A bluffer's briefing on: hacking

Thursday 18 March 1993 00:02 GMT

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COSTS: Equipment needed to hack, about pounds 200. Estimated annual bill to British business of computer fraud: pounds 1.1bn. Cost to the Financial Times of Mr Bedworth's hacking: pounds 24,871.

TARGETS: Bodies known to have been infiltrated by hackers: Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency; European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer; Uruguayan Army Counter-Intelligence; Oxford University; US Strategic Air Command, Colorado; the Duke of Edinburgh's computer.

DAMAGE: Popular computer viruses which have damaged systems include Michelangelo; Jerusalem; Maltese Amoeba; Frodo.

NAME DROPPING: ARCV, Association of Really Cruel Viruses; NUI, Network User Identifiers; HPVC, Hacking Phreaking Viruses Carding; FAST, Federation against Software Theft.

USEFUL PHRASES: stealth virus (one that is undetectable); promiscuous computer (one that is not fussy whose floppy discs are inserted into it); Trojan horse (lurking virus triggering destruction at later date).

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A bluffer's briefing on: hacking

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