#### PHRACK PRESENTS ISSUE 16 #### ^*^*^*^Phrack World News, Part 1^*^*^*^ **** File 8 of 12 **** >From the 9/16 San Francisco Chronicle, page A19: GERMAN HACKERS BREAK INTO NASA NETWORK (excerpted) Bonn A group of West German computer hobbyists broke into an international computer network of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and rummaged freely among the data for at least three months before they were discovered, computer enthusiasts and network users said yesterday. An organization in Hamburg called the Chaos Computer Club, which claimed to be speaking for an anonymous group that broke into the network, said the illicit users managed to install a "Trojan horse," and gain entry into 135 computers on the European network. A "Trojan Horse" is a term for a permanent program that enables amateur computer enthusiasts [as opposed to professionals?], or "hackers," to use a password to bypass all the security procedures of a system and gain access to all the data in a target computer. [Actually, this type of program is a 'back door' or a 'trap door.' The group may very well have *used* a Trojan horse to enable them to create the back door, but it probably wasn't a Trojan horse per se. A Trojan horse is a program that does something illicit and unknown to the user in addition to its expected task. See Phrack xx-x, "Unix Trojan Horses," for info on how to create a Trojan horse which in turn creates a trap door into someone's account.] The NASA network that was broken into is called the Space Physics Analysis Network [ooh!] and is chiefly designed to provide authorized scientists and organizations with access to NASA data. The security system in the network was supplied by an American company, the Digital Equipment Corp. [Probably DECNET. Serves them right.] Users said the network is widely used by scientists in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Japan and five other countries and does not carry classified information. A Chaos club spokesman, Wau Holland, denied that any data had been changed. This, he said, went against "hacker ethics." West German television reports said that computer piracy carries a penalty of three years in prison in West Germany. The government has not said what it plans to do. The Chaos club clearly views its break-in as a major coup. Holland, reached by telephone in Hamburg, said it was "the most successful running of a Trojan horse" to his knowledge, and the club sent a lengthy telex message to news organizations. It said the "Trojan horse" was spotted by a user in August, and the infiltrating group then decided to go public because "they feared that they had entered the dangerous field of industry espionage, economic crime, East- West conflict...and the legitimate security interests of high-tech institutions." The weekly magazine Stern carried an interview with several anonymous hobbyists who showed how they gained access to the network. One described his excitement when for the first time he saw on his screen, "Welcome to the NASA headquarters VAX installation." According to Chaos, the hobbyists discovered a gap in the Digital VAX systems 4.4 and 4.5 and used it to install their "Trojan Horse." [Excerpted and Typed by Shooting Shark. Comments by same.]