Hacker disrupts Hancock County Web site

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http://www.bangornews.com/cgi-bin/article.cfm?storynumber=22823

Tuesday, October 24, 2000
By Shawn OLeary

ELLSWORTH Somebody broke into part of Hancock Countys World Wide Web
site designed to link people to millions of records in its Registry of
Deeds, briefly routing visitors to an unrelated Web page showing three
monkeys.

The county recently signed an agreement with a Portland-based computer
imaging company to make electronic copies of all Hancock County deeds
available to computer users on the Web.

But now county commissioners believe that last week a computer hacker
interrupted the link to the deed service. They believe that on at
least one day, the hacker replaced the link to the imaging company
with one directing computer users to a Web page produced by a critic
of the countys contract with the imaging vendor.

Any image or line of text included in a Web page that, when clicked
on, directs the computer to another Web page is known as a link.

The offending page asked for a full disclosure of county dealings with
the imaging company, and depicted three monkeys at the top of the
screen. The three monkeys were shown covering either mouth, eyes or
ears, and the words Executive Session: makes us all out to be monkeys
was printed across the bottom of the photograph.

While no damage was apparently done to the countys computer system,
and the prank was quickly repaired, Commissioner Dennis Damon said
Monday that he is disturbed by the action and that if a hacker can be
identified, he will seek to have the person prosecuted.

Bob Way, a spokesman for the Maine Attorney Generals Office, said
computer crimes committed in Maine may be prosecuted under the states
computer privacy law. The extent of penalties, he said, depends on the
damage caused by the violation.

A person who hacks into another computer but doesnt copy protected
information or cause permanent damage to the computer would likely be
charged with violating the computer privacy law, a misdemeanor. That
charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison and
possible fines.

Should the hacker steal sensitive information or damage the host
computer, Way said, the person could be charged with aggravated
invasion of computer privacy. That charge, a felony, carries a maximum
sentence of five years in prison, fines and restitution.

Hacking is the word used to describe computer users who force their
way into other computers. Hackers may enter a host computer through a
variety of ways. They can hide from detection by networking through a
number of other computers and sending commands to the victim computer
points in the network.

Damon said Monday that he has just begun to look into the matter and
that nobody has been identified as the culprit. While Damon said
issues relating to the Internet are sometimes difficult to understand,
he is committed to finding out who is responsible.

Im in a new area here, but it seems to me like this is hacking, Damon
said Monday. He has yet to turn the matter over to police for
investigation.

Hancock County contracted with MacImage of Maine to produce digital
copies of county deeds for use in the Registry of Deeds and on the
Internet.

The county pays the three-year contract, which costs $165,000. At some
point, the county plans to start charging a fee for use. The county
would then get back part of the fee if the site is profitable.

MacImage now provides the images to Internet users for free. More than
1.6 million documents are available at MacImages Web site,
www.registryofdeeds.com.

John Simpson, owner of MacImage, said Monday that he had received a
number of e-mail messages from customers trying to gain access to the
registrys Web page on Thursday, but were finding the monkey page.

Simpson said the Web site was fixed before he had a chance to view the
offending page.

Kelly Bellis, a local surveyor and frequent user of the registry, has
balked at Hancock Countys dealings with Simpsons company. He has
contended that the county is merely a guardian of the deeds stored in
the registry and that it therefore had no right to create digital
copies of them without authority of the voters.

Bellis said a reporters call to him Monday was the first he had heard
about the hacking incident.

Bellis said that he created the Web page with the monkeys and that he
also included a series of documents on the site detailing his
position.

The Web site has existed in various forms for many months and has
tracked the countys dealings with MacImage during that time. His site
is at www.gwi.net/surveyor/Registry.

Bellis said Monday that he hadnt been notified of the presence of his
Web page on the countys server, and he added that anyone who was aware
of his Web address could have placed it there as part of a prank.

Im sure that its just an inadvertent oversight, Bellis said. It could
have been accidental.

Bellis also contended that the MacImage Web page is prone to frequent
disruptions and that someone trying to gain access to the site through
a search engine could have made his or her way to the monkey page by
mistake.

If, for example, you at this time sit down and go to a search engine,
Bellis said, and you type in Hancock County Registry of Deeds, you
will get a link to my Web site dealing with the Registry of Deeds. And
thats because Ive registered it with search engines.

Of particular concern to Bellis is a provision in the agreement with
MacImage that gives the company ownership of the digital copies of the
deeds and thus the right to charge a fee for access to them via the
Internet.

Search engines index many Web pages by their themes and keywords.
Internet users can then enter key word or phrase to find a list of
matching Web sites. For example, a person looking for a recipe for
apple pie might search for apple pie recipes on one of these sites.

Lori Roberts, who works in the Ellsworth assessors office, was one of
the first people to discover the monkey page and reported it to county
officials.

Roberts said she has used the site extensively with her work, but that
Thursday was the first time she had ever encountered the problem.

I said, Oh my God, Im having monkeys appear on it! Roberts said.

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