Hackers raided Russia's gas monoploy

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Hackers raided Russia's gas monoploy, officials say

MOSCOW (April 26, 2000 7:27 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Russian authorities say Gazprom, a huge state-run gas monopoly, was one of a growing number of targets hit by computer hackers last year.

Acting with a Gazprom insider, hackers were able to get past the company's security and break into the system controlling gas flows in pipelines, Interior Ministry Col. Konstantin Machabeli said, according to the Interfax news agency.

The central switchboard of gas flows was "for some time" under the control of external users, Machabeli said in the report.

He did not say if the hackers caused any damage. Gazprom officials could not be reached for comment.

Gazprom is the world's largest natural gas producer and the largest gas supplier to Western Europe.

Machabeli said the hackers used a "Trojan horse" program, which stashes lines of harmful computer code in a benign-looking program, Interfax said. The report did not identify the hackers or say if anyone had been apprehended.

Including the Gazprom case, police registered 852 cases of computer crime in Russia in 1999, up twelve-fold from the year before, the report said.

http://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,500197283-500270387-501418162-0,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 26, 2000


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