AP: Hackers Attack U.S. Naval War College

[Eugene]

Hackers Attack U.S. Naval War College

By MICHELLE R. SMITH
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; 1:08 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Hackers attacked the computer network at the Naval War College
in Newport, and the school's network, including its e-mail and Web site, has been
down for more than two weeks as investigators work to find the culprits.

The Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command in Norfolk, Va., detected the intrusion
around Nov. 16 and took the system offline, spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Doug Gabos said.
Gabos said the network was unclassified and was used by students at the war college.

The school's Web site, http://www.nwc.navy.mil, is down and military spokesmen would
not give an estimate on when it will be back up.

-snip-

The Navy's networks are probed thousands of times a day, but intrusions such as this
are rare, Gabos said Tuesday. He said it was uncommon for the Navy to take a system
completely offline.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/05/AR2006120500741.html

[htuttle]

1. Gentlemen! You can't hack in here -- this is the War College!

[Ian David]

2. See also: Romanian hacker charged over US security breach

Romanian hacker charged over US security breach
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com, 04 Dec 2006

Victor Faur faces 54 years in prison after breaking into NASA computers

A federal grand jury has indicted a Romanian hacker on 10 charges of breaking into computers owned by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Goddard Space Flight Center, Sandia National Laboratory and the US Naval Observatory.

Victor Faur, 26, of Arad in Romania, is the alleged leader of a hacking group called the 'WhiteHat Team' accused of targeting the servers "because they were so secure".

Once inside, Faur reconfigured some systems to act as chat rooms for his team and stole passwords to gain further access.

He and the other team members also caused screens to be displayed to users informing them that the machines had been hacked.

"The compromised government computers were used to collect and process data from spacecraft in Earth orbit and in deep space, to evaluate new scientific technologies, and to collect, store and analyse other scientific data," said Thom Mrozek of the Los Angeles Attorney's Office.

<snip>

More:
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2170139/romanian-hacker-charged