____________________________________________________________ GUIDE TO (mostly) HARMLESS HACKING Computer Crime Law Issue #1 By Peter Thiruselvam and Carolyn Meinel ____________________________________________________________ Tired of reading all those “You could go to jail” notes in these guides? Who says those things are crimes? Well, now you can get the first in a series of Guides to the gory details of exactly what laws we’re trying to keep you from accidentally breaking, and who will bust you if you go ahead with the crime anyhow. This Guide covers the two most important US Federal computer crime statutes: 18 USC, Chapter 47, Section 1029, and Section 1030, known as the “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.” Now these are not the *only* computer crime laws. It’s just that these are the two most important laws used in US Federal Courts to put computer criminals behind bars. COMPUTER CRIMES: HOW COMMON? HOW OFTEN ARE THEY REPORTED? The FBI’s national Computer Crimes Squad estimates that between 85 and 97 percent of computer intrusions are not even detected. In a recent test sponsored by the Department of Defense, the statistics were startling. Attempts were made to attack a total of 8932 systems participating in the test. 7860 of those systems were successfully penetrated. The management of only 390 of those 7860 systems detected the attacks, and only 19 of the managers reported the attacks (Richard Power, -Current and Future Danger: A CSI Primer on Computer Crime and Information Warfare_, Computer Security Institute, 1995.) The reason so few attacks were reported was “mainly because organizations frequently fear their employees, clients, and stockholders will lose faith in them if they admit that their computers have been attacked.” Besides, of the computer crimes that *are* reported, few are ever solved. SO, ARE HACKERS A BIG CAUSE OF COMPUTER DISASTERS? According to the Computer Security Institute, these are the types of computer crime and other losses: · Human errors - 55% · Physical security problems - 20%(e.g., natural disasters, power problems) · Insider attacks conducted for the purpose of profiting from computer crime - 10% · Disgruntled employees seeking revenge - 9% · Viruses - 4% · Outsider attacks - 1-3% So when you consider that many of the outsider attacks come from professional computer criminals -- many of whom are employees of the competitors of the victims, hackers are responsible for almost no damage at all to computers. In fact, on the average, it has been our experience that hackers do far more good than harm. Yes, we are saying that the recreational hacker who just likes to play around with other people’s computers is not the guy to be afraid of. It’s far more likely to be some guy in a suit who is an employee of his victim. But you would never know it from the media, would you? OVERVIEW OF US FEDERAL LAWS In general, a computer crime breaks federal laws when it falls into one of these categories: · It involves the theft or compromise of national defense, foreign relations, atomic energy, or other restricted information. · It involves a computer owned by a U.S. government department or agency. · It involves a bank or most other types of financial institutions. · It involves interstate or foreign communications. · it involves people or computers in other states or countries. Of these offenses, the FBI ordinarily has jurisdiction over cases involving national security, terrorism, banking, and organized crime. The U.S. Secret Service has jurisdiction whenever the Treasury Department is victimized or whenever computers are attacked that are not under FBI or U.S. Secret Service jurisdiction (e.g., in cases of password or access code theft). In certain federal cases, the customs Department, the Commerce Department, or a military organization, such as the Air Force Office of Investigations, may have jurisdiction. In the United States, a number of federal laws protect against attacks on computers, misuse of passwords, electronic invasions of privacy, and other transgressions. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 is the main piece of legislation that governs most common computer crimes, although many other laws may be used to prosecute different types of computer crime. The act amended Title 18 United States Code §1030. It also complemented the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which outlawed the unauthorized interception of digital communications and had just recently been passed. The Computer Abuse Amendments Act of 1994 expanded the 1986 Act to address the transmission of viruses and other harmful code. In addition to federal laws, most of the states have adopted their own computer crime laws. A number of countries outside the United States have also passed legislation defining and prohibiting computer crime. THE BIG NO NO’S -- THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT FEDERAL CRIME LAWS As mentioned above, the two most important US federal computer crime laws are 18 USC: Chapter 47, Sections 1029 and 1030. SECTION 1029 Section 1029 prohibits fraud and related activity that is made possible by counterfeit access devices such as PINs, credit cards, account numbers, and various types of electronic identifiers. The nine areas of criminal activity covered by Section 1029 are listed below. All *require* that the offense involved interstate or foreign commerce. 1. Producing, using, or trafficking in counterfeit access devices. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) Penalty: Fine of $50,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 15 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 2. Using or obtaining unauthorized access devices to obtain anything of value totaling $1000 or more during a one-year period. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) Penalty: Fine of $10,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 10 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 3. Possessing 15 or more counterfeit or unauthorized access devices. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) Penalty: Fine of $10,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 10 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 4. Producing, trafficking in, or having device-making equipment. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) Penalty: Fine of $50,000 or twice the value of the of the crime and/or up to 15 years in prison, $1,000,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 5. Effecting transactions with access devices issued to another person in order to receive payment or anything of value totaling $1000 or more during a one-year period. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) Penalty: Fine of 10, or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 10 years in prison, 100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 6. Soliciting a person for the purpose of offering an access device or selling information that can be used to obtain an access device. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud, and without the authorization of the issuer of the access device.) Penalty: Fine of $50,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 15 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 7. Using, producing, trafficking in, or having a telecommunications instruments that has been modified or altered to obtain unauthorized use of telecommunications services. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) This would cover use of “Red Boxes,” “Blue Boxes” (yes, they still work on some telephone networks) and cloned cell phones when the legitimate owner of the phone you have cloned has not agreed to it being cloned. Penalty: Fine of $50,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 15 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 8. Using, producing, trafficking in, or having a scanning receiver or hardware or software used to alter or modify telecommunications instruments to obtain unauthorized access to telecommunications services. This outlaws the scanners that people so commonly use to snoop on cell phone calls. We just had a big scandal when the news media got a hold of an intercepted cell phone call from Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Penalty: Fine of $50,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 15 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. 9. Causing or arranging for a person to present, to a credit card system member or its agent for payment, records of transactions made by an access device.(The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud, and without the authorization of the credit card system member or its agent. Penalty: Fine of $10,000 or twice the value of the crime and/or up to 10 years in prison, $100,000 and/or up to 20 years if repeat offense. SECTION 1030 18 USC, Chapter 47, Section 1030, enacted as part of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, prohibits unauthorized or fraudulent access to government computers, and establishes penalties for such access. This act is one of the few pieces of federal legislation solely concerned with computers. Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI explicitly have been given jurisdiction to investigate the offenses defined under this act. The six areas of criminal activity covered by Section 1030 are: 1. Acquiring national defense, foreign relations, or restricted atomic energy information with the intent or reason to believe that the information can be used to injure the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation. (The offense must be committed knowingly by accessing a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access.) 2. Obtaining information in a financial record of a financial institution or a card issuer, or information on a consumer in a file of a consumer reporting agency. (The offense must be committed intentionally by accessing a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access.) Important note: recently on the dc-stuff hackers’ list a fellow whose name we shall not repeat claimed to have “hacked TRW” to get a report on someone which he posted to the list. We hope this fellow was lying and simply paid the fee to purchase the report. Penalty: Fine and/or up to 1 year in prison, up to 10 years if repeat offense. 3. Affecting a computer exclusively for the use of a U.S. government department or agency or, if it is not exclusive, one used for the government where the offense adversely affects the use of the government’s operation of the computer. (The offense must be committed intentionally by accessing a computer without authorization.) This could apply to syn flood and killer ping as well as other denial of service attacks, as well as breaking into a computer and messing around. Please remember to tiptoe around computers with .mil or .gov domain names! Penalty: Fine and/or up to 1 year in prison, up to 10 years if repeat offense. 4. Furthering a fraud by accessing a federal interest computer and obtaining anything of value, unless the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer. (The offense must be committed knowingly, with intent to defraud, and without authorization or exceeding authorization.)[The government’s view of “federal interest computer” is defined below] Watch out! Even if you download copies of programs just to study them, this law means if the owner of the program says, “Yeah, I’d say it’s worth a million dollars,” you’re in deep trouble. Penalty: Fine and/or up to 5 years in prison, up to 10 years if repeat offense. 5. Through use of a computer used in interstate commerce, knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a computer system. There are two separate scenarios: a. In this scenario, (I) the person causing the transmission intends it to damage the computer or deny use to it; and (ii) the transmission occurs without the authorization of the computer owners or operators, and causes $1000 or more in loss or damage, or modifies or impairs, or potentially modifies or impairs, a medical treatment or examination. The most common way someone gets into trouble with this part of the law is when trying to cover tracks after breaking into a computer. While editing or, worse yet, erasing various files, the intruder may accidentally erase something important. Or some command he or she gives may accidentally mess things up. Yeah, just try to prove it was an accident. Just ask any systems administrator about giving commands as root. Even when you know a computer like the back of your hand it is too easy to mess up. A simple email bomb attack, “killer ping,” flood ping, syn flood, and those huge numbers of Windows NT exploits where sending simple commands to many of its ports causes a crash could also break this law. So even if you are a newbie hacker, some of the simplest exploits can land you in deep crap! Penalty with intent to harm: Fine and/or up to 5 years in prison, up to 10 years if repeat offense. b. In this scenario, (I) the person causing the transmission does not intend the damage but operates with reckless disregard of the risk that the transmission will cause damage to the computer owners or operators, and causes $1000 or more in loss or damage, or modifies or impairs, or potentially modifies or impairs, a medical treatment or examination. This means that even if you can prove you harmed the computer by accident, you still may go to prison. Penalty for acting with reckless disregard: Fine and/or up to 1 year in prison. 6. Furthering a fraud by trafficking in passwords or similar information which will allow a computer to be accessed without authorization, if the trafficking affects interstate or foreign commerce or if the computer affected is used by or for the government. (The offense must be committed knowingly and with intent to defraud.) A common way to break this part of the law comes from the desire to boast. When one hacker finds a way to slip into another person’s computer, it can be really tempting to give out a password to someone else. Pretty soon dozens of clueless newbies are carelessly messing around the victim computer. They also boast. Before you know it you are in deep crud. Penalty: Fine and/or up to 1 year in prison, up to 10 years if repeat offense. Re: #4 Section 1030 defines a federal interest computer as follows: 1. A computer that is exclusively for use of a financial institution[defined below] or the U.S. government or, if it is not exclusive, one used for a financial institution or the U.S. government where the offense adversely affects the use of the financial institution’s or government’s operation of the computer; or 2. A computer that is one of two or more computers used to commit the offense, not all of which are located in the same state. This section defines a financial institution as follows: 1. An institution with deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation(FDIC). 2. The Federal Reserve or a member of the Federal Reserve, including any Federal Reserve Bank. 3. A credit union with accounts insured by the National Credit Union Administration. 4. A member of the federal home loan bank system and any home loan bank. 5. Any institution of the Farm Credit system under the Farm Credit Act of 1971. 6. A broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) within the rules of section 15 of the SEC Act of 1934. 7. The Securities Investors Protection Corporation. 8. A branch or agency of a foreign bank (as defined in the International Banking Act of 1978). 9. An organization operating under section 25 or 25(a) of the Federal Reserve Act. WHO’S IN CHARGE OF BUSTING THE CRACKER WHO GETS A BIT FROGGY REGARDING SECTION 1030? (FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation, USSS for US Secret Service) Section of Law Type of Information Jurisdiction 1030(a)(1) National Security FBI USSS JOINT National defense X 1030(a)(2) Foreign relations X Restricted atomic energy X 1030(a)(2) Financial or consumer Financial records of X banks, other financial institutions Financial records of card issuers X Information on consumers in files of a consumer reporting agency X Non-bank financial institutions X 1030(a)(3) Government computers National defense X Foreign relations X Restricted data X White House X All other government computers X 1030(a)(4) Federal interest computers: Intent to defraud X 1030(a)(5)(A) Transmission of programs, commands: Intent to damage or deny use X 1030(a)(5)(B) Transmission off programs, commands: Reckless disregard X 1030 (a)(6) Trafficking in passwords: Interstate or foreign commerce X Computers used by or for the government X Regarding 1030 (a)(2): The FBI has jurisdiction over bank fraud violations, which include categories (1) through (5) in the list of financial institutions defined above. The Secret Service and FBI share joint jurisdiction over non-bank financial institutions defined in categories (6) and (7) in the list of financial institutions defined above. Regarding 1030(a)(3) Government Computers: The FBI is the primary investigative agency for violations of this section when it involves national defense. Information pertaining to foreign relations, and other restricted data. Unauthorized access to other information in government computers falls under the primary jurisdiction of the Secret Service. MORAL: CONFUCIUS SAY: “CRACKER WHO GETS BUSTED DOING ONE OF THESE CRIMES, WILL SPEND LONG TIME IN JAILHOUSE SOUP.” This information was swiped from _Computer Crime: A Crimefighter’s Handbook_ (Icove, Seger & VonStorch. O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.) _________________________________________________________ Want to see back issues of Guide to (mostly) Harmless Hacking? See either http://www.tacd.com/zines/gtmhh/ or http://ra.nilenet.com/~mjl/hacks/codez.htm. Or get complete archives of our Happy Hacker list digests at http://www.infowar.com under the “Hackers” forum. Subscribe to our email list by emailing to hacker@techbroker.com with message "subscribe". Want to share some kewl stuph with the Happy Hacker list? Correct mistakes? Send your messages to hacker@techbroker.com. To send me confidential email (please, no discussions of illegal activities) use cmeinel@techbroker.com and be sure to state in your message that you want me to keep this confidential. If you wish your message posted anonymously, please say so! Please direct flames to dev/null@techbroker.com. Happy hacking! Copyright 1997 Carolyn P. Meinel. You may forward or post on your Web site this GUIDE TO (mostly) HARMLESS HACKING as long as you leave this notice at the end.. ________________________________________________________ Carolyn Meinel M/B Research -- The Technology Brokers