| ==Phrack Inc.== | |
| Volume Three, Issue 26, File 10 of 11 | |
| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN | |
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| PWN P h r a c k W o r l d N e w s PWN | |
| PWN %%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%% %%%%%%% PWN | |
| PWN Issue XXVI/Part 2 PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN April 25, 1989 PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN Created, Written, and Edited PWN | |
| PWN by Knight Lightning PWN | |
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| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN | |
| Reach Out And TAP Someone April 3, 1989 | |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | |
| Two former employees of Cincinnati Bell, who were fired by the company for | |
| "good cause" according to Cincinnati Bell Chairman Dwight Hibbard are claiming | |
| they installed more than 1200 illegal wiretaps over a 12 year period from 1972 | |
| - 1984 at the request of their supervisors at the telco and the local police. | |
| Among the alleged targets of the snooping were past and present members of | |
| Congress, federal judges, scores of the city's most prominent politicians, | |
| business executives, lawyers and media personalities. | |
| Leonard Gates and Robert Draise say they even wiretapped the hotel room where | |
| President Gerald Ford stayed during two visits to Cincinnati; and this part of | |
| their story, at least, has been verified by the now retired security chief at | |
| the hotel. | |
| As more details come out each day, people in Cincinnati are getting a rare look | |
| at a Police Department that apparently spied on itself, and at a grand jury | |
| probe that has prompted one former FBI official to suggest that the Justice | |
| Department seems more interested in discrediting the accusers than in seeking | |
| the truth. | |
| Cincinnati Bell executives says Gates and Draise are just trying to "get even" | |
| with the company for firing them. But disclosures thus far seem to indicate | |
| there is at least some truth in what the two men are saying about the company | |
| they used to work for. | |
| According to Gates and Draise, they were just employees following the orders | |
| given to them by their superiors at Cincinnati Bell. But Dwight Hibbard, | |
| Chairman of the Board of Cincinnati Bell has called them both liars, and said | |
| their only motive is to make trouble for the company. | |
| Cincinnati Bell responded to allegations that the company had specifically | |
| participated in illegal wiretapping by filing a libel suit against Gates and | |
| Draise. The two men responded by filing a countersuit against the telco. | |
| In addition to their suit, four of the people who were allegedly spied on have | |
| filed a class action suit against the telco. | |
| In the latest development, Cincinnati Bell has gone public with (according to | |
| them) just recently discovered sordid details about an extramarital affair by | |
| Gates. A federal grand jury in Cincinnati is now trying to straighten out the | |
| tangled web of charges and countercharges, but so far no indictments have been | |
| returned. | |
| Almost daily, Gates and Draise tell further details about their exploits, | |
| including taps they claim they placed on phones at the Cincinnati Stock | |
| Exchange and the General Electric aircraft engine plant in suburban Evendale. | |
| According to Draise, he began doing these "special assignments" in 1972, when | |
| he was approached by a Cincinnati police officer from that city's clandestine | |
| intelligence unit. The police officer wanted him to tap the lines of black | |
| militants and suspected drug dealers, Draise said. | |
| The police officer assured him the wiretapping would be legal, and that top | |
| executives at the phone company had approved. Draise agreed, and suggested | |
| recruiting Gates, a co-worker to help out. Soon, the two were setting several | |
| wiretaps each week at the request of the Intelligence Unit of the Cincinnati | |
| Police Department. | |
| But by around 1975, the direction and scope of the operation changed, say the | |
| men. The wiretap requests no longer came from the police; instead they came | |
| from James West and Peter Gabor, supervisors in the Security Department at | |
| Cincinnati Bell, who claimed *they were getting the orders from their | |
| superiors*. | |
| And the targets of the spying were no longer criminal elements; instead, Draise | |
| and Gates say they were asked to tap the lines of politicians, business | |
| executives and even the phone of the Chief of Police himself, and the personal | |
| phone lines of some telephone company employees as well. | |
| Draise said he "began to have doubts about the whole thing in 1979" when he was | |
| told to tap the private phone of a newspaper columnist in town. "I told them I | |
| wasn't going to do it anymore," he said in an interview during the week of | |
| April 2, 1989. | |
| Gates kept on doing these things until 1984, and he says he got cold feet late | |
| that year when "the word came down through the grapevine" that he was to tap | |
| the phone lines connected to the computers at General Electric's Evendale | |
| plant. He backed out then, and said to leave him out of it in the future, and | |
| he claims there were hints of retaliation directed at him at that time; threats | |
| to "tell what we know about you..." | |
| When Dwight Hibbard was contacted at his office at Cincinnati Bell and asked to | |
| comment on the allegations of his former employees, he responded that they were | |
| both liars. "The phone company would not do things like that," said Hibbard, | |
| "and those two are both getting sued because they say we do." Hibbard has | |
| refused to answer more specific questions asked by the local press and | |
| government investigators. | |
| In fact, Draise was fired in 1979, shortly after he claims he told his | |
| superiors he would no longer place wiretaps on lines. Shortly after he quit | |
| handling the "special assignments" given to him he was arrested, and charged | |
| with a misdemeanor in connection with one wiretap -- which Draise says he set | |
| for a friend who wanted to spy on his ex-girlfriend. Cincinnati Bell claims | |
| they had nothing to do with his arrest and conviction on that charge; but they | |
| "were forced to fire him" after he pleaded guilty. | |
| Gates was fired in 1986 for insubordination. He claims Cincinnati Bell was | |
| retaliating against him for taking the side of two employees who were suing the | |
| company for sexual harassment; but his firing was upheld in court. | |
| The story first started breaking when Gates and Draise went to see a reporter | |
| at [Mount Washington Press], a small weekly newspaper in the Cincinnati | |
| suburban area. The paper printed the allegations by the men, and angry | |
| responses started coming in almost immediately. | |
| At first, police denied the existence of the Intelligence Unit, let alone that | |
| such an organization would use operatives at Cincinnati Bell to spy on people. | |
| Later, when called before the federal grand jury, and warned against lying, | |
| five retired police officers, including the former chief, took the Fifth | |
| Amendment. Finally last month, the five issued a statement through their | |
| attorney, admitting to 12 illegal wiretaps from 1972 - 1974, and implicated | |
| unnamed operatives at Cincinnati Bell as their contacts to set the taps. | |
| With the ice broken, and the formalities out of the way, others began coming | |
| forward with similar stories. Howard Lucas, the former Director of Security | |
| for Stouffer's Hotel in Cincinnati recalled a 1975 incident in which he stopped | |
| Gates, West and several undercover police officers from going into the hotel's | |
| phone room about a month before the visit by President Ford. | |
| The phone room was kept locked, and employees working there were buzzed in by | |
| someone already inside, recalled Lucas. In addition to the switchboards, the | |
| room contained the wire distribution frames from which phone pairs ran | |
| throughout the hotel. Lucas refused to let the police officers go inside | |
| without a search warrant; and they never did return with one. | |
| But Lucas said two days later he was tipped off by one of the operators to look | |
| in one of the closets there. Lucas said he found a voice activated tape | |
| recorder and "a couple of coils they used to make the tap." He said he told | |
| the Police Department and Cincinnati Bell about his findings, but "...I could | |
| not get anyone to claim it, so I just yanked it all out and threw it in the | |
| dumpster..." | |
| Executives at General Electric were prompted to meet with Draise and Gates | |
| recently to learn the extent of the wiretapping that had been done at the | |
| plant. According to Draise, GE attorney David Kindleberger expressed | |
| astonishment when told the extent of the spying; and he linked it to the | |
| apparent loss of proprietary information to Pratt & Whitney, a competing | |
| manufacturer of aircraft engines. | |
| Now all of a sudden, Kindleberger is clamming up. I wonder who got to him? He | |
| admits meeting with Draise, but says he never discussed Pratt & Whitney or any | |
| competitive situation with Draise. But an attorney who sat in on the meeting | |
| supports Draise's version. | |
| After an initial flurry of press releases denying all allegations of illegal | |
| wiretapping, Cincinnati Bell has become very quiet, and is now unwilling to | |
| discuss the matter at all except to tell anyone who asks that "Draise and Gates | |
| are a couple of liars who want to get even with us..." And now, the telco | |
| suddenly has discovered information about Gates' personal life. | |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | |
| FBI/Bell Wiretapping Network? April 3, 1989 | |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | |
| [Edited For This Presentation] | |
| Bob Draise/WB8QCF was an employee of Cincinnati Bell Telephone between 1966 and | |
| 1979. He, and others, are involved in a wiretapping scandal of monumental | |
| proportions. They say they have installed more than 1,000 wiretaps on the | |
| phones of judges, law enforcement officers, lawyers, television personalities, | |
| newspaper columnists, labor unions, defense contractors, major corporations | |
| (such as Proctor & Gamble and General Electric), politicians (even ex-President | |
| Gerald Ford) at the request of Cincinnati police and Cincinnati Bell security | |
| supervisors who said the taps were for the police. They were told that many of | |
| the taps were for the FBI. | |
| Another radio amateur, Vincent Clark/KB4MIT, a technician for South-Central | |
| Bell from 1972 to 1981, said he placed illegal wiretaps similar to those done | |
| by Bob Draise on orders from his supervisors -- and on request from local | |
| policemen in Louisville, Kentucky. | |
| When asked how he got started in the illegal wiretap business, Bob said that a | |
| friend called and asked him to come down to meet with the Cincinnati police. An | |
| intelligence sergeant asked Bob about wiretapping some Black Muslims. He also | |
| told Bob that Cincinnati Bell security had approved the wiretap -- and that it | |
| was for the FBI. The sergeant pointed to his Masonic ring which Bob also wore | |
| -- in other words, he was telling the truth under the Masonic oath -- something | |
| that Bob put a lot of stock in. | |
| Most of the people first wiretapped were drug or criminal related. Later on, | |
| however, it go out of hand -- and the FBI wanted taps on prominent citizens. | |
| "We started doing people who had money. How this information was used, I | |
| couldn't tell you." | |
| The January 29th "Newsday" said Draise had told investigators that among the | |
| taps he rigged from 1972 to 1979 were several on lines used by Wren Business | |
| Communications, a Bell competitor. It seems that when Wren had arranged an | |
| appointment with a potential customer, they found that Bell had just been there | |
| without being called. Wren's president is a ham radio operator, David | |
| Stoner/K8LMB. | |
| When spoken with, Dave Stoner said the following; | |
| "As far as I am concerned, the initial focus for all of this began | |
| with the FBI. The FBI apparently set up a structure throughout the | |
| United States using apparently the security chiefs of the different | |
| Bell companies. They say that there have been other cases in the | |
| United States like ours in Cincinnati but they have been localized | |
| without the realization of an overall pattern being implicated." | |
| "The things that ties this all together is if you go way back in | |
| history to the Hoover period at the FBI, he apparently got together | |
| with the AT&T security people. There is an organization that I | |
| guess exists to this day with regular meetings of the security | |
| people of the different Bell companies. This meant that the FBI | |
| would be able to target a group of 20 or 30 people that represented | |
| the security points for all of the Bell and AT&T connections in the | |
| United States. I believe the key to all of this goes back to Hoover. | |
| The FBI worked through that group who then created the activity at | |
| the local level as a result of central planning." | |
| "I believe that in spite of the fact that many people have indicated | |
| that this is an early 70's problem -- that there is no disruption to | |
| that work to this day. I am pretty much convinced that it is | |
| continuing. It looks like a large surveillance effort that | |
| Cincinnati was just a part of." | |
| "The federal prosecutor Kathleen Brinkman is in a no-win situation. | |
| If she successfully prosecutes this case she is going to bring | |
| trouble down upon her own Justice Department. She can't | |
| successfully prosecute the case." | |
| About $200 million in lawsuits have already been filed against Cincinnati Bell | |
| and the Police Department. Several members of the police department have taken | |
| the Fifth Amendment before the grand jury rather than answer questions about | |
| their roles in the wiretapping scheme. | |
| Bob Draise/WB8QCF has filed a suit against Cincinnati Bell for $78 for | |
| malicious prosecution and slander in response to a suit filed by Cincinnati | |
| Bell against Bob for defamation. Right after they filed the suit, several | |
| policemen came forward and admitted to doing illegal wiretaps with them. The | |
| Cincinnati police said they stopped this is 1974 -- although another policeman | |
| reportedly said they actually stopped the wiretapping in 1986. | |
| Now the CBS-TV program "60 Minutes" is interested in the Cincinnati goings-on | |
| and has sent in a team of investigative reporters. Ed Bradley from "60 | |
| Minutes" has already interviewed Bob Draise/WB8QCF and it is expected that | |
| sometime during this month (April) April, we will see a "60 Minutes" report on | |
| spying by the FBI. We also understand that CNN, Ted Turner's Cable News | |
| Network, is also working up a "Bugging of America" expose. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Crackdown On Hackers Urged April 9, 1989 | |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | |
| Taken From the Chicago Tribune (Section 7, Page 12b) | |
| "Make Punishment Fit The Crime," computer leaders say. | |
| DALLAS (AP) -- The legal system has failed to respond adequately to the threat | |
| that hackers pose to the computer networks crucial to corporate America, a | |
| computer expert says. | |
| Many computer hackers "are given slaps on the wrist," Mark Leary, a senior | |
| analyst with International Data Corp., said at a roundtable discussion last | |
| week. | |
| "The justice system has to step up...to the fact that these people are | |
| malicious and are criminals and are robbing banks just as much as if they | |
| walked up with a shotgun," he said. | |
| Other panelists complained that hackers, because of their ability to break into | |
| computer systems, even are given jobs, sometimes a security consultants. | |
| The experts spoke at a roundtable sponsored by Network World magazine, a | |
| publication for computer network users and managers. | |
| Computer networks have become crucial to business, from transferring and | |
| compiling information to overseeing and running manufacturing processes. | |
| The public also is increasingly exposed to networks through such devices as | |
| automatic teller machines at banks, airline reservation systems and computers | |
| that store billing information. | |
| Companies became more willing to spend money on computer security after last | |
| year's celebrated invasion of a nationwide network by a virus allegedly | |
| unleased by a graduate student [Robert Tappen Morris], the experts said. | |
| "The incident caused us to reassess the priorities with which we look at | |
| certain threats," said Dennis Steinaur, manager of the computer security | |
| management group of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. | |
| But computer security isn't only a matter of guarding against unauthorized | |
| entry, said Max Hopper, senior vice president for information systems as | |
| American Airlines. | |
| Hopper said American has built a "a Cheyenne mountain-type" installation for | |
| its computer systems to guard against a variety of problems, including | |
| electrical failure and natural disaster. Referring to the Defense Department's | |
| underground nerve center in a Colorado mountain, he said American's precautions | |
| even include a three-day supply of food. | |
| "We've done everything we can, we think, to protect the total environment," | |
| Hopper said. | |
| Hopper and Steinaur said that despite the high-tech image of computer | |
| terrorism, it remains an administrative problem that should be approached as a | |
| routine management issue. | |
| But the experts agreed that the greatest danger to computer networks does not | |
| come from outside hackers. Instead, they said, the biggest threat is from | |
| disgruntled employees or others whose original access to systems was | |
| legitimate. | |
| Though employee screening is useful, Steinaur said, it is more important to | |
| build into computer systems ways to track unauthorized use and to publicize | |
| that hacking can be traced. | |
| Steinaur said growing computer literacy, plus the activities of some | |
| non-malicious hackers, help security managers in some respects. | |
| Expanded knowledge "forces us as security managers not be dependent on | |
| ignorance," Steinaur said. | |
| "Security needs to be a part of the system, rather than a 'nuisance addition,'" | |
| Steinaur said, "and we probably have not done a very good job of making | |
| management realize that security is an integral part of the system." | |
| IDC's Leary said the organization surveys of Fortune 1000 companies | |
| surprisingly found a significant number of companies were doing little to | |
| protect their systems. | |
| The discussion, the first of three planned by Network World, was held because | |
| computer sabotage "is a real problem that people aren't aware of," said editor | |
| John Gallant. Many business people sophisticated networks." | |
| It also is a problem that many industry vendors are reluctant to address, he | |
| said, because it raises questions about a company's reliability. | |
| Typed For PWN by Hatchet Molly | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Ex-Worker Charged In Virus Case -- Databases Were Alleged Target Apr 12, 1989 | |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | |
| by Jane M. Von Bergen (Philadelphia Inquirer) | |
| A former employee was charged yesterday with infecting his company's computer | |
| database in what is believed to be the first computer-virus arrest in the | |
| Philadelphia area. | |
| "We believe he was doing this as an act of revenge," said Camden County | |
| Assistant Prosecutor Norman Muhlbaier said yesterday, commenting on a motive | |
| for the employee who allegedly installed a program to erase databases at his | |
| former company, Datacomp Corp. in Voorhees, New Jersey. | |
| Chris Young, 21, of the 2000 block of Liberty Street, Trenton, was charged in | |
| Camden County with one count of computer theft by altering a database. | |
| Superior Court Judge E. Stevenson Fluharty released Young on his promise to pay | |
| $10,000 if he failed to appear in court. If convicted, Young faces a 10-year | |
| prison term and a $100,000 fine. Young could not be reached for comment. | |
| "No damage was done," Muhlbaier said, because the company discovered the virus | |
| before it could cause harm. Had the virus gone into effect, it could have | |
| damaged databases worth several hundred thousand dollars, Muhlbaier said. | |
| Datacomp Corp., in the Echelon Mall, is involved in telephone marketing. The | |
| company, which has between 30 and 35 employees, had a contract with a major | |
| telephone company to verify the contents of its white pages and try to sell | |
| bold-faced or other special listings in the white pages, a Datacomp company | |
| spokeswoman said. The database Young is accused of trying to destroy is the | |
| list of names from the phone company, she said. | |
| Muhlbaier said that the day Young resigned from the company, October 7, 1988 he | |
| used fictitious passwords to obtain entry into the company computer, | |
| programming the virus to begin its destruction December 7, 1988 -- Pearl Harbor | |
| Day. Young, who had worked for the company on and off for two years -- most | |
| recently as a supervisor -- was disgruntled because he had received some | |
| unfavorable job-performance reviews, the prosecutor said. | |
| Eventually, operators at the company picked up glitches in the computer system. | |
| A programmer, called in to straighten out the mess, noticed that the program | |
| had been altered and discovered the data-destroying virus, Muhlbaier said. | |
| "What Mr. Young did not know was that the computer system has a lot of security | |
| features so they could track it back to a particular date, time and terminal," | |
| Muhlbaier said. "We were able to ... prove that he was at that terminal." | |
| Young's virus, Muhlbaier said, is the type known as a "time bomb" because it is | |
| programmed to go off at a specific time. In this case, the database would have | |
| been sickened the first time someone switched on a computer December 7, he said | |
| Norma Kraus, a vice president of Datacomp's parent company, Volt Information | |
| Sciences Inc, said yesterday that the company's potential loss included not | |
| only the databases, but also the time it took to find and cure the virus. "All | |
| the work has to stop," causing delivery backups on contracts, she said. "We're | |
| just fortunate that we have employees who can determine what's wrong and then | |
| have the interest to do something. In this case, the employee didn't stop at | |
| fixing the system, but continued on to determine what the problem was." The | |
| Volt company, based in New York, does $500 million worth of business a year | |
| with such services as telephone marketing, data processing and technical | |
| support. It also arranges temporary workers, particularly in the | |
| data-processing field, and installs telecommunication services, Kraus said. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Mexico's Phone System Going Private? April 17, 1989 | |
| %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% | |
| By Oryan QUEST (Special Hispanic Corespondent) | |
| The Mexico Telephone Company, aka Telefonos de Mexico, aka Telmex, is likely to | |
| go private in the next year or two. The Mexican government is giving serious | |
| consideration to selling its controlling interest in that nation's | |
| communications network, despite very stiff opposition from the local unions | |
| which would prefer to see the existing bureaucracy stay in place. | |
| The proposed sale, which is part of a move to upgrade the phone system there -- | |
| and it *does* need upgrading -- by allowing more private investment, is part of | |
| a growing trend in Mexico to privatize heretofore nationalized industries. | |
| The Mexico Telephone Company has spent more than a year planning a $14 billion, | |
| five-year restructuring plan which will probably give AT&T and the Bell | |
| regional holding companies a role in the improvements. | |
| One plan being discussed by the Mexican government is a complete break-up of | |
| Telmex, similar to the court-ordered divestiture of AT&T a few years ago. | |
| Under this plan, there would be one central long distance company in Mexico, | |
| with the government retaining control of it, but privately owned regional firms | |
| providing local and auxiliary services. | |
| Representatives of the Mexican government have talked on more than one | |
| occasion with some folks at Southwestern Bell about making a formal proposal. | |
| Likewise, Pacific Bell has been making some overtures to the Mexicans. It will | |
| be interesting to see what develops. | |
| About two years ago, Teleconnect Magazine, in a humorous article on the | |
| divestiture, presented a bogus map of the territories assigned to each BOC, | |
| with Texas, New Mexico and Arizona grouped under an entity called "Taco Bell." | |
| Any phone company which takes over the Mexican system will be an improvement | |
| over the current operation, which has been slowly deteriorating for several | |
| years. | |
| PS: I *Demand* To Be Let Back On MSP! | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |