KUJI AND DATASTREAM COWBOY
THE Pentagon is under siege from computer hackers, according to a study
from the US General Accounting Office (GAO). The report warns that every year
there are an estimated 250 000 attempts to gain unauthorized access to military
computers. An unknown number of these attempts is successful, it says.
In its search for intruders, the Pentagon’s own team of hackers has
successfully hacked into defense computers in about 65 percent of the 38 000
attempts they have made since 1992. Only about 4 percent of these friendly
attacks were detected by the Pentagon’s computer operators, and even fewer were
reported to security officials, says the study.
“Hackers have stolen and destroyed sensitive data and software. They have
installed back doors’ into computer systems which allow them to surreptitiously regain entry into sensitive defence systems,” says Jack Brock, an official at the GAO. “They havecrashed’ entire systems and networks, denying computer
service to authorized users and preventing defense personnel from performing
their duties.”
Brock told a Congressional committee that a 16-year-old British hacker going
by the name of “Datastream cowboy” and working with an accomplice called “Kuji”
attacked computers at the Air Force’s Rome Laboratory in New York more than 150
times in 1994. They stole research data relating to the attack instructions that
would be given to US warplanes in battle. The British boy is still awaiting
prosecution in Britain for allegedly stealing telephone services, but Kuji has
never been found. “Consequently, no one knows what happened to the data stolen
from Rome lab,” says Brock.
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