Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 73

A spy breaks into a computer at the Liberal Party's headquarters and reads the party's top-secret election strategy, which he may want to pa.s.s on to the Labor Party. He doesn't insert or delete any data in the process, or view any commercial information. The penalty under this legislation? A maximum of six months in prison.

That same spy decides he wants to get rich quick. Using the local telephone system, he hacks into a bank's computer with the intention of defrauding the financial inst.i.tution. He doesn't view any commercial or personal information, or delete or insert any files. Yet the information he reviews--about the layout of a bank building, or how to set off its fire alarm or sprinkler system--proves vital in his plan to defraud the bank. His penalty: a maximum of two years prison.

Our spy now moves onto bigger and better things. He penetrates a Department of Defence computer with the intention of obtaining information about Australia's military strategies and pa.s.sing it on to the Malaysians. Again, he doesn't delete or insert any data--he just reads every sensitive planning doc.u.ment he can find. Under the federal anti-hacking laws, the maximum penalty he would receive would also be two years prison.

Meanwhile, a look-see hacker breaks into a university computer without doing any damage. He doesn't delete any files. He FTPs a public-domain file from another system and quietly tucks it away in a hidden, unused corner of the university machine. Maybe he writes a message to someone else on-line. If caught, the law, as interpreted by the AFP and the DPP, says he faces up to ten years in prison. The reason? He has inserted or deleted data.

Although the spy hacker might also face other charges--such as treason--this exercise ill.u.s.trates some of the problems with the current computer crime legislation.

The letter of the law says that our look-see hacker might face a prison term five times greater than the bank fraud criminal or the military spy, and twenty times greater than the anti-Liberal Party subversive, if he inserts or deletes any data. The law, as interpreted by the AFP, says that the look-see hacking described above should have the same maximum ten-year prison penalty as judicial corruption. It's a weird mental image--the corrupt judge and the look-see hacker sharing a prison cell.

Although the law-makers may not have fully understood the technological aspects of hacking when they introduced the computer crimes legislation, their intent seems clear. They were trying to differentiate between a malicious hacker and a look-see hacker, but they could have worded it better.

As it's worded, the legislation puts malicious, destructive hacking on a par with look-see hacking by saying that anyone who destroys, erases, alters or inserts data via a carrier faces a prison term, regardless of the person's intent. There is no gradation in the law between mere deletion of data and 'aggravated deletion'--the maximum penalty is ten years for both. The AFP has taken advantage of this lack of distinction, and the result has been a steady stream of look-see hackers being charged with the most serious computer crime offences.

Parliament makes the laws. Government inst.i.tutions such as the AFP, the DPP and the courts interpret and apply those laws. The AFP and to some extent the DPP have applied the strict letter of the law correctly in most of the hacking cases described in this book. They have, however, missed the intention of the law. Change the law and they may behave differently. Make look-see hacking a minor offence and the inst.i.tutions will stop going after the soft targets and hopefully spend more time on the real criminals.

I have seen some of these hackers up close, studied them for two years and learned a bit about what makes them tick. In many ways, they are quintessentially Australian, always questioning authority and rebelling against 'the establishment'. They're smart--in some cases very smart. A few might even be cla.s.sified as technical geniuses.

They're mischievous, but also very enterprising. They're rebels, public nuisances and dreamers.

Most of all, they know how to think outside the box.

This is not a flaw. Often, it is a very valuable trait--and one which pushes society forward into new frontiers. The question shouldn't be whether we want to crush it but how we should steer it in a different direction.

END

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Underground -- Glossary and Abbreviations.

AARNET Australian Academic Research Network

ACARB Australian Computer Abuse Research Bureau, once called CITCARB

AFP Australian Federal Police

Altos West German chat system and hacker hang-out, connected to X.25 network and run by Altos Computer Systems, Hamburg

ANU Australian National University

ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation

Backdoor A program or modification providing secret access to a computer system, installed by a hacker to bypa.s.s normal security. Also used as a verb

BBS Bulletin Board System

BNL Brookhaven National Laboratory (US)

BRL Ballistics Research Laboratory (US)

BT British Telecom

CCITT Committee Consultatif Internationale Telegraph et Telephonie: Swiss telecommunications standards body (now defunct; see ITU)

CCS Computer Crime Squad

CCU Computer Crimes Unit (Australian Federal Police)

CERT Computer Emergency Response Team

CIAC Computer Incident Advisory Capability: DOE's computer security team

CITCARB Chisholm Inst.i.tute of Technology Computer Abuse Research Bureau (now defunct. See ACARB)

COBE Cosmic Background Explorer project: a NASA research project

DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US)

DCL Digital Command Language, a computer programming language used on VMS computers

DDN Defense Data Network

DEC Digital Equipment Corporation

DECNET A network protocol used to convey information between (primarily) VAX/VMS machines

DEFCON (a) Defense Readiness Conditions, a system of progressive alert postures in the US; (b) the name of Force's computer program which automatically mapped out computer networks and scanned for accounts

DES Data Encryption Standard, an encryption algorithm developed by IBM, NSA and NIST

Deszip Fast DES Unix pa.s.sword-cracking system developed by Matthew Bishop

Dial-up Modem access point into a computer or computer network

DMS-100 Computerised telephone switch (exchange) made by NorTel

DOD Department of Defense (US)

DOE Department of Energy (US)

DPP Director of Public Prosecutions

DST Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire-- French secret service agency

EASYNET Digital Equipment Corporation's internal communication network (DECNET)

GTN Global Telecommunications Network: Citibank's international data network