Hiring hacker backfires on Murdoch

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid54179

Lauren Chambliss in New York 
14 October 2002 

BY THE mid-1990s, when still in his twenties, computer hacker 
Christopher Tarnovsky already had the cyber equivalent of a PhD, a 
skill for pirating satellite technology and the nickname to match - 
the Big Gun. 

Now 31, Tarnovsky, has emerged as a central figure in a civil lawsuit 
and a US Justice Department investigation in California, where the 
murky world of corporate espionage is attracting authorities' 
attention and turning into a public relations and legal nightmare for 
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. 

News offshoot NDS, one of the satellite industry's top anti-piracy 
firms, hired Tarnovsky in 1997. Technology companies often lure 
talented hackers to help them build security-proof systems, figuring 
what better way to keep out thieves than to use their expertise to 
erect a more secure system. But employing the Big Gun has backfired on 
NDS, which last week received 31 subpoenas from the US Justice 
Department. 

While working at NDS, Tarnovsky was known as Mike Smith, maintaining a 
fake identity so that he could frequent hacker hotbeds without 
revealing his cross-over into the corporate world. The Justice 
Department is investigating whether there is merit to allegations by 
Vivendi Universal and Echo-Star Communications - two of the biggest 
satellite dish providers - that Tarnovsky did not end his pirating 
ways after being hired. 

NDS's rivals claim Tarnovsky continued to filter information to 
websites frequented by cyber hackers, enabling TV thieves to create 
false smart cards and, ultimately, to access pay TV free. 

Over the years, a flood of counterfeit smart cards robbed Canal Plus 
of more than $1bn and eventually helped cost former chief executive 
Jean-Marie Messier his job. Canal Plus was among Vivendi's 
under-performing units that caused the board to lose confidence in 
Messier. 

Vivendi recently pulled out of a civil suit filed against NDS after 
News agreed to buy a major stake in Vivendi's Italian pay TV unit. But 
the Justice Department continues to investigate NDS, led by chief 
executive Abraham Peled, and Tarnovsky. 

The corporate spy received his early training in computer technology 
courtesy of the US Army, where he had top-secret clearance as a 
satellite communications specialist in the mid-1990s while posted in 
Germany. At the time, Germany was well known as a haven for hacker 
activity through the Kaos Computer Club. 

Although Tarnovsky has never been charged with a crime, before 
secretly joining NDS he was thought to have been a programmer for a 
Canadian counterfeiter Ron Ereiser, who openly sold bogus smart cards 
that allowed users to bypass satellite TV providers and access the 
service for nothing. 

NDS is standing by its man, supplying him with an attorney and 
insisting his only job has been to make their newest smart cards 
resistant to cyber attack. In a Press release, NDS said the charges 
were 'baseless and motivated by a desire on the part of certain 
persons and entities to cause harm to NDS and to thwart legitimate 
competition'. 



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