An example of cyber-terrorism?

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From the (London) Electronic Telegraph, Monday, February 1, 1999:

Hacker takes revenge on computer security expert

By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent

A DISGRUNTLED computer hacker has wreaked revenge on the British creator of a security system by changing his bank details and making it impossible for him to sell his house or get a mortgage.

Paul Smith, 29, a creator of Access Denied, a so-called firewall security system, is now fighting to clear his name after the hacker added six default notices and a County Court judgment to the financial records held on him.

Mr Smith's employer, Gen Technology, had issued a challenge on the Internet to hackers, defying them to break into a computer network protected by its Access Denied system. Hackers routinely breach military, government, commercial and private systems within a few hours of trying, but after spending several weeks making 240,000 attacks on Access Denied, no hackers had breached the firewall.

Most firewalls need only a user name and password to allow access. Access Denied also needs a user profile and serial number hidden on the computer of the person wanting access to the network. If it does not find these, its makers claim it will terminate the connection within an eightieth of a second. Three weeks after the hacker challenge was issued, a disgruntled hacker managed to contact Mr Smith.

"I got a phone-call from a hacker with a British voice. He said he was part of a team of hackers and had been humiliated in front of his friends after he had boasted that he would get in within five minutes," Mr Smith said. "He threatened me with a list of what was going to happen to me."

A few weeks later Mr Smith applied for a mortgage, only to be rejected. "The hacker had managed to do exactly what he threatened to do," he said.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), February 01, 1999

Answers

LIke to taunt a Hacker, huh? Heeeeere's your sign!

-- Buffalo Bob (buff@hal.com), February 01, 1999.

What's the Y2K connection?

Also hardly news. Mittnick was doing this sort of thing to anyone who annoyed him years ago.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), February 01, 1999.


Nigel, the Clinton Administration has talked about "cyber terrorism" as one of the reasons for triggering the Emergency Powers Act. US administrations have acted precipitously on less evidence than the hacker story.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), February 01, 1999.

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