2 Boys Held in Computer Theft of Phone Codes

Two 17-year-old Hueneme High School students, suspected of computer hacking, were arrested Tuesday for allegedly tapping into the computer network of a long-distance telephone company.

The boys, described as honor students, are believed to have illegally obtained telephone codes to make unauthorized calls, and they may have sold the codes for as much as $200 apiece, police said.

Police don’t know yet the loss to the telephone company, Thrifty Tel Inc. of Garden Grove, but they said it appears to be several thousand dollars.

The company doesn’t know the actual loss yet either, but Thrifty Tel’s security director, Dale Herring, said the boys and their parents may have more to worry about than just the criminal case.

Herring said the company goes after computer hackers through a special tariff approved by the Public Utilities Commission in 1990. In this case, the cost to the parents could run more than $80,000, he said.

The boys, described as friends who live a few blocks apart in south Oxnard, were released to the custody of their parents after police searched their bedrooms and seized two complete computer systems, hundreds of disks, computer programs and manuals. Their names were not released by police because they are juveniles.

“The kids were extremely cooperative,” said Detective Len Newcomb of the Oxnard Police Department. “These are extremely good kids with high grade-point averages.” At one of the homes, a parent told police he believed his son was simply having a good time with the computer, Newcomb said.

The boys would program the computer at night to tap into Thrifty Tel’s computer network and randomly search for numbers that make up an authorized telephone code, similar to a long-distance calling card number, Newcomb said.

By morning the computer might have one customer code number or several, he said. In one night, one of the computers uncovered eight codes, he said. Then these codes were used to make unauthorized calls which were billed to unsuspecting customers.

Newcomb said the boys had obtained 40 codes, but how many were actually used to make unauthorized calls isn’t yet known. Nor has the company tallied up how many minutes of telephone time were used illegally. Also unknown is how many of the calls were ordinary telephone calls and how many were calls to computer bulletin boards where computer buffs communicate with each other.

Newcomb said he believes some of the acquired codes may have been sold to other people.

Executives of the Orange County long-distance company contacted Oxnard police about the suspected computer hacking two weeks ago.

“I caught them. I put the case together,” said Herring who does nothing but try to catch computer hackers who tap into Thrifty Tel’s network. “We’re the most aggressive in Southern California.”

The unauthorized calls usually come to the company’s attention when a customer complains about a bill, he said. Then Herring goes to work. Meanwhile, the company picks up the tab for the unauthorized calls.

He said the vast majority of the hackers he has tracked are juveniles. “Their parents don’t have a clue about computer technology,” he said. The juveniles who are caught usually think that all they have to do is pay for the telephone minutes used, he said.

But Thrifty Tel, like several other phone companies, uses the tariff to recoup losses from hacking and the cost to investigate them. Thrifty’s tariff is $2,880 per day, and in the Oxnard case the use is believed to be more than 30 days, he said.

“Eighty thousand dollars, that’s not unusual,” he said. “I’ve got two families that owe over $100,000.

“I feel sorry for the families to a certain extent,” he said, “but why should my company pay for their kids’ fun and games?”

And if they don’t pay?

“We sue in a heartbeat,” he said.