VAX Debug 12-Feb-1990 1040 <JNELSON@tle.enet.dec.com> (02/12/90)
The following is extracted from the "Vogon News Service," VNS Computer News
section, edited by Tracy Talcott. VNS enjoys a worldwide readership of over
7800 Digital employees.
Hackers - Accused of scheme against BellSouth. Legion of Doom Group.
Federal grand juries in Chicago and Atlanta indicted four alleged
computer hackers in what authorities called a fraud scheme that could
potentially disrupt emergency "911" telephone service throughout nine
Southern states. The men, alleged to be part of a closely knit cadre
of computer hackers known as the Legion of Doom, gained access to the
computer system controlling telephone emergency service of BellSouth
Corp., the Atlanta-based telecommunications giant.
The Chicago indictment said members of the Legion of Doom are engaged
in disrupting telephone service by entering a telephone company's
computers and changing the routing of telephone calls. The hackers in
the group also fraudulently obtain money from companies by altering
information in their computers, the indictment said.
The hackers transferred stolen telephone-computer information from
BellSouth to what prosecutors termed a "computer bulletin board
system" in Lockport, Ill. In turn, the men planned to publish the
computer data in a hacker's magazine, the grand jury charged.
-Jeff E. Nelson
-Digital Equipment Corporation
-Internet: jnelson@tle.enet.dec.com
-Affiliation given for identification purposes only.
[Moderator's Note: Do you, or do any readers have the names of the
chaps who were indicted? What BBS were they using? PT]MM02885@swtexas.bitnet (02/20/90)
<<< SYS$ANCILLARY:[NOTES$LIBRARY]GENERAL.NOTE;1 >>>
-< General Discussion >-
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Note 155.6 the MENTOR of the tree tops 6 of 6
SWT::RR02026 "Ray Renteria [ F L A T L I N E ] " 89 lines 20-FEB-1990 00:18
-< Life, The Universe, & LOD >-
To set the record straight, a member of LOD who is a student in Austin
and who has had his computer account at UT subpoenaed by the DA out of
Chicago because of dealings with the above happenings:
My name is Chris, but to the computer world, I am Erik Bloodaxe. I
have been a member of the group known as Legion of Doom since its
creation, and admittedly I have not been the most legitimate computer
user around, but when people start hinting at my supposed
Communist-backed actions, and say that I am involved in a world-wide
consipracy to destroy the nations computer and/or 911 network, I have
to speak up and hope that people will take what I have to say
seriously.
Frank, Rob and Adam were all definately into really hairy systems.
They had basically total control of a packet-switched network owned by
Southern Bell (SBDN)...through this network they had access to every
computer Southern Bell owned...this ranging from COSMOS terminals up
to LMOS front ends. Southern Bell had not been smart enough to
disallow connections from one public pad to another, thus allowing
anyone who desired to do so, the ability to connect to, and seize
information from anyone else who was using the network...thus they
ended up with accounts and passwords to a great deal of systems.
This was where the 911 system came into play. I don't know if this
system actually controlled the whole Southern Bell 911 network, or if
it was just a site where the software was being developed, as I was
never on it. In any case, one of the trio ended up pulling files off
of it for them to look at. This is usually standard proceedure: you
get on a system, look around for interesting text, buffer it, and
maybe print it out for posterity. No member of LOD has ever (to my
knowledge) broken into another system and used any information gained
from it for personal gain of any kind...with the exception of maybe a
big boost in his reputation around the underground. Rob took the
documentation to the system and wrote a file about it. There are
actually two files, one is an overview, the other is a glossary. (Ray
has the issue of PHRACK that has the files) The information is hardly
something anyone could possibly gain anything from except knowledge
about how a certain aspect of the telephone company works.
The Legion of Doom used to publish an electronic magazine called the
LOD Technical Journal. This publication was kind of abandoned due to
laziness on our part. PHRACK was another publication of this sort,
sent to several hundred people over the Internet, and distributed
widely on bulletin boards around the US. Rob sent the files to PHRACK
for the information to be read. One of PHRACK's editors, Craig,
happened to be the one who received the files. If Rob had sent the
files to one address higher, Randy would have been the one who would
probably be in trouble. In anycase, Craig, although he may have
suspected, really had no way to know that the files were propriatary
information and were stolen from a Southern Bell computer.
The three Atlanta people were busted after having voice and data taps
on their lines for 6 months. The Phrack people were not busted, only
questioned, and Craig was indicted later.
What I don't understand is why Rob and Craig are singled out more
often than any other people. Both of them were on probation for other
incidents and will probably end up in jail due to probation violations
now. Frank and Adam still don't know what is going on with their
cases, as of the last time I spoke with them.
The whole bust stemmed from another person being raided and rolling
over on the biggest names he could think of to lighten his burden.
Since that time, Mr. William Cook, the DA in Chicago, has made it his
life's goal to rid the world of the scourge of LOD. The three Atlanta
busts, two more LOD busts in New York, and now, my Subpoena.
People just can't seem to grasp the fact that a group of 20 year old
kids just might know a little more than they do, and rather than make
good use of us, they would rather just lock us away and keep on
letting things pass by them. I've said this before, you cant stop
burglars from robbing you when you leave the doors unlocked and merely
bash them in the head with baseball bats when they walk in. You need
to lock the door. But when you leave the doors open, but lock up the
people who can close them for you another burglar will just walk right
in.
If anyone really wants to know anything about what is going on or just
wants to offer any opinions about all this directly to me, I'm
erikb@walt.cc.utexas.edu
but my account is being monitored so don't ask anything too explicit.
->ME
cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (02/28/90)
[Moderator's Note: Carl sends along a copy of a letter he wrote someone. PT] Notice the mention of Jolnet. There were some earlier messages about it being shut down? ----- Forwarded message # 1 [excerpt only]: What has allegedly gone on is Riggs broke into a system containing operating information for the 911 system. He captured this information and prepared a "phile" on it for publication in PHRACK magazine (a phreak/hackers electronic journal published every couple of months). This file was tranferred to Neidorf via an account on Jolnet (a public access net-site in Lockport, Illinois). ----- End of forwarded messages