In message <9310271129 .
AA14847 @
cs .
utexas .
edu> you write:
>smb @
research .
att .
com remarked in digest 2.211:
>> Btw, y'all may want to look at the ``News in Review'' section from this
>> past Sunday's NY Times. There's a profile of Richard Petthia, the head
>> of CERT. There's also the claim, attributed to a Scotland Yard
>> detective, that deaths have resulted from a computer intrusion. He
>> said that a weather bureau computer was penetrated, stopping forecasts,
>> which led to the loss of a ship in a storm in the English Channel.
>> (No, there weren't any more details on what really happened.)
>
> I haven't read the NYT story yet, but I'd guess that it was written
> by John Markoff and is based on a presentation by a Yard detective
> given at the recent FIRST workshop in St. Louis, Aug 10-13; he gave
> an extraordinarily dramatic presentation (voice and diction was
> stage quality) telling 3 stories of how crackers (could?) cause harm
> on computer networks; besides the ship story, there was a story about
I have the NYT article in front of me and yes, yes and yes. I have also
heard a story about teenage hackers who moved a satellite in geo-
synchonous orbit to a new orbit by running a program that fired the
satellite's rockets used to adjust the orbit.
Here in Connecticut we had teenage hackers who (via demon-dialing)
found a phone line and modem attached to a DOT computer (which was
not passworded) and were able to put up nasty messages - about the
governor and the state police - in lights on those programmable
"bad weather"/"construction ahead" signs on the highway for drivers
going to/from work. No firewall there...it reminds me of the movie
"LA Story" though.
Also in the NYT article Markoff says that "The Internet's growth rate
is a staggering 20% per month, and it suggests increasing pressure on
CERT as the data superhighway approaches".
"I'm continually awestruck by the Internet and its acceptance and
growth," Mr. Petthia said. "This curve has been going on for three
years" - he paused - "and the incident rate is marching right along
with it." - "Keeping Things Safe and Orderly In the
Neighborhoods of Cyberspace" New York Times,
Sun Oct 24, 1993
- Morrow
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