http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010112/wr/crime_dc_2.html

Friday January 12 8:08 PM ET

U.S. Says Finds Int'l Youth Plot to Disable Internet

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of teen and young adult computer hackers allegedly planned an international conspiracy in which they hoped to ``take down the Internet'' on New Year's Eve, federal agents in Los Angeles said on Friday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it has seized computers, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and other related equipment for further investigation but have not made any arrests in the United States.

FBI (news - web sites) Special Agent Matt McLaughlin said four Israeli youths were arrested in their country in connection with the alleged conspiracy.

The agent added that the FBI was contacted by Dalnet, an international provider of Internet chat rooms, last October and told that several young people using their chat rooms had disabled some of their computer systems and were discussing cyber-terrorism online.

A 16-year-old Lynnwood, Washington, resident under investigation had boasted on a personal Web site that a plot to sabotage communications hardware on the Web would ``take down the Internet on New Year's Eve 2001.'' The teenager later told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published in Friday's editions that the case is overblown and based on his misguided efforts to impress his friends in cyberspace.

However FBI agents took the boy's online missives seriously. They searched his mother's house Dec. 22 and seized computer equipment, McLaughlin said.

Youths from California, Michigan and Israel were also found to have discussed cyber-terrorism in some chat rooms and are suspected of trying to inject a malicious computer code into the Web servers that form the communications backbone of the Internet, he said.

That would have allowed them to shut down some chat rooms and other realms of the Internet, and possibly gain access to some peoples' personal computers, the agent said.

``There is an ability with the proper program to take over another person's private computer and make that a robot where you can operate it remotely,'' McLaughlin said. ``A lot of identity theft occurs as a result of hackers going into private computers, taking the information there and doing with it what they will.''

FBI agents said it is difficult to know whether the teens were exaggerating because agents thwarted an alleged attack before it was able to occur.

``The severity of the threat was such that it required a preemptive search. It's just not worth allowing something like this to happen where there is probable cause to believe it will. I say there was probable cause because a federal search warrant was signed regarding this matter,'' McLaughlin said.

-- (news@of.note), January 13, 2001