Hacker Journeys Through NASA's Secret World

Hacker journeys through NASAs secret world

It became more like a game... How many systems can you break into?

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

DENVER While tripping through NASAs most sensitive computer files, Ricky Wittman suddenly realized he was in trouble. Big trouble.

He had been scanning the E-Mail, electronic messages sent between two scientists at one of NASA's space centres. they were talking about the computer hacker who had broken into the system. They were talking about Wittman.

Curiosity lapsed into panic.

LO. Log off., the 24-year-old Wittman remembers thinking as he sat alone in his apartment, staring at his computer screen, in May 1990. Hang up the phone. Leave the house.

By then it was too late. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's computer detectives were on the trail. After 400 hours of backtracking phone records, they found the Sandpiper Apartments in Westminster, Colo.

And they found the inconspicuous third-floor apartment where Wittman using an outdated IBM XT computer penetrated the most massive hacking incident in the history of NASA.

Last week a federal judge sentenced Wittman to three years probation and ordered him to undergo psychiatric counselling.

But perhaps the most punishing aspect to Wittman was the judge's order that he not use computers without permission from a probation officer.

That's going to be the toughest part, Wittman said. I've become so dependent on computers. I get the news and weather from a computer.

In his first interview since a federal grand jury indicted him in September, Wittman expressed regret for what he had done.

But he remained oddly nonchalant about having overcome the security safeguards designed by NASA's best computer minds.

I'll level with you. I still think they're bozos, Wittman said. If they had done a halfway competent job, this wouldn't have happened.

Prosecutors didn't buy Wittman's argument.

No software security system is foolproof, wrote assistant U.S. attorney Gregory Graf. If a thief picks the lock on the door of your home is the homeowner responsible because he didn't have a pickproof lock on the front door?

Breaking into the system was just that easy, Wittman said, so much so that it took him a while to realize what he had done.

He had been fooling around inside a public-access NASA computer bulletin-board service in 1986, looking for information on the space shuttle program. He started toying with a malfunction.

The software went blooey and dumped me inside, Wittman said. At first, I didn't know what happened. I pressed the help key. I realized after a while that I was inside.

Somehow, Wittman then 18 had found a way to break out of the bulletin board's menu-driven system and into a restricted-access area full of personal files.

Once past the initial gate, it didn't take Wittman long to find the file of a security manager. Wittman picked up a password for another system, and the romp began.

Then I started looking around, and it became more like a game, he recalled. How many systems can you break into?

By the federal government's Account, Wittman eventually hacked his way into 115 user files on 68 computer systems linked by the Space Physics Analysis Network. His access extended as far as the European Southern Observatory in Munich, Germany.

Given the chance, Wittman could have gone even farther, prosecutors contend. In an interview with the FBI, Wittman told agents he accidentally had come across the log on screen for the U.S. controller of currency. Wittman said he didn't try to crack that password.

The controller of currency is a little out of my league, he said.

from The Gazette, Montreal, March 24, 1992, p. A5