SATAN Makes a Quiet Debut : No Signs of Rise in Computer Hacking

The controversial program known as SATAN was unleashed on the Internet on Wednesday, sending computer systems administrators rushing to secure their machines and boosting traffic on the global computer web.

The program--Security Administrators Tool for Analyzing Networks--is designed to help network administrators find and patch vulnerabilities that could be exploited by unauthorized users.

But since it is free and easily accessible, anyone with basic computer skills could just as easily use SATAN to find the weaknesses and gain access to commercial, military, educational or government computers that contain sensitive or valuable information.

Several Internet sites reported increased traffic Wednesday, which they attributed to users playing with SATAN. USC’s computer network logged more than double the number of attempts to connect to its computers. The computing services staff downloaded SATAN as soon as it became available, at 7 a.m., and began scanning the university’s 3,000 computers that are connected to the Internet.

“We haven’t seen any major break-ins,” said Jim Pepin, USC executive director for computing services. “But everyone seems to be playing with it.”

Still, the cyber-apocalypse that some had predicted upon SATAN’s release has not materialized--at least not yet.

The Computer Emergency Response Team--the U.S. government-funded agency that responds to incidents of intruder break-ins on the Internet’s computer systems--reported no increase in calls Wednesday. “It’s business as usual,” a CERT spokesman said.