| Excerpted from a March 18, 1998 Press Release of the U.S.
Department of Justice
JUVENILE COMPUTER HACKER CUTS OFF FAA TOWER
 According to a U.S. Department of Justice Press release dated March 18,
1998, federal criminal charges were filed against a juvenile computer
hacker for commission of serious computer crimes.
The charges alleged that the youth intentionally accessed and disabled a
major loop carrier system, or network of programmable remote computers
that integrate voice and data communications over a large number of phone
lines that are transmitted via a single, sophisticated fiber-optic cable.
This loop carrier system serviced an airport in Worcester, Massachusetts
and the community of Rutland, Massachusetts. The juvenile hacker sent a series of computer commands that altered and impaired the
data on which the system relied, thereby disabling it. As a result,
vital services to the FAA control tower were disabled for six hours in
March of 1997. Public health and safety were threatened by the outage
which resulted in the loss of telephone service to the Federal Aviation
Administration Tower at the airport, to the Worcester Airport Fire
Department and to other related concerns such as airport security, the
weather service and various private airfreight companies. Furthermore, as
a result of the outage, both the main radio transmitter, which is
connected to the tower by the loop carrier system, and a circuit which
enables aircraft to send an electric signal to activate the runway lights
on approach were not operational for this same period of time.
On the same day, the hacker intentionally accessed the
loop carrier system servicing telephone customers in and around Rutland. He sent a
series of computer commands that altered and
impaired the integrity of the system's data and disabled the entire system. As a result, telephone service throughout the Rutland area was disrupted
for six hours, causing financial damage and threatening public health and
safety as a result of the loss of phone service. During this attack, the
juvenile computer hacker changed the system identification to "." The charges brought by the Justice Department also alleged
that in a separate intrusion, the hacker used his personal computer and
modem to break into a pharmacist's computer in a Worcester area branch of
a major pharmacy chain. The pharmacist's computer was accessible by modem
after hours when the pharmacy was closed so that the pharmacy chain could
periodically transfer information from the pharmacist's local computer to
a centralized computer operated by the chain. On four separate occasions,
the juvenile computer hacker used his personal computer modem to break
into the Worcester pharmacy computer and instructed that computer to
transmit to his personal computer files all of the prescriptions filled by
the pharmacy during the previous week. All of these prescriptions were
detailed by customer name, address, telephone number and prescription
medicine supplied. While the hacker apparently did not alter the
prescriptions or disseminate the customers' personal information, his
intrusion constituted a serious invasion of privacy.
Due to the young age of the hacker, his name was not divulged,
and he received only two years' probation, during which he was barred from
possessing or using a modem or other means of remotely accessing a
computer or computer network directly or indirectly. He also was ordered
to pay restitution to the telephone company and complete 250 hours of
community service. In addition, he was required to forfeit all of the
computer equipment that he used during his criminal activity. |
