Government Defense Network Halted by Hacker by Scott Mason, New York City Times
Vaughn Chase, a 17 year old high school student Galbraith High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan was indicted today on charges that he infected the nationwide INTERNET network with a computer virus. This latest attack upon INTERNET is reminiscent of a similar incident launched by Robert Morris of Cornell University in November, 1988.
According to the Computer Emergency Response Team, a DARPA spon- sored group, if Mr. Chase had not left his name in the source code of his virus, there would have been no way to track down the culprit.
A computer virus is a small software program that is secretly put into a computer, generally designed to cause damage. A virus attaches itself to other computer programs secretively. At some time after the parasite virus program is 'glued' into the comput- er, it is reawakened on a specific date or by a particular se- quence of events.
Chase, though, actually infected INTERNET with a Worm. A Worm is a program that copies itself, over and over and over, either filling the computer's memory to capacity or slowing down its operation to a snail's pace. In either case, the results are devastating - effectively, the computer stops working.
Chase, a math wizard according to his high school officials, released the Worm into Internet in early August with a detonation date of September 1, which brought thousands of computers to a grinding halt.
INTERNET ties together tens of thousands of computers from the Government, private industry, universities and defense contrac- tors all over the country. Chase said he learned how to access the unclassified computer network from passwords and keys dis- tributed on computer Bulletin Boards.
Computer security experts worked for 3 days hours to first deter- mine the cause of the network slowdown and then to restore the network to normal operation. It has been estimated that almost $100 Million in damage was caused by Mr. Chase's Worm. Mr. Chase said the Worm was experimental, and was accidentally released into INTERNET when a piece of software he had written malfunc- tioned. He apologized for any inconvenience he caused.
The Attorney General of the State of Michigan is examining the legal aspects of the case and it is expected that Mr. Chase will be tried within in a year. Mr. Chase was released on his own recognizance.
This is Scott Mason wondering why the Pentagon doesn't shoot worms instead of bombs at enemy computers.