Schoolboy cracker caught by dialling 1471

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2001/6/ns-20991.html

Thu, 15 Feb 2001 11:01:37 GMT
Will Knight

Intruder comes a cropper after making ransom demands

A UK computer security consultant has revealed how he snared a hapless
computer cracker who made blackmail threats to his company.

Rather than tracing him through the latest computer security
technology, he used a rather simpler methood -- the telephone callback
facility.

Stephen Ward, who was a consultant with the UK security startup
Intensiti at the time, says that the hacker tried to gain access to
the company's computer systems last December. The intruder claimed to
have damaging information about the company's security and threaten to
release this if he was not paid a cash ransom. However, says Ward, the
unlucky cracker made the fatal mistake of calling from his own home
and forgetting to disable the callback facility.

"The idiot forgot to dial 141 before calling," he says. "I took his
number down and passed it on to CCU (Computer Crime Unit) who did a
fantastic job. The lad was charged for breaching, I believe, sections
1 and 3 of the Computer Misuses Act."

The 15-year-old cracker was then arrested at school and cautioned by
police. Ward says that he had nevertheless succeeded in crashing email
servers causing 20,000 worth of damage.

Experts from Information Risk Management (IRM), a UK computer security
firm specialising in gathering forensic evidence for computer crime
investigations, confirm that it is not always the most sophisticated
techniques that catch a computer crook. "Occasionally the information
you're after is just siting there on the disk," says Richard Stagg,
senior security architect with IRM. "It's not worth assuming that it's
going to be difficult."

Stagg adds that in this case the hacker was unlikely to be a
professional. "I don't think you would face an enormous danger from
someone trying to extort money from their home phone."

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