7 June 1995 – some 13 months after his original arrest, by which time he was in the middle of his A-level exams – he was charged at Holborn police station with 12 offences under Section 1(1) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Three of these charges were later dropped and three more inserted in their place. On 19 June 1996 Richard was charged with two offences of conspiracy to commit an offence under Sections 1 and 3 of the same Act – charges which were withdrawn on 14 March 1997 after an abuse of process application was commenced by the defence. Despite implying that they would charge him with other offences under Section 3, the Prosecution eventually decided to proceed solely in respect of the revised set of 12 offences under Section 1(1).

The plea in mitigation The Defendant’s legal team stressed three points in the plea in mitigation made on his behalf.

First, Richard was not motivated by malice or by a desire for financial gain, and did not erase or alter
data on the computer systems or disclose any sensitive information.

His actions were motivated by the curiosity of a bright 16 year old who was not a sophisticated
computer user; he exploited vulnerabilities of the computer systems using information and methods to
gain access to insecure systems which were widely known and available.

Second, instead of being charged in a juvenile court, where he would have been dealt with speedily and with little publicity, Richard had suffered very public disruption to his career over a period of three
years. He had been punished severely already, through the repeated hearings and frequent alteration of the charges against him, extensive media and public interest in him and the case, and confiscation of equipment and material being used for his A-level studies.

Third, he had received excellent character references, had no previous convictions and had co-
operated with the police throughout.

The sentence After hearing the evidence, Mr Bartle accepted Richard’s plea of guilty. He rejected the option of a custodial sentence, on the grounds that it would be excessive in the light of the offences committed. He also rejected the option of a Community Service Order, on the grounds that it would have interfered unfairly with his music studies. Instead, the magistrate opted for a fine, at GBP 1,200 set at a level which takes account of Richard’s financial circumstances as a student (notably the fact that he receives a means-tested local authority grant). He also ordered him to pay GBP 250 towards costs.

Mr Pryce was represented in Court by Mr Martin Hicks, lead by Mr Geoffrey Robertson QC. Mr Geoffrey
Robertson, QC said: “The sentence handed down in this case should not be
misconstrued or interpreted in a way that suggests that the Courts do not take “hacking”, and its
effect, very seriously indeed. The particular combination of circumstances – the age of the
defendant, the delays in the prosecution process and the co-operation given by Richard – all contributed to the sentence which, in the circumstance, is just and fair. However, it should also be said that the case against Richard has been blown out of all proportion by the police, politicians (particularly in the United States) and the media, for reasons which have nothing to do with the facts of the case.

We are pleased that the magistrate saw reason and accepted our plea in mitigation. Richard has already paid heavily for what was, in effect, a schoolboy prank. It was not his fault that security systems in the computing and defense industries left something to be desired.

Mrs Pryce, Richard’s mother, said: On behalf of my son and the family as a whole, I would just like to say that we are relieved this is all over and very much hope that Richard will now be allowed to get on with his studies at the Royal College of Music. He has had a very tough time for nearly three years – despite accepting his guilt for the offences with which he was finally charged and his willingness to co-operate with the police – and would now like to put it all behind him.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Richard Pryce
Richard Charles Vaughan Pryce was born on 26 May 1977. He lives with his parents, Nick and Alison, and his two sisters, Sally (aged 17) and Katie (aged 15) in Kingsbury, North London. His father and mother run their own business restoring musical instruments.

In September 1995, Richard started his studies at the Royal College of Music, where he has been awarded a scholarship following auditions at the Royal College.

He is an accomplished double bass player: he was the youngest member of the Brittan Pears orchestra and has toured in the UK and Europe with other orchestras.

At the time the offences were committed, Richard was
a pupil at Purcell School, Harrow in Middlesex. He
took his A-levels in 1995 (receiving an A in music
and a D in computer science).

The Computer Misuse Act 1990
Under Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, it
is a criminal offence to cause a computer to perform
any function with a view to securing unauthorised
access, knowing at the time that that is the case.
The maximum sentence for an adult on conviction is
six months imprisonment or a fine not exceeding GBP
5,000 or both.

Under Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, it
is a criminal offence to do any act which causes
unauthorised modification of the contents of a
computer with intent to impair its operation, prevent
or hinder access to a program or data, or to impair
the operation of a program or the reliability of any
data. Where the matter is dealt with in the
Magistrates’ Court, the maximum sentence for an adult
on conviction is six months imprisonment or a fine
not exceeding GBP 5,000 or both. Where the matter is
tried on indictment in the Crown Court, the maximum
sentence for an adult on conviction is five years
imprisonment or a fine (unlimited) or both

CONTACT: Fenella Gentleman, marketing communications
manager, Lovell White Durrant
Tel: +44 (0)171 236 0066
e-mail: fenella.gentleman@lovellwhitedurrant.com
WWW: http://www.lovellwhitedurrant.com

*M2 COMMUNICATIONS DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITY FOR
INFORMATION PROVIDED WITHIN M2 PRESSWIRE. DATA
SUPPLIED BY NAMED PARTY/PARTIES.*

Copyright ? 1997 M2 Communications, Ltd., All Rights Reserved.

LOVELL WHITE DURRANT: Richard Pryce fined GBP 1,200 for offences under the computer misuse act 1990., M2 PressWIRE, 03-24-1997.

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23 Mar 97 SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: HACKER OF THE WEEK
:The teenage security threat: Asia Intelligence Wire

RICHARD PRYCE

If you had to imagine the number one threat to America’s security, you might go for a terrorist group or a coalition of Iraq, Libya and North Korea. You would be unlikely to select a teenage double bass player at a British music college.

But RICHARD PRYCE, from a north London suburb, can count himself among those who have been elevated to the ranks of major threats to United States national security up there alongside Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Pryce’s claim to fame, or infamy, lies in the way he hacked into America’s deepest defence secrets. At one point, he was even accused of having caused more harm to the US defence and missile systems than Russian intelligence. One might, equally, imagine that such a number one threat would operate from a secret base filled with the latest computers and advanced software. But PRYCE did it all from his bedroom in the suburb of Colindale, with equipment worth a grand total of GBP7SO (HK$9,315).

He was just 16 at the time. PRYCE, who only got a D grade in computer science, obtained the passwords to download super-secret computer records in New York and California, including an Air Force base which deals with sensitive subjects such as artificial intelligence.

When he was brought to trial last week, his solicitor said that officials believed he was being manipulated by an East European outfit.
A US congressional report on computer attacks said he had been seizing control of defence department computers on the direction of an unknown third In the Senate in Washington, PRYCE was accused of “causing more harm than the KGB” and described as the number one threat to US security.
The magistrates took a more lenient view. Fining PRYCE GBP1,200 on Friday, they accepted his innocent motives after he admitted 12 charges of gaining access to the computers.

But they did order his computer equipment to be confiscated.
PRYCE, now 19, was arrested after the US Air Force Office of Special Intelligence investigated the hacking.
They codenamed the unknown culprit “Datastream Cowboy”, and finally got his name from other computer users.

The Pentagon said yesterday it was taking measures to stop its systems coming under computer attack.

22 Mar 97 British teenager fined after hacking into US defence system:
His lawyer says RICHARD PRYCE used information he learned on the Internet to gain access.

By JASON BENNETTO LONDON

LONDON – A British teenager who barely passed computer science was fined Friday for hacking into United States defence and missile systems and removing files on artificial intelligence and battle management.

RICHARD PRYCE was only 16 when he used a basic dollars 1,650 computer from his bedroom in north London to infiltrate some of America’s top security establishments.

Codenamed Datastream Cowboy, PRYCE, now 18, was the subject of allegations in the US Senate, where the unknown ‘spy’ was accused of ‘causing more harm than the KGB.’

He has also been described as ‘the number one threat to US security.’ But his lawyer insisted Friday it was a ‘schoolboy prank’ and that the teenager with just six months experience had used information taken off the Internet to break into the US networks.

Lawyers believe the case shows the extraordinary lax security deployed within US military systems.

PRYCE was fined dollars 3,200 after pleading guilty to 12 charges of gaining unauthorized access to computer systems in March and April 1994.
He has now dropped his interest in computers in favor of a double bass that he studies at the Royal College of Music in London.

The first that Pryce’s parents, Nick and Alison, knew of their son’s activities was when members of Scotland Yard’s Computer Crime Unit arrived at the home in Colindale to arrest him.
Bow Street Magistrates’ Court heard that PRYCE managed to hack into the Griffiss Air Force Base in New York.

It is alleged he downloaded material from the air force base about artificial intelligence and battlefield management systems.
He also broke into the Lockheed Space and Missile Company in California. The systems he was said to have obtained access to included those for ballistic weapons research and aircraft design, payroll, procurement, personnel records and electronic mail.

Pryce’s forays led to allegations that a spy had managed to infiltrate secret intelligence data.
His hacking was described as an example of a growing and serious threat to US national security in reports and testimony to a Senate committee by the US General Accounting Office.

Some of the more outlandish allegations about the effects of Pryce’s hacking exploits were later seen as an attempt to obtain extra funding. Indeed, US officials later insisted PRYCE had been unable to access any secret information.

Despite these claims it is understood that the British authorities were considering using a Public Immunity Certificate, a gagging order, to cover part of the hearing, but decided not to bother after the more serious charges were dropped.

Defence lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said that what the Pentagon had at first suspected was a European spy-ring was later
discovered to be the teenaged Londoner.

‘He was riding, rather than surfing, the Internet.
‘He made no profit and there was no subversion of defence systems,’ he said.
His lawyer says RICHARD PRYCE used information he learned on the Internet to gain access.

The Vancouver Sun Page A10
FINAL Copyright (C) The Vancouver Sun 1994-1997

23 Jun 96 BRITON CHARGED WITH HACKING INTO PENTAGON DATA: REUTER NEWS

LONDON

British police said on Sunday they had charged a second man with hacking into US military computers months after the arrest of a teenage whizzkid accused of gaining access to messages from US agents in North Korea. MATHEW BEVAN, a 21-year-old information technology technician, has been charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorised access to computers and conspiracy to cause unauthorised modification to computers.

A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said both charges related to computer systems operated by the US military and the Lockheed missile and space company.
Bevan’s co-defendant, RICHARD PRYCE, was charged last year with using a computer in his bedroom in north London to tap into several US Defence Department systems over a period of seven months.

PRYCE, who was just 16 at the time, got access to files on ballistic weapons research and messages from US agents in North Korea during a crisis over nuclear inspection in 1994, according to reports last year in The Independent newspaper.

Police sources said the two were arrested after a long search instigated by the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations based in Washington. BEVAN, from Cardiff in Wales, is to appear before magistrates in central London on July 11.
A recent study by the General Accounting Office of Congress said attempts to hack into Pentagon computers were running at a rate of 250,000 a year.
The GAO said the attacks were, at least, a multi-million dollar nuisance and, at worst, could pose a serious threat to national security.

(c) Reuters Limited 1996
Reuter News Service – United Kingdom. Reuter Economic News.
Companies: LCKHED LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION HLDG (USA)
Reuter Textline
Copyright (C) Reuters Limited 1980-1997

Hackers pillaged US files to sell secrets to Saddam
By Tim Reid

HUNDREDS of military secrets, including troop movements and missile capability, were stolen from American government computers and offered to Saddam Hussein during the Gulf war, a former US security expert has admitted.

Computer hackers in the Netherlands used the Internet to steal enough top-secret information potentially to change the course of the war. Luckily for the Allies, the Iraqis ignored the data, probably fearing a hoax, according to intelligence experts.

Dr Eugene Schultz, former head of computer security at the US Department of Energy, has disclosed for the first time how he and colleagues sat helpless as the Dutch hackers pillaged the files across 34 US military sites in the months leading up to the 1991 conflict.

His revelations, to be screened on BBC 2’s Sci Files programme tomorrow, come after the conviction on Friday of a London Teenager for gaining unauthorised access to American defence and missile secrets. Using equipment that cost £750 from local shops, Richard Pryce, 19, broke into computer files of the US Air Force and the Lockheed aerospace company. US military intelligence officials claimed he had caused “more harm than the KGB”. Pryce, of Colindale, north London, who was 16 at the time, was fined £1,200.

Dr Schultz, who was also responsible for protecting the computers of US nuclear weapons sites, told the BBC that the Americans learnt for certain in October 1990 that the information was being offered to Baghdad. Working with the FBI, he pinpointed the source of the attacks to Eindhoven.

The leakage of data was certainly alarming. The Dutch hackers learnt about the exact locations of US troops and the types of weapons they had. They gained information about the Patriot missile’s capability and the movement of American warships in the region.

“We realised that these files should not have been stored on Internet-capable machines,” Dr Schultz said. “They related to our military systems, they related to Operation Desert Shield at the time, and later Operation Desert Storm. This was a huge mistake.”

Once the Dutch hackers had gained access to a military computer site, they simply kept guessing different passwords until the system let them in. Once inside, they could pick and choose the exact information they wanted. The attacks lasted for months.

“We couldn’t do anything about it,” Dr Schultz said. “If we had shut down one machine that they had been getting into, they would have found others to launch the attacks from.”

The full story of Iraqi involvement in this episode is still classified. The CIA will neither confirm nor deny that the hackers tried to sell military secrets to Iraq.