High-Tech ‘Pirates’ : Abuse Hits Computer Networking

From Long Island, an electronic bulletin board is open to computer users who want to share opinions about American foreign policy in Central America. Gay activists around the country can exchange information over several electronic networks in San Francisco. And a Texas-based white supremacist group that claims computer technology is “Aryan technology” uses a computer network to disseminate racist hate propaganda.

These invisible networks, blending computer technology with the free speech tradition of 18th-Century pamphleteering, represent America’s newest communications forums.

Anyone with a computer equipped to send or receive messages over a telephone line can participate. An electronic bulletin board is simply a computer that can answer telephones and exchange messages with other computers.

1,500 Boards in Use

Industry experts estimate that there are more than 1,500 computer bulletin boards operated out of offices and homes across America, serving a potential audience of about 1 million computer users equipped with telephone connectors called modems.

Doctors, business executives, engineers, Vietnam veterans and teen-agers are among the growing numbers of bulletin board users sharing information or opinions via computer on subjects ranging from famine in Africa, tax law changes or the nuclear freeze movement to science, software or sports.

But computer bulletin boards also are being used to exchange stolen credit card numbers, to organize illicit sex rings and to offer advice on how to assemble bombs or break into the data banks of credit bureaus, schools or government agencies.

7 Teen-Agers Arrested

Earlier this month, for example, New Jersey police arrested seven teen-agers and closed down a bulletin board that published false credit card numbers, details on how to assemble a pipe bomb and private telephone numbers to computer systems in the Pentagon, a credit agency and a medical library.

Two teen-agers in Monterey were arrested and their computers seized last April after they posted extortion demands on an Encino bulletin board.

This is a corner of the high-tech underworld, the world of “pirate” bulletin boards where law enforcement investigators increasingly are finding clues to such criminal activities as fraud and vandalism.

“I guess it’s like with anything else--there’s always going to be someone who abuses a good thing,” Paul Zurkowski, president of the Information Industry Assn. in Washington, said.

Corporations that have been victims of computer criminals--among them TRW Inc., which operates a nationwide credit bureau out of Orange County, and MCI Communications Corp., the long distance telephone service in Washington--now monitor scores of underground bulletin boards daily.

In a typical investigation last April, an undercover “hacker” at TRW spent several days “lurking” in two New York-based bulletin boards--named Sherwood Forest II and III--where the agent found a published appeal for credit cards with credit limits of $5,000 to $25,000. The message offered to pay cash or trade Commodore computer software.

A response came three days later when another bulletin board patron using the code name “Circuit Breaker” left a message that he had some credit card account numbers to trade. During that same period other Sherwood Forest patrons published a stolen telephone credit card number, solicited help to gain unauthorized entry to an insurance company computer and requested information on how to make a bomb.

TRW notified authorities, and Secret Service agents subsequently seized about $25,000 in computers from two upstate New York teen-agers. They face federal wire fraud charges.

Monitoring Efforts Pay Off

In recent months, numerous arrests and confiscated computers have resulted from the bulletin board monitoring programs of corporations and law enforcement agencies. Roger A. Braham, TRW’s security assurance supervisor, estimates that at least 26 pirate bulletin boards have been closed down in the last year, about half as a direct response to TRW-initiated investigations.

Cats Den, a Boston-area bulletin board, was shut down in February after a TRW agent came upon published plans of a 14-year-old computer user to attempt to sabotage the credit of another teenager’s parents. (TRW denied that sabotage was possible.)

Dragon Fire, the popular bulletin board of a well-to-do teen-ager in Gainesville, Tex., was taken off-line in May after TRW found telephone credit card numbers published as well as messages indicating that users in Massachusetts planned to vandalize a high school there.

And Farmers of Doom, a Denver-area bulletin board that routed its incoming calls through a suburban public phone booth to foil any tracing attempts, was closed in May based on a tip from TRW agents.

‘They’re Being Watched’

“We want them to know they’re being watched,” Braham, a retired Orange city police investigator, said.

The stepped-up campaign to intercept illegal computer activity prompted one hacker--calling himself “Doctor Who”--to warn in a recent electronic bulletin board message to fellow hackers: “This is war!! Stay . . . away from TRW until it kools (sic) down.”

In California, legislation is pending that would make it unlawful to publish, on a computer network, anyone’s unlisted phone number, credit card numbers or computer access codes without their approval. Bulletin board operators who fail to remove such private information after notification also would be liable in the bill sponsored by State Sen. John Doolittle (R-Citrus Heights).

“Bulletin boards are great. We’d like to encourage their use, but we’re concerned about the abuse of privacy,” Ted Blanchard, legislative consultant to Doolittle, said. “Everyone needs to understand the rules.”

Originated in Chicago

The nation’s first electronic bulletin board is believed to have originated in Chicago where two computer buffs set up a home-grown system on Feb. 16, 1978--still in the early days of the personal computer revolution.

At first, they were the venue primarily of computer hobbyists who used the message system to send out calls for assistance to solve technical problems. Rapidly, their potential was recognized by national organizations and professional groups such as doctors and engineers who set up computer networks to organize conventions, exchange technical papers and share a variety of communications.

Today electronic bulletin board networks are operated by such widely disparate groups and individuals as the Ku Klux Klan, an alleged prostitution ring in Florida, scientists working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and local police agencies in Arizona.

Almost anyone with a personal computer can set up his own electronic bulletin board with investments in readily available electronics gear for as little as $2,000.

“All you need is a cheap computer, the right software and a modem (that hooks your computer to your telephone) and you’re a bulletin board,” Everick Bowens, director of security for MCI and president of the newly formed Communications Fraud Control Assn., said.

Most Networks Are Small

While most bulletin board networks are small, many are operated by large companies such as CompuServe, Dialog and The Source--each of them major data base providers--who monitor users of their bulletin boards.

MCI routinely monitors bulletin boards to see if its long distance access codes--popular among youths who call themselves “phreakers”--are being distributed illegally.

Bowens said that the enforcement effort has been largely effective, but one side effect of success is that operators of pirate bulletin boards have become more sophisticated and, therefore, more difficult to investigate.

“A lot of these phreaks have gone deep underground,” he said, noting that elaborate security measures are being taken by some bulletin board system operators--measures that include extensive security checks or demand for referrals from trusted hackers and phreakers.

“We’ve got to educate these people and their parents--and most of the phreakers are teen-agers--that what they’re doing is wrong,” Bowens said. “They’ve got to understand that they are violating the rights of others and that it’s not acceptable.”

Zurkowski said that the information industry supports tougher legislation as well.

“If the information age is going to work to benefit all of us, we have to have mutual respect for the privacy and the information products of others,” the industry spokesman said. “Government has to say in no uncertain terms that violations are illegal.”