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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] Number Crunch charged
From:       mea culpa <jericho () dimensional ! com>
Date:       1998-07-26 10:06:17
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Forwarded From: Julian Assange <proff@iq.org>
Originally To: lacc@suburbia.net
 

 Police seek help in hacking case 
 By NICOLE MANKTELOW

 22jul98

VICTORIAN police have called for companies that have lost data or suffered
damage to their computer systems to come forward after the arrest of a
30-year-old man allegedly responsible for a two-week hacking spree. 

Police allege the hacker, using the name Number Crunch, attacked business,
corporate and government computers in all major capital cities. 

Police allege that in some cases attacks have resulted in computer
crashes, requiring complete systems to be re-built. 

They allege the hacker exploited "operating systems weaknesses" of NT
servers, workstations and Windows 95 workstations - in order to delete
operating system software from servers and wipe important information from
local area networks. 

Detective Senior Constable Richard Culshaw of the Computer Crime Squad
said a man was arrested and charged with one count of criminal damage. He
is now on bail. 

Detective Culshaw said some companies may have attributed loss of data or
interference with systems to a virus. This was the first case of its kind
to be handled by the Victorian computer crime squad, he said. 

Speaking generally and without any reference to this case, Detective
Culshaw said the squad dealt with cases of fraud, particularly the misuse
of credit cards. 

He said up to $10 million had been lost by Internet service providers due
to credit card fraud, where bogus credit card numbers were used to attain
Internet accounts. 

Fraudulent users then ran up the hourly and data charges to hefty bills -
some as much as $16,000, he said. 

The crux of the problem was a program available on the Internet, which
could generate plausible credit card numbers. 

Cases of computer hacking, on the other hand, were infrequent. Most
reported incidents of hacking involved "teenagers mucking about",
Detective Culshaw said. 

Police urge anyone with information about computer crime to ring Crime
Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Anyone with information about suspected hacking,
particularly after June 29, should call Detective Senior Constable Culshaw
on (03) 9865 2042. 


-o-
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