HT >> (Hacker Topic) Computer seized from Portland-area home

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Computer seized from Portland-area home

Tuesday, February 15, 2000

By The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A Portland-area computer used in last week's hacker assaults on popular Web sites has been seized by federal investigators, law officials said today.

The FBI is analyzing that computer, which was seized within the last two days from a home business, a federal official in Washington said, requesting anonymity.

The owner of the computer apparently was not aware it was used as a middleman, or "zombie," in the attacks, said the federal official.

Hillsboro Police Sgt. Allen Zaugg, head of a group of officers trained for high-tech cases, also said that federal officials had seized a computer.

Portland-based FBI spokesman Gordon Compton declined to comment.

Two FBI agents on Zaugg's team have been involved in the investigation.

"The really really good hackers are not going to get caught, or at least not get caught right away. We usually catch what's called the ankle biters or the ones that are not very smart," said Roger Bush, a member of Zaugg's Silicon Forest High-Tech Crime Team, based in Hillsboro.

Meanwhile, the FBI was seeking to interview several hackers known by their Internet screen names, including one that calls himself "mafiaboy" and another who calls himself "coolio," a Justice Department official, seeking anonymity, said.

The Portland-area computer was used in the hacker assaults on Web sites run by Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, CNN and eTrade along with a computer and an Internet device at two California universities.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Portland has confirmed that federal law officials are pursuing leads in Oregon in connection with the hacker attacks.

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-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000

Answers

www.oregonli ve.com/news/00/02/st021528.html

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000.

Can someone provide the thread on the whistleblower (software engineer) who acted as consultant in suit involving major computer corps who "substituted" hard and software in equipment? I think it was posted as OT around the middle of last month.

Now, re the above posting: I picked up on some information that my shop's pc's had been cannibalized and reconfigured prior to delivery to interact normally with current NT. This was last year. The truly bizarre angle to the rumor was the involvement of foreign techs- allegedly imported to complete the configuration. Subsequent events lent some substantiation to the original allegation.

If this was not an isolated incident(and is in fact true) then there may be some pretty heavy entities out there who acted unwittingly and may still be involved in DoS attacks. The Fed and the crackers have never made any bones about the fact that the problem in containing the DoS attacks will reside in the involvement of the unwitting slaves.

By the way, I searched the threads till my eyes crossed today looking for that post. If anyone can help pleas get me the info-it needs to go chain of command. Sorry about the email address but I'm not totally crazy: if you have the thread, just post back to this thread or new question. I'll be looking and checking. Sysops-do you have it on delete page? Wouldn't bug you but it could be important.

-- needstoknow (don'teventry@myplace.com), February 15, 2000.


top of new answers.

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000.

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