From: cult hero (jerichodimensional.com)
Date: Wed Jun 02 1999 - 08:31:49 CDT

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[Moderator: This article will be going on the Errata site soon. This
 contains a wide variety of errors regarding the role and actions of John
 Vranesevich and AntiOnline. Mr. Richtel chose to believe JV at face
 value, and apparently did not challenge anything he said.]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/mo/biztech/articles/02hack.html

June 2, 1999
Federal Cybercrime Unit Hunts for Hackers
By MATT RICHTEL

Raids by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week against
several suspected computer hackers are part of a new Government cybercrime
unit's crackdown against illegal tampering with computer networks and Web
sites, a Federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

The raids prompted a counteroffensive in which disparate hacker groups
took responsibility for bringing down additional corporate and Government
sites, including the F.B.I.'s public information site.

The events escalated a longstanding game of tit-for-tat between pranksters
using personal computers and a newly galvanized Federal police force stung
by recent attacks on some of the Government's high-level Web sites.

Paul E. Coggins, the United States Attorney in Dallas who is overseeing
the effort, said yesterday that Federal prosecutors had issued 16 warrants
in 12 jurisdictions after a yearlong investigation, but had not yet
charged anyone with a crime.

The investigation is part of the Government's new, Dallas-based cybercrime
task force, which includes the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the United
States Attorney's Office and the Defense Department, Coggins said.

"It's probably the most far-reaching investigation of its kind," he said.
"It's an investigation with national and international implications."

Coggins declined to elaborate or to say whether the targets of the
investigation were considered to be part of a conspiracy.

Don K. Clark, a special F.B.I. agent in Houston, said the activities under
investigation included stealing and misusing credit card numbers and
computer passwords.

Two of those who were raided by the bureau's agents last Wednesday said
one connection between some of the targets was that they knew one another
from various discussion groups in an Internet chat forum called Internet
Relay Chat. The participants said that the talk sometimes revolved around
hacking techniques but that they were not involved in any general hacking
conspiracy with other members of the discussion groups.

"I have never defaced any Web pages or taken out any major sites," said
Paul Maidman, 18, of Waldwick, N.J., one of those who were raided.

Referring to proprietary computer systems, he said: "I got into other
servers. I'd look around, read some E-mail, and that would be it."

Maidman said he was awakened last Wednesday morning by five or six armed
F.B.I. agents surrounding a living room couch where he slept. He said the
agents confiscated a computer, some diskettes, CD-ROM's and other computer
paraphernalia.

Two Internet service providers have also received requests for
documentation in connection with the case. The requests, parts of which
have been posted on the Internet, seek information about dozens of
hackers, hacker groups and software used by hackers.

John Vranesevich, who operates the Anti-Online Web site, which chronicles
hacker activity, said the information requested from Internet service
providers involved software tools, computer files and aliases pertaining
to hacker activities.

Vranesevich said several of the aliases actually represented software
programs called "bots," which are posted in chat rooms as automated
monitors but may have been mistaken by F.B.I. agents for human
participants.

"Anything that has to do with hackers they're going after," he said. "I'm
not going to call this a witch hunt, but it's an uninformed
investigation."

Meanwhile, hacker groups continued attacks on corporate and Government
computers, in some cases making sites inaccessible and, in others, taking
over sites with their own messages, some of them profane. The F.B.I. site,
taken down last week, remained inaccessible yesterday.

One hacker group, which calls itself F0rpaxe, says it is based in Portugal
and takes responsibility for "massive attacks" on various Web sites, sent
a statement to Anti-Online saying, "If the F.B.I. doesn't stop we won't,
and we can start destroying."

-o-
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