Wardriver pleads guilty in Lowes WiFi hacks

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Wardriver pleads guilty in Lowes WiFi hacks
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:42:10 -0700
From: steelhead-mobile <bill () ries-knight net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>, Steelhead <bill () ries-knight net>


http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8835

 SECURITYFOCUS NEWS

Declan, here is an item pointing out the vulnurability of a
wifi system to hacking, and why they may not be a good idea
for many businesses.

www.securityfocus.com/news/8835


Wardriver pleads guilty in Lowes WiFi hacks

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Jun 4 2004 1:04PM


In a rare wireless hacking conviction, a Michigan man
entered a guilty plea Friday in federal court in Charlotte,
North Carolina for his role in a scheme to steal credit card
numbers from the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores by
taking advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network at a store in
suburban Detroit.

Brian Salcedo, 21, faces an a unusually harsh 12 to 15 year
prison term under federal sentencing guidelines, based
largely on a stipulation that the potential losses in the
scheme exceeded $2.5 million. But Salcedo has agreed to
cooperate with the government in the prosecution of one or
more other suspects, making him eligible for a sentence
below the guideline range.

One of Salcedo's two codefendants, 20-year-old Adam Botbyl,
is scheduled to plead guilty Monday, assistant U.S. attorney
Matthew Martins confirmed. Botbyl faces 41 to 51 months in
prison, but also has a cooperation deal with the
prosecutors, according to court filings. The remaining
defendant, 23-year-old Paul Timmins, is scheduled for
arraignment on June 28th.

In 2000, as a juvenile, Salcedo was one of the first to be
charged under Michigan's state computer crime law, for
allegedly hacking a local ISP.

According to statements provided by Timmins and Botbyl
following their arrest, as recounted in an FBI affidavit
filed in the case, the pair first stumbled across an
unsecured wireless network at the Southfield, Michigan
Lowe's last spring, while "driving around with laptop
computers looking for wireless Internet connections," i.e.,
wardriving. The two said they did nothing malicious with the
network at that time.

It was six months later that Botbyl and his friend Salcedo
hatched a plan to use the network to steal credit card
numbers from the hardware chain, according to the affidavit.

FBI Stakeout
The hackers used the wireless network to route through
Lowe's corporate data center in North Carolina and connect
to the local networks at stores in Kansas, North Carolina,
Kentucky, South Dakota, Florida, and two stores in
California. At two of the stores -- in Long Beach,
California and Gainseville, Florida -- they modified a
proprietary piece of software called "tcpcredit" that Lowe's
uses to process credit card transactions, building in a
virtual wiretap that would store customer's credit card
numbers where the hackers could retrieve them later.

At some point, Lowe's network administrators and security
personnel detected and began monitoring the intrusions, and
called in the FBI. In November, a Bureau surveillance team
staked out the Southfield Lowe's parking lot, and spotted a
white Grand Prix with suspicious antennas and two young men
sitting inside, one of them typing on a laptop from the
passenger seat, according to court documents. The car was
registered to Botbyl.

...
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