Air Force Rome Lab

In March 1994, system administrators at Air Force Rome Lab in New York found their network under attack. The Air Force dispatched two teams to investigate further. The attacks were traced to an ISP (Internet service provider) first in New York, then in Seattle, Washington, where the Internet path dead-ended (the attackers used dial-up lines). There was subsequent monitoring at Rome Lab and two hacker handles or aliases were identified &mdash; Kuji and Datastream Cowboy. Informants were solicited and someone recognized a hacker from the United Kingdom; this hacker had bragged that he had broken into various U.S. military systems. The United States then contacted Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard discovered the hacker was “phreaking” through Columbia and Chile to New York, defrauding telephone companies and the New York ISP as a jumping off point to attack Rome Lab.

The UK hacker was later observed targeting other sites such as NATO headquarters, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At least eight countries were used as conduits for these attacks. Scotland Yard had enough information to issue an arrest warrant and proceeded to make the arrest after data from the South Korean Atomic Research Institution was accessed. In all, over 150 intrusions were monitored at Rome Lab from 100 different points of origin. More than 100 other victims reportedly were hit.

Datastream Cowboy, a 16 year-old British student, pled guilty and was fined. His mentor, Kuji, a 22 year-old Israeli technician, was found not guilty because no laws in Israel applied to this incident.