Hacker 2/HACKER2.mdf/cud/cud518b.txt

Text File | 1995-01-03 | 9KB | 249 lines

Date: 04 Mar 1993 11:29:00 -0800
From: [e-mail](Lynn Dimick)
Subject: File 2--Hackers in the News (Orange County Register
Reprint)

I have received permission from Catherine A, Boesche of the Orange
County register to reprint this story ONE TIME.  They would like to
receive the following credit:

Reprinted with permission of The Orange County Register, copyright
1993.

This originally appeared on February 17, 1993

     Jeffrey Cushing knew his teenage son was a "computer freak,"
spending hours hunched over a bedroom keyboard playing games and
tapping out messages to friends.

     It seemed like wholesome, hightech fun -- until Cushing was
sued
last April by a Garden Grove telephone company that accused his son
of
hacking into the firms' long distance lines.

     The tab: $80,000

     "I was in shock," said Cushing, 51, an advertising executive
from
Huntington Beach. "all of a sudden this guy knocks on the door at
9
p.m. and serves me with this humungous suit."

     The war against hackers who steal long-distance telephone time
has left a trail of slack-jawed parents throughout the state. Hit
with
lawsuits throughout the state.  Hit with lawsuits, search warrants
and
demands for damages many parents are gulping hard and paying the
toll
for telephone fraud.

     Although no record is kept, some industry analysts estimate
that
telephone fraud drains as much as $5 billion a year from companies
nationwide.

     "Fraud on the (telephone) network is still one of the most
devastating things to long-distance companies, especially the
smaller
ones," said Jim smith, vice president of the 34-member California
Association of Long Distance Telephone Companies.

     The culprits often are juveniles, whose parents know little
about
computers and less about what their children are doing with them.

     At the forefront in pursuing the dial-tone desperadoes is
Garden
Grove's Thrifty Tel Inc. -- which in 1990 became the first
telephone
company to impose a tariff on hackers.

     The idea was copied by several other small phone companies in
California, although Thrifty's tariff remains the highest at $2,880
per day, per line.

     As part of every settlement, Thrifty also confiscates the
offending computer.

     "This is designed to spank 'em hard. It can (financially) wipe
out a family," said Dale L. Herring, Thrifty's director of
security.
"I sympathize, to some extent, but why should our company absorb
the
loss?  Giving their kids a computer and a modem is like giving them
a
loaded gun."

     Thrifty estimates its hacker losses at $22,000 a month.

     Over the past three years the company has recovered nearly $1
million and has nabbed 125 alleged hackers -- the vast majority of
them juveniles. About 24 cases were prosecuted, with nearly all the
defendants pleading guilty.

     Early the month, Thrifty said, it busted, a 10-member ring of
teenage hackers stretching from La Habra to Mission Viejo.

     Criminal charges are pending against one of the suspects, a 19
year-old Irvine man who allegedly called Thrifty's computer system
6,435 times in 24 days. More than 1,000 calls came on Christmas.

     The bill from Thrifty: $75,000.

     The teen-ager allegedly used a simple scam employed by dozens
of
hackers to break into long-distance carriers:

     Using a modem and a home computer programed for hacking the
thief
telephones the company's switching system. From there, the hacker's
computer generates ran-dom digits until it hits the access codes
--similar to calling-card numbers - - given to customers.

     Those special codes are then used by the hacker to make
long-distance calls that will be billed to unsuspecting customers.
Many times, egotistical hackers post the codes on computer bulletin
boards for others to use, much like a victorious matador throwing
a
rose to a pretty lady.

     It can take several hours -- and several hundred calls to the
phone company -- to identify a handful of codes. But the hackers
simply set their computers to run night and day, calling three to
four
times a minute.

     For the novice, hacking programs with names such as "Code
Thief
Deluxe" are widely available and can be downloaded without charge
from
computer bulletin boards.

     "It's becoming a subculture. Just as kids were sucked into
`Dungeons and Dragons,' they're being sucked into hacking," said
Thrifty's Herring.

     Often teen-age hackers are highly intelligent loners, addicted
to
the worldwide computer bulletin boards that allow them to
communicate
with others of their ilk.

     "But they run up $300 to $400 in monthly phone bills, their
parents go ballistic, so they turn to hacking," Herring said.

     Unknown to the young hackers, some calls can be traced.
Digging
through stacks of computer printouts. Herring and other experts at
Thrifty have followed the electronic trail over the past three
years
to:

    * An Escondido boy whose parents were ordered by an Orange
Count
judge recently to pay Thrifty $33,000 in damages.

    * A Foothill High School student in Santa Ana who was blamed
for
more than $250,000 in losses to Thrifty and two other long-distance
companies in 1991. The boy pleaded guilty to telephone fraud.

    * A six-member ring of San Diego high school students who
raided
system in March. Their families are paying more than $100,000 in
damages.

    Herring said the response from parents is always the same.

    "Their first reaction is they want to kill their kids. Then, 24
hours later, they want to kill us," Herring said.

    Last year, a 63-year-old father from San Diego responded to
Thrifty's demands for $16,000 by filing a harassment suit.  The man
contended that he suffered from a nervous condition and had warned
by
his doctor to avoid emotional shock.

    And what could be more shocking then being hit with Thrifty's
$2,880-a-day tariff, approved by the Public Utilities Commission in
1990?

    The tariff is meant to recover the costs of investigation
hacker
paying attorneys and losing customers who've been victimized.

    While the fee has been upheld in court, some parents complain
th
it is unfair and inflated. The actual cost of the pirated phone
call
amounts to only a small part of the huge damages sought by Thrifty.

    Part of Thrifty's aggression in civil court comes from its
growiin
inability to get the hackers into criminal court.

    Thrifty has had a tough time persuading law authorities to
spend
their limited resources on telephone hacking.

    Garden Grove police recently notified Thrifty that the
department
will no longer investigate hacking calls that do not originate in
th
city. Since then, Herring said, the company keeps getting passed
fro
one police agency to another, each claiming not to have
jurisdiction

    "I have to fight tooth and nail to get them interested," said
Herring, who last month persuaded the Orange County District
Attorney
Office to prosecute at least one  alleged member of the recently
bus
Orange County hacking ring.

    Garden Grove Lt. Bill Dalton said his department couldn't keep
u
with the expense of investigating Thrifty's hacker problem. Dalton
a
that Thrifty could make its telephone system more secure by putting
digits in the access codes, making them harder to discover.

    That strategy literally saved Com-Systems of Westlake Village,
w
was losing $250,000 a month to hackers before it overhauled its
security
system in 1990. The move cost $1 million.

    "Now we don't lose $250,000 in a whole year," said senior
investigator John Elerick. "We were getting killed."

    About 15 of the small long-distance carriers in California have
reconfigured their access codes. But Thrifty has resisted, because
t
change would inconvenience customers by making them wait a few
seconds
more for their calls to go through, Herring said.

    While Thrifty wrestles with its security  dilemma, Huntington
Be
dad Cushing found and easy way to protect himself from ever again
be
sued for hacking: He disconnected the phone line in his son's
bedroom.

    "Now, he can only games, do homework, and that's about it."

                      ++++++End of article++++++

 * RM 1.0 B0008 * [e-mail] (Lynn Dimick)

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