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- ==Phrack Magazine==
-
- Volume Five, Issue Forty-Five, File 20 of 28
-
- ****************************************************************************
-
- The Senator Markey Hearing Transcripts
-
- [To obtain your own copy of this hearing and the other related ones,
- contact the U.S. Government Printing Office (202-512-0000) and ask
- for Serial No. 103-53, known as "Hearings Before The Subcommittee
- on Telecommunications and Finance of the Committee on Energy and
- Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress,
- First Session, April 29 and June 9, 1993".]
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Mr. MARKEY. If you could close the door, please, we could move
- on to this very important panel. It consists of Mr. Donald Delaney,
- who is a senior investigator for the New York State Police. Mr.
- Delaney has instructed telecommunications fraud at the Federal Law
- Enforcement Training Center and has published chapters on computer
- crime and telecommunications fraud. Dr. Peter Tippett is an expert
- in computer viruses and is the director of security products for
- Symantec Corporation in California. Mr. John J. Haugh is chairman
- of Telecommunications Advisors Incorporated, a telecommunications
- consulting firm in Portland, Oreg., specializing in network
- security issues. Dr. Haugh is the editor and principal author of
- two volumes entitled "Toll Fraud" and "Telabuse" in a newsletter
- entitled "Telecom and Network Security Review." Mr. Emmanuel
- Goldstein is the editor-in-chief of "2600: The Hacker Quarterly."
- Mr. Goldstein also hosts a weekly radio program in New York called
- "Off The Hook." Mr. Michael Guidry is chairman and founder of the
- Guidry Group, a security consulting firm specializing in
- telecommunications issues. The Guidry Group works extensively with
- the cellular industry in its fight against cellular fraud.
- We will begin with you, Mr. Delaney, if we could. You each
- have 5 minutes. We will be monitoring that. Please try to abide by
- the limitation. Whenever you are ready, please begin.
- STATEMENTS OF DONALD P. DELANEY, SENIOR INVESTIGATOR, NEW YORK
- STATE POLICE; JOHN J. HAUGH, CHAIRMAN, TELECOMMUNICATIONS ADVISORS;
- EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN, PUBLISHER, 2600 MAGAZINE; PETER S. TIPPETT,
- DIRECTOR, SECURITY AND ENTERPRISE PRODUCTS, SYMANTEC CORP.; AND
- MICHAEL A. GUIDRY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE GUIDRY GROUP
- Mr. DELANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to
- testify today.
- As a senior investigator with the New York State Police, I
- have spent more than 3 years investigating computer crime and
- telecommunications fraud. I have executed more than 30 search
- warrants and arrested more than 30 individuals responsible for the
- entire spectrum of crime in this area.
- I authored two chapters in the "Civil and Criminal
- Investigating Handbook" published by McGraw Hill entitled
- "Investigating Computer Crime and Investigating Telecommunications
- Fraud." Periodically I teach a 4-hour block instruction on
- telecommunications fraud at the Federal Law Enforcement Training
- Center in Georgia.
- Although I have arrested some infamous teenagers, such as
- Phiber Optic, ZOD, and Kong, in some cases the investigations were
- actually conducted by the United States Secret Service. Because
- Federal law designates a juvenile as one less than 18 years of age
- and the Federal system has no means of prosecuting a juvenile,
- malicious hackers, predominately between 13 and 17 years of age,
- are either left unprosecuted or turned over to local law
- enforcement. In some cases, local law enforcement were either
- untrained or unwilling to investigate the high-tech crime.
- In examining telecommunications security, one first realizes
- that all telecommunications is controlled by computers. Computer
- criminals abuse these systems not only for free service but for a
- variety of crimes ranging from harassment to grand larceny and
- illegal wiretapping. Corporate and Government espionage rely on the
- user-friendly networks which connect universities, military
- institutions, Government offices, corporate research and
- development computers. Information theft is common from those
- companies which hold our credit histories. Their lack of security
- endanger each of us, but they are not held accountable.
- One activity which has had a financial impact on everyone
- present is the proliferation of call sell operations. Using a
- variety of methods, such as rechipped cellular telephones,
- compromised PBX remote access units, or a combination of cellular
- phone and international conference lines, the entrepreneur deprives
- the telephone companies of hundreds of millions of dollars each
- year. These losses are passed on to each of us as higher rates.
- The horrible PBX problem exists because a few dozen finger
- hackers crack the codes and disseminate them to those who control
- the pay phones. The major long distance carriers each have the
- ability to monitor their 800 service lines for sudden peaks in use.
- A concerted effort should be made by the long distance carriers to
- identify the finger hackers, have the local telephone companies
- monitor the necessary dialed number recorders, and provide local
- law enforcement with timely affidavits. Those we have arrested for
- finger hacking the PBX's have not gone back into this type of
- activity or crime.
- The New York State Police have four newly trained
- investigators assigned to investigate telecommunications fraud in
- New York City alone. One new program sponsored by AT&T is
- responsible for having trained police officers from over 75
- departments about this growing blight in New York State alone.
- Publications, such as "2600," which teach subscribers how to
- commit telecommunications crime are protected by the First
- Amendment, but disseminating pornography to minors is illegal. In
- that many of the phone freaks are juveniles, I believe legislation
- banning the dissemination to juveniles of manuals on how to commit
- crime would be appropriate.
- From a law enforcement perspective, I applaud the proposed
- Clipper chip encryption standard which affords individuals
- protection of privacy yet enables law enforcement to conduct
- necessary court-ordered wiretaps, and with respect to what was
- being said in the previous conversation, last year there were over
- 900 court-ordered wiretaps in the United States responsible for the
- seizure of tons of illicit drugs coming into this country, solving
- homicides, rapes, kidnappings. If we went to an encryption standard
- without the ability for law enforcement to do something about it,
- we would have havoc in the United States -- my personal opinion.
- In New York State an individual becomes an adult at 16 years
- old and can be prosecuted as such, but if a crime being
- investigated is a Federal violation he must be 18 years of age to
- be prosecuted. Even in New York State juveniles can be adjudicated
- and given relevant punishment, such as community service.
- I believe that funding law enforcement education programs
- regarding high-tech crime investigations, as exists at the Federal
- Law Enforcement Training Center's Financial Frauds Institute, is
- one of the best tools our Government has to protect its people with
- regard to law enforcement.
- Thank you.
- Mr. WYDEN [presiding]. Thank you very much for a very helpful
- presentation.
- Let us go next to Mr. Haugh.
- We welcome you. It is a pleasure to have an Oregonian,
- particularly an Oregonian who has done so much in this field, with
- the subcommittee today. I also want to thank Chairman Markey and
- his excellent staff for all their efforts to make your attendance
- possible today.
- So, Mr. Haugh, we welcome you, and I know the chairman is
- going to be back here in just a moment.
- STATEMENT OF JOHN J. HAUGH
- Mr. HAUGH. Thank you, Mr. Wyden.
- We expended some 9,000 hours, 11 different people, researching
- the problem of toll fraud, penetrating telecommunications systems,
- and then stealing long distance, leading up to the publication of
- our two-volume reference work in mid-1992. We have since spent
- about 5,000 additional hours continuing to monitor the problem, and
- we come to the table with a unique perspective because we are
- vender, carrier, and user independent.
- In the prior panel, the distinguished gentleman from AT&T, for
- whom I have a lot of personal respect, made the comment that the
- public justifiably is confident that the national wire network is
- secure and that the problem is wireless. With all due respect, that
- is a laudable goal, but as far as what is going on today, just
- practical reality, that comment is simply incorrect, and if the
- public truly is confident that the wired network is secure, that
- confidence is grossly misplaced.
- We believe 35,000 users will become victimized by toll fraud
- this year, 1993. We believe the national problem totals somewhere
- between $4 and $5 billion. It is a very serious national problem.
- We commend the chairman and this committee for continuing to
- attempt to draw public attention and focus on the problem.
- The good news, as we see it, over the last 3 years is that the
- severity of losses has decreased. There is better monitoring,
- particularly on the part of the long distance carriers, there is
- more awareness on the part of users who are being more careful
- about monitoring and managing their own systems, as a result of
- which the severity of loss is decreasing. That is the good news.
- The bad news is that the frequency is greatly increasing, so
- while severity is decreasing, frequency is increasing, and I will
- give you some examples. In 1991 we studied the problem from 1988 to
- 1991 and concluded that the average toll fraud loss was $168,000.
- We did a national survey from November of last year to March of
- this year, and the average loss was $125,000, although it was
- retrospective. Today we think the average loss is $30,000 to
- $60,000, which shows a rather dramatic decline.
- The problem is, as the long distance thieves, sometimes called
- hackers, are rooted out of one system, one user system, they
- immediately hop into another one. So severity is dropping, but
- frequency is increasing. Everybody is victimized. You have heard
- business users with some very dramatic and very sad tales. The
- truth is that everybody is victimized; the users are victimized;
- the long distance carriers are victimized; the cellular carriers
- are victimized, the operator service providers; the co-cod folks,
- the aggregators and resellers are victimized; the LEC's and RBOC's,
- to a limited extent, are victimized; and the vendors are victimized
- by being drawn into the problem.
- Who is at fault? Everybody is at fault. The Government is at
- fault. The FCC has taken a no-action, apathetic attitude toward
- toll fraud. That Agency is undermanned, it is understaffed, it is
- underfunded, it has difficult problems -- no question about that --
- but things could and should be done by that Agency that have not
- been done.
- The long distance carriers ignored the problem for far too
- long, pretended that they could not monitor when, in fact, the
- technology was available. They have done an outstanding job over
- the last 2 years of getting with it and engaging themselves fully,
- and I would say the long distance carriers, at the moment, are
- probably the best segment of anyone at being proactive to take care
- of the problem.
- Users too often ignored security, ignored their user manuals,
- failed to monitor, failed to properly manage. There has been
- improvement which has come with the public knowledge of the
- problem. CPE venders, those folks who manufactured the systems that
- are so easy to penetrate, have done an abysmally poor job of
- engineering into the systems security features. They have ignored
- security. Their manuals didn't deal with security. They are
- starting to now. They are doing a far better job. More needs to be
- done.
- The FCC, in particular, needs to become active. This committee
- needs to focus more attention on the problem, jawbone, keep the
- heat on the industry, the LEC's and the RBOC's in particular. The
- LEC's and the RBOC's have essentially ignored the problem. They are
- outside the loop, they say, yet the LEC's and the RBOC's collected
- over $21 billion last year in access fees for connecting their
- users to the long distance networks. How much of that $21 billion
- did the LEC's and the RBOC's reinvest in helping to protect their
- users from becoming victimized and helping to combat user-targeted
- toll fraud? No more than $10 million, one-fifth of 1 percent.
- Many people in the industry feel the LEC's and the RBOC's are
- the one large group that has yet to seriously come to the table.
- Many in the industry -- and we happen to agree -- feel that 3 to 4
- percent of those access fees should be reinvested in protecting
- users from being targeted by the toll fraud criminals.
- The FCC should become more active. The jawboning there is at
- a minimal level. There was one show hearing last October, lots of
- promises, no action, no regulation, no initiatives, no meetings. A
- lot could be done. Under part 68, for example, the FCC, which is
- supposed to give clearance to any equipment before it is connected
- into the network, they could require security features embedded
- within that equipment. They could prevent things like low-end PBX's
- from being sold with three-digit barrier codes that anyone can
- penetrate in 3 to 5 minutes.
- Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
- Mr. MARKEY. THANK YOU, MR. HAUGH, VERY MUCH.
- Mr. Goldstein, let's go to you next.
- STATEMENT OF EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to this
- committee for allowing me the opportunity to speak on behalf of
- those who, for whatever reason, have no voice.
- I am in the kind of unique position of being in contact with
- those people known as computer hackers throughout the world, and I
- think one of the misconceptions that I would like to clear up, that
- I have been trying to clear up, is that hackers are analogous to
- criminals. This is not the case. I have known hundreds of hackers
- over the years, and a very, very small percentage of them are
- interested in any way in committing any kind of a crime. I think
- the common bond that we all have is curiosity, an intense form of
- curiosity, something that in many cases exceeds the limitations
- that many of us would like to put on curiosity. The thing is
- though, you cannot really put a limitation on curiosity, and that
- is something that I hope we will be able to understand.
- I like to parallel the hacker culture with any kind of alien
- culture because, as with any alien culture, we have difficulty
- understanding its system of values, we have difficulty
- understanding what it is that motivates these people, and I hope to
- be able to demonstrate through my testimony that hackers are
- friendly people, they are curious people, they are not out to rip
- people off or to invade people's privacy; actually, they are out to
- protect those things because they realize how valuable and how
- precious they really are.
- I like to draw analogies to where we are heading in the world
- of high technology, and one of the analogies I have come up with is
- to imagine yourself speeding down a highway, a highway that is
- slowly becoming rather icy and slippery, and ask yourself the
- question of whether or not you would prefer to be driving your own
- car or to be somewhere inside a large bus, and I think that is kind
- of the question we have to ask ourselves now. Do we want to be in
- control of our own destiny as far as technology goes, or do we want
- to put all of our faith in somebody that we don't even know and
- maybe fall asleep for a little while ourselves and see where we
- wind up? It is a different answer for every person, but I think we
- need to be able to at least have the opportunity to choose which it
- is that we want to do.
- Currently, there is a great deal of suspicion, a great deal of
- resignation, hostility, on behalf of not simply hackers but
- everyday people on the street. They see technology as something
- that they don't have any say in, and that is why I particularly am
- happy that this committee is holding this hearing, because people,
- for the most part, see things happening around them, and they
- wonder how it got to that stage. They wonder how credit files were
- opened on them; they wonder how their phone numbers are being
- passed on through A&I and caller ID. Nobody ever went to these
- people and said, "Do you want to do this? Do you want to change the
- rules?"
- The thing that hackers have learned is that any form of
- technology can and will be abused, whether it be calling card
- numbers or the Clipper chip. At some point, something will be
- abused, and that is why it is important for people to have a sense
- of what it is that they are dealing with and a say in the future.
- I think it is also important to avoid inequities in access to
- technology, to create a society of haves and have-nots, which I
- feel we are very much in danger of doing to a greater extent than
- we have ever done before. A particular example of this involves
- telephone companies, pay phones to be specific. Those of us who can
- make a telephone call from, say, New York to Washington, D.C., at
- the cheapest possible rate from the comfort of our own homes will
- pay about 12 cents for the first minute. However, if you don't have
- a phone or if you don't have a home, you will be forced to pay
- $2.20 for that same first minute.
- What this has led to is the proliferation of what are known as
- red boxes. I have a sample (indicating exhibit). Actually, this is
- tremendously bigger than it needs to be. A red box can be about a
- tenth of the size of this. But just to demonstrate the sound that
- it takes for the phone company to believe that you have put a
- quarter into the phone (brief tone is played), that is it, that is
- a quarter.
- Now we can say this is the problem, this huge demonic device
- here is what is causing all the fraud, but it is not the case. This
- tape recorder here (same brief tone is played) does the same thing.
- So now we can say the tones are the problem, we can make tones
- illegal, but that is going to be very hard to enforce.
- I think what we need to look at is the technology itself: Why
- are there gaping holes in them? and why are we creating a system
- where people have to rip things off in order to get the same access
- that other people can get for virtually nothing?
- I think a parallel to that also exists in the case of cellular
- phones. I have a device here (indicating exhibit) which I won't
- demonstrate, because to do so would be to commit a Federal crime,
- but by pressing a button here within the course of 5 seconds we
- will be able to hear somebody's private, personal cellular phone
- call.
- Now the way of dealing with privacy with cellular phone calls
- is to make a law saying that it is illegal to listen. That is the
- logic we have been given so far. I think a better idea would be to
- figure out a way to keep those cellular phone calls private and to
- allow people to exercise whatever forms of privacy they need to
- have on cellular phone calls.
- So I think we need to have a better understanding both from
- the legislative point of view and in the general public as far as
- technology in itself, and I believe we are on the threshold of a
- very positive, enlightened period, and I see that particularly with
- things like the Internet which allow people access to millions of
- other people throughout the world at very low cost. I think it is
- the obligation of all of us to not stand in the way of this
- technology, to allow it to go forward and develop on its own, and
- to keep a watchful eye on how it develops but at the same time not
- prevent it through overlegislation or overpricing.
- Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Goldstein.
- Dr. Tippett.
- STATEMENT OF PETER S. TIPPETT
- Mr. TIPPET. Thank you.
- I am Peter Tippett from Symantec Corporation, and today I am
- also representing the National Computer Security Association and
- the Computer Ethics Institute. Today is Computer Virus Awareness
- Day, in case you are not aware, and we can thank Jack Fields,
- Representative Fields, for sponsoring that day on behalf of the
- Congress, and I thank you for that.
- We had a congressional briefing this morning in which nine
- representatives from industry, including telecommunications and
- aerospace and the manufacturing industry, convened, and for the
- first time were willing to talk about their computer virus problems
- in public. I have got to tell you that it is an interesting
- problem, this computer virus problem. It is a bit different from
- telephone fraud. The virus problem is one which has probably among
- the most misrepresentation and misunderstanding of these various
- kinds of fraud that are going on, and I would like to highlight
- that a little bit. But before I do, I would like to suggest what we
- know to be the costs of computer viruses just in America.
- The data I am representing comes from IBM and DataQuest, a
- Dunn and Bradstreet company, it is the most conservative
- interpretation you could make from this data. It suggests that a
- company of only a thousand computers has a virus incident every
- quarter, that a typical Fortune 500 company deals with viruses
- every month, that the cost to a company with only a thousand
- computers is about $170,000 a year right now and a quarter of a
- million dollars next year. If we add these costs up, we know that
- the cost to United States citizens of computer viruses just so far,
- just since 1990, exceeds $1 billion.
- When I go through these sorts of numbers, most of us say,
- well, that hype again, because the way the press and the way we
- have heard about computer viruses has been through hype oriented
- teachings. So the purpose here is not to use hype and not to sort
- of be alarmist and say the world is ending, because the world isn't
- ending per se, but to suggest that there isn't a Fortune 500
- company in the United States who hasn't had a computer virus
- problem is absolutely true, and the sad truth about these viruses
- is that the misconceptions are keeping us from doing the right
- things to solve the problem, and the misconceptions stem from the
- fact that companies that are hit by computer viruses, which is
- every company, refused to talk about that until today.
- There are a couple of other unique things and misconceptions
- about computer viruses. One is that bulletin boards are the leading
- source of computer viruses. Bulletin boards represent the infancy
- of the superhighway, I think you could say, and there are a lot of
- companies that make rules in their company that you are not allowed
- to use bulletin boards because you might get a virus. In fact, it
- is way in the low, single-digit percents. It may be as low as 1
- percent of computer viruses that are introduced into companies come
- through some route via a bulletin board.
- We are told that some viruses are benign, and, in fact, most
- people who write computer viruses think that their particular virus
- is innocuous and not harmful. It turns out that most virus authors,
- as we just heard from Mr. Goldstein, are, in fact, curious people
- and not malicious people. They are young, and they are challenged,
- and there is a huge game going on in the world. There is a group of
- underground virus bulletin boards that we call virus exchange
- bulletin boards in which people are challenged to write viruses.
- The challenge works like this: If you are interested and
- curious, you read the threads of communication on these bulletin
- boards, and they say, you know, "If you want to download some
- viruses, there's a thousand here on the bulletin board free for
- your downloading," but you need points. Well, how do you get
- points? Well, you upload some viruses. Well, where do you get some
- viruses from? If you upload the most common viruses, they are not
- worth many points, so you have to upload some really good, juicy
- viruses. Well, the only way to get those is to write them, so you
- write a virus and upload your virus, and then you gain acceptance
- into the culture, and when you gain acceptance into the culture you
- have just added to the problem.
- It is interesting to know that the billion dollars that we
- have spent since 1990 on computer viruses just in the United States
- is due to viruses that were written in 1988 and 1987. Back then, we
- only had one or two viruses a quarter, new, introduced into the
- world. This year we have a thousand new computer viruses introduced
- into our community, and it won't be for another 4 or 5 years before
- these thousand viruses that are written now will become the major
- viruses that hurt us in the future.
- So virus authors don't believe they are doing anything wrong,
- they don't believe that they are being harmful, and they don't
- believe that what they do is dangerous, and, in fact, all viruses
- are.
- Computer crime laws don't have anything to do with computer
- virus writers, so we heard testimony this morning from Scott
- Charney of the Department of Justice who suggested that authorized
- access is the biggest law you could use, and, in fact, most viruses
- are brought into our organizations in authorized ways, because
- users who are legitimate in the organizations accidentally bring
- these things in, and then they infect our companies.
- In summary, I think that we need to add a little bit of
- specific wording in our computer crime legislation that relates
- particularly to computer viruses and worms. We need, in particular,
- to educate. We need to go after an ethics angle. We need to get to
- the point where Americans think that writing viruses or doing these
- other kinds of things that contaminate our computer superhighways
- are akin to contaminating our expressways.
- In the sixties we had a big "Keep America Beautiful" campaign,
- and most Americans would find it unthinkable to throw their garbage
- out the window of their car, but we don't think it unthinkable to
- write rogue programs that will spread around our highway.
- Thank you.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Dr. Tippett.
- Mr. Guidry.
- STATEMENT OF MICHAEL A. GUIDRY
- Mr. GUIDRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the
- opportunity to appear before this subcommittee, and thank you,
- subcommittee, for giving me this opportunity.
- The Guidry Group is a Houston-based security consulting firm
- specializing in telecommunication issues. We started working in
- telecommunication issues in 1987 and started working specifically
- with the cellular industry at that time. When we first started, we
- were working with the individual carriers across the United States,
- looking at the hot points where fraud was starting to occur, which
- were major metropolitan cities of course.
- In 1991, the Cellular Telephone Industry Association contacted
- us and asked us to work directly with them in their fight against
- cellular fraud. The industry itself has grown, as we all know,
- quite rapidly. However, fraud in the industry has grown at an
- unbelievable increase, actually faster than the industry itself,
- and as a result of that fraud now is kind of like a balloon, a
- water balloon; it appears in one area, and when we try to stamp it
- out it appears in another area.
- As a result, what has happened is, when fraud first started,
- there was such a thing as subscription fraud, the same type of
- fraud that occurred with the land line telecommunication industry.
- That subscription fraud quickly changed. Now what has occurred is,
- technology has really stepped in.
- First, hackers, who are criminals or just curious people,
- would take a telephone apart, a cellular phone apart, and change
- the algorithm on the chip, reinsert the chip into the telephone,
- and cause that telephone to tumble. Well, the industry put its best
- foot forward and actually stopped, for the most part, the act of
- tumbling in cellular telephones. But within the last 18 months
- something really terrible has happened, and that is cloning.
- Cloning is the copying of the MIN and and ESN number, and, for
- clarification, the MIN is the Mobile Identification Number that is
- assigned to you by the carrier, and the ESN number is the
- Electronic Cellular Number that is given to the cellular telephone
- from that particular manufacturer. As a result, now we have
- perpetrators, or just curious people, finding ways to copy the MIN
- and the ESN, thereby victimizing the cellular carrier as well as
- the good user, paying subscriber. This occurs when the bill is
- transmitted by the carrier to the subscriber and he says something
- to the effect of, "I didn't realize that I had made $10,000 worth
- of calls to the Dominican Republic," or to Asia or Nicaragua or
- just any place like that.
- Now what has happened is, those clone devices have been placed
- in the hands of people that we call ET houses, I guess you would
- say, and they are the new immigrants that come into the United
- States for the most part that do not have telephone subscriptions
- on the land line or on the carrier side from cellular, and now they
- are charged as much as $25 for 15 minutes to place a call to their
- home.
- Unfortunately, though, the illicit behavior of criminals has
- stepped into this network also. Now we have gang members, drug
- dealers, and gambling, prostitution, vice, just all sorts of crime,
- stepping forward to use this system where, by using the cloning,
- they are avoiding law enforcement. Law enforcement has problems, of
- course, trying to find out how to tap into those telephone systems
- and record those individuals.
- Very recently, cloning has even taken a second step, and that
- is now something that we term the magic phone, and the magic phone
- works like this: Instead of cloning just one particular number, it
- clones a variety of numbers, as many as 14 or 66, thereby
- distributing the fraud among several users, which makes it almost
- virtually impossible for us to detect at an early stage.
- In response to this, what has happened? A lot of legitimate
- people have started to look at using the illegitimate cellular
- services. They are promised that this is a satellite phone or just
- a telephone that if they pay a $2,500 fee will avoid paying further
- bills. So now it has really started to spread.
- Some people in major metropolitan areas, such as the
- Southwest, Northeast, and Southeast, have started running their own
- mini-cellular companies by distributing these cloning phones to
- possible clients and users, collecting the fee once a month to
- reactivate the phone if it is actually denied access.
- The cellular industry has really stepped up to the plate I
- think the best they can right now in trying to combat this by
- working with the switch manufacturers and other carriers, 150 of
- them to date with the cellular telephone industry, as well as the
- phone manufacturers, and a lot of companies have started looking at
- software technology. However, these answers will not come to pass
- very soon. What we must have is strong legislation.
- We have been working for the last 18 months, specifically with
- the Secret Service and a lot of local, State, and Federal law
- enforcement agencies. The Service has arrested over 100 people
- involved in cellular fraud. We feel very successful about that. We
- also worked with local law enforcement in Los Angeles to form the
- L.A. Blitz, and we arrested an additional 26 people and seized 66
- illegal telephones and several computers that spread this cloning
- device.
- However, now we have a problem. U.S. Title 18, 1029, does not
- necessarily state cellular or wireless. It is very important, and
- I pray that this committee will look at revising 1029 and changing
- it to include wireless and cellular. I think wireless
- communications, of course, like most people, is the wave of the
- future, and it is extremely important that we include that in the
- legislation so that when people are apprehended they can be
- prosecuted.
- Thank you, sir.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Guidry, very much.
- We will take questions now from the subcommittee members.
- Let me begin, Mr. Delaney. I would like you and Mr. Goldstein
- to engage in a conversation, if we could. This is Mr. Goldstein's
- magazine, "The Hacker Quarterly: 2600," and for $4 we could go out
- to Tower Records here in the District of Columbia and purchase
- this. It has information in it that, from my perspective, is very
- troubling in terms of people's cellular phone numbers and
- information on how to crack through into people's private
- information.
- Now you have got some problems with "The Hacker Quarterly,"
- Mr. Delaney.
- Mr. DELANEY. Yes, sir.
- Mr. MARKEY. And your problem is, among other things, that
- teenagers can get access to this and go joy riding into people's
- private records.
- Mr. DELANEY. Yes, sir. In fact, they do.
- Mr. MARKEY. Could you elaborate on what that problem is?
- And then, Mr. Goldstein, I would like for you to deal with the
- ethical implications of the problem as Mr. Delaney would outline
- them.
- Mr. DELANEY. Well, the problem is that teenagers do read the
- "2600" magazine. I have witnessed teenagers being given free copies
- of the magazine by the editor-in-chief. I have looked at a
- historical perspective of the articles published in "2600" on how
- to engage in different types of telecommunications fraud, and I
- have arrested teenagers that have read that magazine.
- The publisher, or the editor-in-chief, does so with impunity
- under the cloak of protection of the First Amendment. However, as
- I indicated earlier, in that the First Amendment has been abridged
- for the protection of juveniles from pornography, I also feel that
- it could be abridged for juveniles being protected from manuals on
- how to commit crime -- children, especially teenagers, who are
- hackers, and who, whether they be mischievous or intentionally
- reckless, don't have the wherewithal that an adult does to
- understand the impact of what he is doing when he gets involved in
- this and ends up being arrested for it.
- Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Goldstein, how do we deal with this problem?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. First of all, "2600" is not a manual for
- computer crime. What we do is, we explain how computers work. Very
- often knowledge can lead to people committing crimes, we don't deny
- that, but I don't believe that is an excuse for withholding the
- knowledge.
- The article on cellular phones that was printed in that
- particular issue pretty much goes into detail as to how people can
- track a cellular phone call, how people can listen in, how exactly
- the technology works. These are all things that people should know,
- and perhaps if people had known this at the beginning they would
- have seen the security problems that are now prevalent, and perhaps
- something could have been done about it at that point.
- Mr. MARKEY. Well, I don't know. You are being a little bit
- disingenuous here, Mr. Goldstein. Here, on page 17 of your spring
- edition of 1993, "How to build a pay TV descrambler." Now that is
- illegal.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Not building. Building one is not illegal.
- Mr. MARKEY. Oh, using one is illegal?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Exactly.
- Mr. MARKEY. I see. So showing a teenager, or anyone, how to
- build a pay TV descrambler is not illegal. But what would they do
- then, use it as an example of their technological prowess that they
- know how to build one? Would there not be a temptation to use it,
- Mr. Goldstein?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is a two-way street, because we have been
- derided by hackers for printing that information and showing the
- cable companies exactly what the hackers are doing.
- Mr. MARKEY. I appreciate it from that perspective, but let's
- go over to the other one. If I am down in my basement building a
- pay TV descrambler for a week, am I not going to be tempted to see
- if it works, Mr. Goldstein? Or how is it that I then prove to
- myself and my friends that I have actually got something here which
- does work in the real world?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is quite possible you will be tempted to try
- it out. We don't recommend people being fraudulent --
- Mr. MARKEY. How do you know that it works, by the way?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Actually, I have been told by most people that
- is an old version that most cable companies have gotten beyond.
- Mr. MARKEY. So this wouldn't work then?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It will work in some places, it won't work in
- all places.
- Mr. MARKEY. Oh, it would work? It would work in some places?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Most likely, yes. But the thing is, we don't
- believe that because something could be used in a bad way, that is
- a reason to stifle the knowledge that goes into it.
- Mr. MARKEY. That is the only way this could be used. Is there
- a good way in which a pay TV descrambler could be used that is a
- legal way?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Certainly, to understand how the technology
- works in the first place, to design a way of defeating such devices
- in the future or to build other electronic devices based on that
- technology.
- Mr. MARKEY. I appreciate that, but it doesn't seem to me that
- most of the subscribers to "2600" magazine --
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is interesting that you are pointing to
- that. That is our first foray into cable TV. We have never even
- testified on the subject before.
- Mr. MARKEY. I appreciate that.
- Well, let's move on to some of your other forays here. What
- you have got here, it seems to me, is a manual where you go down
- Maple Street and you just kind of try the door on every home on
- Maple Street. Then you hit 216 Maple Street, and the door is open.
- What you then do is, you take that information, and you go down to
- the corner grocery store, and you post it: "The door of 216 Maple
- is open."
- Now, of course, you are not telling anyone to steal, and you
- are not telling anyone that they should go into 216 Maple. You are
- assuming that everyone is going to be ethical who is going to use
- this information, that the house at 216 Maple is open. But the
- truth of the matter is, you have got no control at this point over
- who uses that information. Isn't that true, Mr. Goldstein?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The difference is that a hacker will never
- target an individual person as a house or a personal computer or
- something like that. What a hacker is interested in is wide open,
- huge data bases that contain information about people, such as TRW.
- A better example, I feel, would be one that we tried to do 2
- years ago where we pointed out that the Simplex Lock Corporation
- had a very limited number of combinations on their hardware locks
- that they were trying to push homeowners to put on their homes, and
- we tried to alert everybody as to how insecure these are, how easy
- it is to get into them, and people were not interested.
- Hackers are constantly trying to show people how easy it is to
- do certain things.
- Mr. MARKEY. I appreciate what you are saying. From one
- perspective, you are saying that hackers are good people out there,
- almost like -- what are they called? -- the Angels that patrol the
- subways of New York City.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Guardian Angels. I wouldn't say that though.
- Mr. MARKEY. Yes, the Guardian Angels, just trying to protect
- people.
- But then Mr. Delaney here has the joy riders with the very
- same information they have taken off the grocery store bulletin
- board about the fact that 216 Maple is wide open, and he says we
- have got to have some laws on the books here to protect against it.
- So would you mind if we passed, Mr. Goldstein, trespassing
- laws that if people did, in fact, go into 216 and did do something
- wrong, that we would be able to punish them legally? Would you have
- a problem with that?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I would be thrilled if computer trespassing
- laws were enforced to the same degree as physical trespassing laws,
- because then you would not have teenage kids having their doors
- kicked in by Federal marshals and being threatened with $250,000
- fines, having all their computer equipment taken and having guns
- pointed at them. You would have a warning, which is what you get
- for criminal trespass in the real world, and I think we need to
- balance out the real world --
- Mr. MARKEY. All right. So you are saying, on the one hand, you
- have a problem that you feel that hackers are harassed by law
- enforcement officials and are unduly punished. We will put that on
- one side of the equation. But how about the other side? How about
- where hackers are violating people's privacy? What should we do
- there, Mr. Goldstein?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. When a hacker is violating a law, they should
- be charged with violating a particular law, but that is not what I
- see today. I see law enforcement not having a full grasp of the
- technology. A good example of this was raids on people's houses a
- couple of years ago where in virtually every instance a Secret
- Service agent would say, "Your son is responsible for the AT&T
- crash on Martin Luther King Day," something that AT&T said from the
- beginning was not possible.
- Mr. MARKEY. Again, Mr. Goldstein, I appreciate that. Let's go
- to the other side of the problem, the joy rider or the criminal
- that is using this information. What penalties would you suggest to
- deal with the bad hacker? Are there bad hackers?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There are a few bad hackers. I don't know any
- myself, but I'm sure there are.
- Mr. MARKEY. I assume if you knew any, you would make sure we
- did something about them. But let's just assume there are bad
- people subscribing. What do we do about the bad hacker?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, I just would like to clarify something.
- We have heard here in testimony that there are gang members and
- drug members who are using this technology. Now, are we going to
- define them as hackers because they are using the technology?
- Mr. MARKEY. Yes. Well, if you want to give them another name,
- fine. We will call them hackers and crackers, all right?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I think we should call them criminals.
- Mr. MARKEY. So the crackers are bad hackers, all right? If you
- want another word for them, that is fine, but you have got the
- security of individuals decreasing with the sophistication of each
- one of these technologies, and the crackers are out there. What do
- we do with the crackers who buy your book?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I would not call them crackers. They are
- criminals. If they are out there doing something for their own
- benefit, selling information --
- Mr. MARKEY. Criminal hackers. What do we do with them?
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There are existing laws. Stealing is still
- stealing.
- Mr. MARKEY. OK. Fine.
- Dr. Tippett.
- Mr. TIPPETT. I think that the information age has brought on
- an interesting dilemma that I alluded to earlier. The dilemma is
- that the people who use computers don't have parents who used
- computers, and therefore they didn't get the sandbox training on
- proper etiquette. They didn't learn you are not supposed to spit in
- other people's faces or contaminate the water that we drink, and we
- have a whole generation now of 100 million in the United States
- computer users, many of whom can think this through themselves,
- but, as we know, there is a range of people in any group, and we
- need to point out the obvious to some people. It may be the bottom
- 10 percent.
- Mr. MARKEY. What the problem is, of course, is that the
- computer hacker of today doesn't have a computer hacker parent, so
- parents aren't teaching their children how to use their computers
- because parents don't know how to use computers. So what do we do?
- Mr. TIPPETT. It is incumbent upon us to do the same kind of
- thing we did in the sixties to explain that littering wasn't right.
- It is incumbent upon us to take an educational stance and for
- Congress to credit organizations, maybe through a tax credit or
- through tax deductions, for taking those educational opportunities
- and educating the world of people who didn't have sandbox training
- what is good and what is bad about computing.
- So at least the educational part needs to get started, because
- I, for one, think that probably 90 percent of the kids -- most of
- the kids who do most of the damage that we have all described up
- here, in fact, don't really believe they are doing any damage and
- don't have the concept of the broadness of the problem that they
- are doing. The 10 percent of people who are criminal we could go
- after potentially from the criminal aspect, but the rest we need to
- get after from a plain, straight ahead educational aspect.
- Mr. MARKEY. I appreciate that.
- I will just say in conclusion -- and this is for your benefit,
- Mr. Goldstein. When you pass laws, you don't pass laws for the good
- people. What we assume is that there are a certain percent of
- people -- 5 percent, 10 percent; you pick it -- who really don't
- have a good relationship with society as a whole, and every law
- that we pass, for the most part, deals with those people.
- Now, as you can imagine, when we pass death penalty statutes,
- we are not aiming it at your mother and my mother. It is highly
- unlikely they are going to be committing a murder in this lifetime.
- But we do think there is a certain percentage that will. It is a
- pretty tough penalty to have, but we have to have some penalty that
- fits the crime.
- Similarly here, we assume that there is a certain percentage
- of pathologically damaged people out there. The cerebral mechanism
- doesn't quite work in parallel with the rest of society. We have to
- pass laws to protect the rest of us against them. We will call them
- criminal hackers. What do we do to deal with them is the question
- that we are going to be confronted with in the course of our
- hearings?
- Let me recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fields.
- Mr. FIELDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
- Just for my own edification, Mr. Goldstein, you appear to be
- intelligent; you have your magazine, so obviously you are
- entrepreneurial. For me personally, I would like to know, why don't
- you channel the curiosity that you talk about into something that
- is positive for society? And, I'm going to have to say to you, I
- don't think it is positive when you invade someone else's privacy.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I agree.
- Mr. FIELDS. Whether it is an individual or a corporation.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, I would like to ask a question in return
- then. If I discover that a corporation is keeping a file on me and
- I access that corporation's computer and find out or tell someone
- else, whose privacy am I invading? Or is the corporation invading
- my privacy?
- You see, corporations are notorious for not volunteering such
- information: "By the way, we are keeping files on most Americans
- and keeping track of their eating habits and their sexual habits
- and all kinds of other things." Occasionally, hackers stumble on to
- information like that, and you are much more likely to get the
- truth out of them because they don't have any interest to protect.
- Mr. FIELDS. Are you saying with this book that is what you are
- trying to promote? because when I look through this book, I find
- the same thing that the chairman finds, some things that could
- actually lead to criminal behavior, and when I see all of these
- codes regarding cellular telephones, how you penetrate and listen
- to someone's private conversation, I don't see where you are doing
- anything for the person, the person who is actually doing the
- hacking. I see that as an invasion of privacy.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. All right. I need to explain something then.
- Those are not codes, those are frequencies. Those are frequencies
- that anybody can listen to, and by printing those frequencies we
- are demonstrating how easy it is for anybody to listen to them.
- Now if I say that by tuning to 871 megahertz you can listen to
- a cellular phone call, I don't think I am committing a crime, I
- think I am explaining to somebody. What I have done at previous
- conferences is hold up this scanner and press a button and show
- people how easy it is to listen, and those people, when they get
- into their cars later on in the day, they do not use their cellular
- telephones to make private calls of a personal nature because they
- have learned something, and that is what we are trying to do, we
- are trying to show people how easy it is.
- Now, yes, that information can be used in a bad way, but to
- use that as an excuse not to give out the information at all is
- even worse, and I think it is much more likely that things may be
- fixed, the cellular industry may finally get its act together and
- start protecting phone calls. The phone companies might make red
- boxes harder to use or might make it easier for people to afford
- phone calls, but we will never know if we don't make it public.
- Mr. FIELDS. I want to be honest with you, Mr. Goldstein. I
- think it is frightening that someone like you thinks there is a
- protected right in invading someone else's privacy.
- Mr. Guidry, let me turn to you. How does a hacker get the
- codes that you were talking about a moment ago -- if I understood
- what you were saying correctly, the manual ID number, the other
- cellular numbers that allow them to clone?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Well, unfortunately, "2600" would be a real good
- bet to get those, and we have arrested people and found those
- manuals in their possession.
- The other way is quite simply just to what we call dumpster
- dive, and that is to go to cellular carriers where they may destroy
- trash. Unfortunately, some of it is shredded and put back together,
- some of it is not shredded, and kids, criminals, go into those
- dumpsters, withdraw that information, piece it together, and then
- experiment with it. That information then is usually sold for
- criminal activity to avoid prosecution.
- Mr. FIELDS. You are asking the subcommittee to include
- wireless and cellular, and I think that is a good recommendation.
- I think certainly that is one that we are going to take as good
- counsel. But it appears that much of what you are talking about is
- organized activity, and my question is, does the current punishment
- scheme actually fit the crime, or should we also look at increasing
- punishment for this type of crime?
- Mr. GUIDRY. I would strongly suggest that we increase the
- punishment for this sort of crime. It is unfortunate that some
- hackers take that information and sell it for criminal activity,
- and, as a result, if prosecution is not stiff enough, then it far
- outweighs the crime.
- Mr. FIELDS. What is the punishment now for this type of
- cellular fraud?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Right now, it can be as high as $100,000 and up to
- 20 years in the penitentiary.
- Mr. FIELDS. Mr. Delaney, do you feel that that is adequate?
- Mr. DELANEY. Under New York State law, which is what I deal
- with, as opposed to the Federal law, we can charge a host of
- felonies with regard to one illicit telephone call if you want to
- be creative with the law. Sections 1029 and 1039 really cover just
- about everything other than the cellular concern and the wireless
- concern.
- However, I think the thing that is not dealt with is the
- person who is running the call sell operations. The call selling
- operations are the biggest loss of revenue to the telephone
- companies, cellular companies. Whether they are using PBX's or call
- diverters or cellular phones, this is where all the fraud is coming
- from, and there is only a handful of people who are originating
- this crime.
- We have targeted these people in New York City right now, and
- the same thing is being done in Los Angeles and Florida, to
- determine who these people are that use just the telephone to hack
- out the codes on PBX's, use ESN readers made by the Curtis Company
- to steal the ESN and MIN's out of the air and then to disseminate
- this to the street phones and to the cellular phones that are in
- cars and deprive the cellular industry of about $300 million a
- year, and the rest of the telecommunications networks in the United
- States probably of about $1 billion a year, due to the call sell
- operations.
- In one particular case that we watched, as a code was hacked
- out on a PBX in a company in Massachusetts, the code was
- disseminated to 250 street phones within the period of a week. By
- the end of the month, a rather small bill of $40,000 was sent to
- the company, small only because they were limited by the number of
- telephone lines going through that company. Had it been a larger
- company whose code had been cracked by the finger hacker, the bill
- would have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or over $1
- million as typically some of the bills have been.
- But this is a relatively small group of people creating a
- tremendous problem in the United States, and a law specifically
- dealing with a person who is operating as an entrepreneur, running
- a call selling operation, I think would go far to ending one of the
- biggest problems we have.
- Mr. FIELDS. Let me ask so I understand, Mr. Delaney and Mr.
- Guidry, because I am a little confused, or maybe I just didn't
- understand the testimony, are these individual hackers acting
- separately, or are these people operating within a network, within
- an organization?
- Mr. DELANEY. These finger hackers are the people that control
- the network of people that operate telephone booths and cellular
- phones for reselling telephone service. These finger hackers are
- not computer hackers.
- Mr. FIELDS. When you say finger hackers, is this one person
- operating independently, or is that finger hacker operating in
- concert --
- Mr. GUIDRY. No. He has franchised. He has franchised out. He
- actually sells the computer and the software and the cattail to do
- this to other people, and then they start their own little group.
- Now it is going internationally.
- Mr. FIELDS. Explain to me, if the chairman would permit --
- Mr. MARKEY. Please.
- Mr. FIELDS. Explain to me the franchise.
- Mr. GUIDRY. What happens is, let's pretend we are in Los
- Angeles right now and I have the ability to clone a phone that is
- using a computer, a cattail, we call it, that goes from the
- computer, the back of the computer, into the telephone, and I have
- the diskette that tells me how to change that program. I can at
- some point sell the cloning. You can come to me, and I can clone
- your phone.
- However, that is one way for me to make money. The best way
- for me to make money is to buy computers, additional diskettes, and
- go to Radio Shack or some place and make additional cattails and
- say, "I can either clone your phone for $1,500, or what you can do
- for $5,000 is start your own company." So you say, "Well, wow,
- that's pretty good, because how many times would I have to sell one
- phone at from $500 to $1,500 to get my initial investment back?" As
- a result now, you have groups, you have just youngsters as well as
- organized crime stepping in.
- The Guidry Group has worked in the Philippines on this, we
- have worked in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina,
- and next week I will be in London and in Rome. It is so bad, sir,
- that now intelligence agencies in Rome have told me -- and that is
- what I am going there for -- that organized crime seems to think
- that telecommunications fraud is more lucrative, unfortunately,
- than drugs, and it is darned sure more lucrative in the Los
- Angeles, probably New York, and Miami areas, because right now
- prosecution is not that strong. It is unfortunate that all of law
- enforcement is not trained, nor could they be, to pick up on
- someone standing on a corner using an illegitimate phone.
- Mr. FIELDS. How would a person know where to get their
- telephone cloned?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Let me tell you what happens. Normally when we go
- into a major metropolitan city, or we also check the computer
- bulletin boards, a lot of times that information is there. Most of
- the time, though, it is in magazines, like green sheets, which are
- free advertisements saying, "Call anywhere in the world. Come to --"
- a location, or, "Call this number." Also in Los Angeles, for some
- reason, they seem to advertise a lot in sex magazines, and people
- will simply buy a sex magazine and there will be a statement in
- there, "Earn money the fast way. Start your own telecommunications
- company." And then we will follow up on that tip and work with the
- Secret Service to try to apprehend those people.
- Mr. FIELDS. Mr. Haugh.
- Mr. HAUGH. If I could just add a few comments, it would be
- most unfortunate if this denigrates into a discussion of
- adolescents who are curious and so-called finger hackers. The truth
- of the matter is that the toll fraudsters are adults, they are
- organized, they are smart, they are savvy, and the drug dealers in
- particular are learning very quickly that it is far more lucrative,
- far less dangerous, to go into the telecom crime business.
- "Finger hacking" is a term, but the truth is, war dialers,
- speed dialers, modems, automated equipment now will hack and crack
- into systems and break the codes overnight. While the criminal
- sleeps, his equipment penetrates those systems. He gets up in the
- morning, and he has got a print sheet of new numbers that his
- equipment penetrated overnight.
- We have interviewed the criminals involved. These so-called
- idle curiosity adolescents are being paid up to $10,000 a month for
- new codes. I don't call that curiosity, I call that venality. We
- are talking a $4 billion problem.
- The chairman came up with the Maple Street example. I think
- even better yet, Mr. Chairman, the truth is that 216 Maple had a
- security device on the door and a code, and what Mr. Goldstein and
- his ilk do is sell that code through selling subscriptions to these
- periodicals. There is a big difference, in my opinion, between
- saying, "216 Maple is open" -- that is bad enough -- than to say,
- "You go to 216 Maple, and push 4156, and you can get in the door."
- But we are talking about crime, we are talking about adults,
- we are talking about organized crime, perhaps not in the Cosa
- Nostra sense, but even the Cosa Nostra is wising up that they can
- finance some of these operations, and in New York and Los Angeles,
- in particular, the true Mafia is now beginning to finance some of
- these telecom fraud operations.
- Mr. FIELDS. Mr. Guidry, one last question. Is it the Secret
- Service that is at the forefront of Federal activity?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Yes, sir, it is.
- Mr. FIELDS. Do they have the resources to adequately deal with
- this problem?
- Mr. GUIDRY. No, sir. The problem is growing so rapidly that
- they are undermanned in this area but have asked for additional
- manpower.
- Mr. FIELDS. Is this a priority for the Secret Service?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Yes, sir, it is.
- Mr. FIELDS. Thank you, Mr Chairman.
- Mr. MARKEY. The gentleman's time has expired.
- Again, it is a $4 to $5 billion problem.
- Mr. HAUGH. That is what our research indicated.
- Mr. MARKEY. There were 35,000 victims last year alone.
- Mr. HAUGH. Yes, sir, and this is only users, large users. Now
- it can be businesses, nonprofits. There is a university on the East
- Coast that just this last week got hit for $490,000, and the fraud
- is continuing.
- Mr. MARKEY. The gentleman from Ohio.
- Mr. OXLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
- Let me ask the witnesses: Other than making the penalties
- tougher for this type of activity, what other recommendations, if
- any, would any of you have that we could deal with, that our
- subcommittee should look at, and the Judiciary Committee, I assume,
- for what we might want to try to accomplish?
- Mr. Haugh?
- Mr. HAUGH. I happen to disagree with a couple of the witnesses
- who have indicated tougher penalties. I mean it sounds great. You
- know, that is the common instant reaction to anything, expand the
- penalties. I happen to think 20 years is plenty enough for criminal
- penetration of a telecom system, and there are a few housekeeping
- things that could be done.
- The problem isn't the adequacy of the law, the laws are pretty
- adequate, and, as Mr. Delaney indicated, you have a violation
- someplace, you have got a State law and a Federal law, both, and if
- you are a smart prosecutor, there are about eight different ways
- you can go after these criminals.
- The truth is, we have got inadequate enforcement, inadequate
- funding, inadequate pressure on the part of the Congress on the FCC
- to make more proactive efforts and to put more heat on the industry
- to coordinate.
- The truth is that the carriers compete with each other
- fiercely. They, with some limited exceptions, don't share
- appropriate information with each other. The LEC's and the RBOC's
- hide behind privacy; they hide behind other excuses not to
- cooperate with law enforcement and with the rest of the industry as
- effectively as they should.
- So I think putting the heat on the industry, putting the heat
- on the FCC, more adequately funding the FCC, more adequately
- funding the Secret Service, and having hearings like this that
- focus on the problem is the answer and not expanding the penalty
- from 20 years to 25 years. Nobody gets 20 years anyway, so
- expanding the 20 years is, to me, not the answer.
- Mr. OXLEY. What is the average sentence for something like
- that?
- Mr. HAUGH. I think the average toll fraud criminal who
- actually goes to jail -- and they are few and far between -- spends
- 3 to 6 months, and they are out.
- Now recidivism levels are low, I agree with Mr. Delaney. Once
- you catch them, they rarely go back to it. So it isn't a question
- of putting them in jail forever, it is a question of putting them
- in jail. The certainty of punishment level is very low.
- We talked to a drug dealer in New York City who left the drug
- business to go into toll fraud because he told me he can make
- $900,000 a year -- nontaxable income, he called it -- and never
- ever worry about going to jail.
- Mr. DELANEY. In New York City, I have never seen anybody go to
- jail on a first offense for anything short of armed robbery, let
- alone telephone fraud. They typically get 200 hours of community
- service, depending upon the judge.
- These people that I am speaking about are not the computer
- hackers that we were speaking about earlier, these are the people
- that are the finger hackers that break into the PBX's around the
- country. These are immigrants in the United States, they are
- adults, they know how to operate a telephone. They sit there
- generally -- almost every one that we have arrested so far uses a
- Panasonic memory telephone, and they sit there night and day try
- ing to hack out the PBX codes. They go through all the default
- codes of the major manufacturers of PBX's. They know that much.
- We don't have a single person in New York City, that I know
- of, that is hacking PBX's with a computer. The long distance
- carriers can see patterns of hacking into 800 lines, which are
- typically the PBX's, and they can see that it is being done by
- telephone, by finger hacking a telephone key pad, as opposed to a
- computer.
- The war dialing programs that Mr. Haugh referred to are
- typically used by the computer hackers to get these codes, but they
- create only a minuscule amount of the fraud that is ongoing in the
- country. The great majority is generated by the finger hackers who
- then disseminate those codes to the telephone booths and the call
- selling operations that operate out of apartments in New York City.
- In one apartment with five telephones in it that operates 16 hours
- a day for 365 days a year selling telephone service at $10 for 20
- minutes, you take in $985,000. It is a very profitable business.
- One of the individuals we arrested that said he did this
- because it was more profitable and less likely that he be caught
- than in selling drugs was murdered several months after we arrested
- him in the Colombian section of Queens because he was operating as
- an independent. It is a very controlled situation in New York City,
- and different ethnicities throughout New York City control the call
- sell operations in their neighborhoods, and everyone in those
- neighborhoods knows where they can go to make an illicit phone call
- or to get a phone cloned, whether it is a reprogrammed phone or
- rechipped.
- Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Guidry, did you have a comment?
- Mr. GUIDRY. Well, I think that we really do need to enforce
- the laws and we need to make some statutory changes in title 18,
- section 1029 to include cellular and wireless.
- I have been in courtrooms where really savvy defense attorneys
- say, "Well, it does not specifically indicate cellular or
- wireless," and that raises some question in the jury's mind, and I
- would just as soon that question not be there.
- Mr. OXLEY. Thank you.
- Mr. Chairman, I see we have got a vote, and I yield back the
- balance of my time.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you.
- We are going to have each one of you make a very brief summary
- statement to the committee if you could, and then we are going to
- adjourn the hearing.
- As you know, the Federal Communications Commission will be
- testifying before this subcommittee next week. We have a great
- concern that, although they held an all-day hearing on toll fraud
- last October, while we thought they were going to move ahead in an
- expeditious fashion, that, with a lot of good information, it has
- all sat on the shelf since that time. We expected them to act on
- that information to establish new rules protecting consumers and
- pushing carriers to do a lot more than they have done thus far to
- protect their networks. In light of recent court decisions holding
- that consumers are always liable I think that action by the FCC is
- long overdue, and at the FCC authorization hearing next week I
- expect to explore this issue with the commissioners in depth, so
- you can be sure of that, Mr. Haugh.
- Let's give each of you a 1-minute summation. Again, we will go
- in reverse order and begin with you, Mr. Guidry.
- Mr. GUIDRY. Thank you, sir.
- Telecommunications fraud, of course, is going internationally,
- and as it goes internationally and starts to franchise and get more
- organized, we are going to have to figure out a better way to
- combat it. Industry itself right now is putting its best foot
- forward. However, I would ask this committee to strongly look at
- changing some of this legislation and to also increase law
- enforcement's efforts through manpower.
- Thank you very much, sir.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you.
- Mr. Haugh.
- Mr. HAUGH. I agree with Mr. Guidry that there are some
- housekeeping changes that need to be made, and the particular title
- and section he referred to should definitely be amended to include
- more clearly wireless.
- The overall problem is an immense one; it is a very serious
- one; it is a complicated one. Everybody is at fault. Finger
- pointing has been carried to an extreme. Again, I think the long
- distance carriers, the big three -- AT&T, MCI, and Sprint -- have
- done a superb job of coming up to speed with monitoring. They are
- starting to cooperate better. They have really come to the table.
- The laggards are the LEC's and the RBOC's, the CPE
- manufacturers, and the FCC. In fairness to the FCC, they are
- understaffed, undermanned, underfunded. They can't even take care
- of all their mandated responsibilities right now, let alone take on
- new chores.
- All that said, there is a great deal the FCC can do --
- jawboning, regulations, pushing the LEC's and the RBOC's, in
- particular, to get real, get serious -- and I would urge this
- committee -- applaud your efforts and urge you to continue that.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you.
- Dr. Tippett.
- Mr. TIPPETT. Thank you.
- The computer virus issue is a little bit different than the
- toll fraud issue. In fact, there are no significant laws that deal
- with viruses, and, in fact, the fact that there are no laws gives
- the people who write viruses license to write them. The typical
- statement you read is, "It's not illegal, and I don't do anything
- that is illegal." So in the computer virus arena we do need laws.
- They don't need to be fancy; they don't need to be extensive. There
- are some suggestions of approaches to virus legislation in my
- written testimony.
- We also need education, and I would encourage Congress to
- underwrite some education efforts that the private sector could
- perform in various ways, perhaps through tax incentives or tax
- credits. The problem is growing and large. It exceeds $1 billion
- already in the United States, and it is going to be a $2 billion
- problem in 1994.
- As bad as toll fraud seems, this virus issue is, oddly, more
- pervasive and less interesting to a whole lot of people, and I
- think it needs some higher attention.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you.
- Mr. Goldstein.
- Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you.
- I would like to close by cautioning the subcommittee and all
- of us not to mix up these two very distinct worlds we are talking
- about, the world of the criminal and the world of the experimenter,
- the person that is seeking to learn. To do so will be to create a
- society where people are afraid to experiment and try variations on
- a theme because they might be committing some kind of a crime, and
- at the same time further legislation could have the effect of not
- really doing much for drug dealers and gangsters, who are doing far
- more serious crimes than making free phone calls, and it is not
- likely to intimidate them very much.
- I think the answer is for all of us to understand specifically
- what the weaknesses in the technology are and to figure out ways to
- keep it as strong and fortress-like as possible. I do think it is
- possible with as much research as we can put into it.
- Thank you.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Goldstein.
- Mr. Delaney.
- Mr. DELANEY. Last year, the Secret Service and the FBI
- arrested people in New York City for conducting illegal wiretaps.
- The ability to still do that by a hacker exists in the United
- States. Concerned with privacy, I am very happy to see that
- something like the Clipper chip is going to become available to
- protect society. I do hope, though, that we will always have for
- the necessary law enforcement investigation the ability to conduct
- those wiretaps. Without it, I see chaos.
- But with respect to the cellular losses, the industry is
- coming along a very rapid rate with technology to save them money
- in the future, because with encryption nobody will be able to steal
- their signals either.
- Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Delaney.
- I apologize. There is a roll call on the Floor, and I only
- have 3 minutes to get over there to make it. You have all been very
- helpful to us here today. It is a very tough balancing act, but we
- are going to be moving aggressively in this area. And we are going
- to need all of you to stay close to us so that we pass legislation
- that makes sense.
- This hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
- [Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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