Forwarded From: phreakmoi <hackerelite@deathsdoor.com>
From: http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/98/nov/1116/feat.htm
Hacking Babba
By Adam L. Penenberg
Nineteen ninety-eight may well go down as the year of the hack. Not since
the arrest of hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1995 have there been so many
high-profile computer break-ins. The latest victim was The New York
Times, which had to shut its web site down for 9 hours on September 13
when a gang calling itself Hacking for Girlies (HFG) replaced Times
content with a page of their own design. And earlier in the year, there
were a number of security breaches that were far more
serious--high-profile hacks of the Pentagon, a TV satellite in California,
and potentially the most devastating, a nuclear research center in India.
ICSA, a computer security company based in Pennsylvania, estimates there
are about 1 million hackers out there in cyberland. Here is the story of
two of them, the first ones to penetrate the computers of Bhabha, India's
number one nuclear research center, located in Bombay, India, which led to
perhaps as many as 100 hackers wilding through the center's network over
the course of several days.
A now defunct hacker group called "milw0rm" claimed credit for the hack.
Although the hack received extensive media coverage, the fact is that
milw0rm copped credit for a hack they merely inherited. Here's what
happened.
It was mid-May, 1998, when 15-year-old 10th grader, Joey Westwood (not his
real name) was watching the TV coverage of India's underground nuclear
tests. For some reason it stuck in his craw. Joey was not sure exactly
why. After all, he's much too young to remember Hiroshima, Nagasaki and
the Cuban Missile Crisis. He couldn't even find India on the map. Some
third-world hole that can't even feed its own people was getting into a
nuclear arms race with Pakistan and China. The more he thought about it,
the madder he got.
Joey decided to wreak vengeance on the Indians. And he would accomplish
this without leaving his bedroom in suburban America. In cyberspace, where
Joey spent much of his life, he went by the name t3k-9. He's especially
adept at cracking passwords and log-ins, the keys to illegally accessing
computer systems.
On this particular day, t3k-9 stomped upstairs carrying his favorite hack
snacks--chocolate pop tarts, Coca-Cola and sour jawbreakers--and went to
his bedroom, where he booted up his computer and listened to the
comforting squawk of his modem. He checked in with search engine Infoseek,
and plugged in ".in atomic," the equivalent of typing "India, atomic
research." One of the first sites to come up was India's Bhabha Atomic
Research Center (BARC), which he read had been instrumental in helping
India develop the A-bomb.
Forty-five seconds after he'd started, t3k-9 was amazed to discover that
he'd cracked one of the passwords.
Joey pointed and clicked his way to the BARC site and accessed the John
the Ripper DES Encryption Cracker software he had downloaded off the
Internet, where literally thousands of complex hacker applications and
"how-to" guides are available from web sites and hacker chat channels.
The password cruncher worked by setting up a phony log-in program so that
BARC thought it was accepting a connection from a friendly machine. Then,
by brute force, the cruncher tried every single combination of letters and
numbers until it hit the jackpot. First, the application ran through all
the lettered combinations at the speed of digital light--a, b, aa, bb,
cc--then after going through the entire alphabet, backtracking to ab, ac,
ad, etc. t3k-9 had also added special customized word lists that combine
letters and numbers he'd downloaded over the course of his cybertravels
Forty-five seconds after he'd started, t3k-9 was amazed to discover that
he'd cracked one of the passwords. He was inside India's number one atomic
research network.
His eyes bugged. He checked the password: "ANSI." Someone's name, he
thought, the same as the log-in prompt. He couldn't believe his luck. The
administrator hadn't followed standard password selection rules, which
would have meant complex strings of numbers and letters--more difficult to
crack because the longer it takes, the greater the likelihood you'll get
caught.
t3k-9's first step was to download all the passwords and log-in names.
Then he installed a "backdoor" that would enable him to gain entry into
the system without being detected. After that, he consulted the network
map, which was open to public display. He headed over to the web server
and read through E-mails written in scientific geek-speak, then rifled
through some documents on particle physics. Boring stuff, he thought.
t3k-9 decided to get out while the getting was good, downloading a few
E-mails and a scientific document for souvenirs. Then, after erasing logs
to ensure no one would be able to track him, he logged off.
If he'd kept this to himself, no one would have ever known. And in the
days to follow, India's top nuclear research facility would probably never
have suffered the ignominy of perhaps 100 hackers running roughshod
through its computer network like gangs on a rampage.
But t3k-9 couldn't keep mum. He did what every self-respecting hacker
would do. He bragged.
-o-
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Received on Wed Nov 18 14:57:22 1998