Israeli Teenager Questioned in Pentagon Hacking Case

An Israeli teenager accused of infiltrating Pentagon and Israeli computer systems was questioned Wednesday and placed under house arrest, police said.

The suspect, who calls himself “The Analyzer,” and two accomplices, all 18, told police they had not penetrated the systems for personal gain, police spokeswoman Linda Menuhin said. No charges have been brought so far against the three, and Israel did not release their identities.

However, in Washington, the Justice Department identified the arrested hacker as Ehud Tenebaum.

“This arrest should send a message to would-be computer hackers all over the world that the United States will treat computer intrusions as serious crimes,” Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said.

The suspects were questioned for several hours at a police station in Bat Yam, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv, then put under house arrest, Menuhin said. Police confiscated their passports and forbade any contact among them.

“They are all cooperating with the police,” Menuhin said, adding that their parents also had been brought to the station but were not questioned.

She had no details on what Israeli systems were involved, but Channel 2 television identified one as the computer system of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The Analyzer is also suspected of being the mentor of two California teenagers who have been questioned by the FBI in connection with hacking into the Pentagon’s computer system and university research computers.

The Pentagon has said the intrusions appeared to have been aimed at systems that contained unclassified personnel and payroll records. A spokesman described the Israeli hacker’s work as the most organized and systematic attack the Pentagon has seen to date.

The Analyzer and the two teens from Cloverdale, Calif., apparently penetrated computers in February using a weakness that already had been identified by computer security teams.

In an interview with the Internet magazine AntiOnline before a suspect was arrested, The Analyzer said the penetrations were innocent and claimed that he even helped the targets by patching any weaknesses he found.

“Chaos . . . I think it’s a nice idea,” The Analyzer had mused in the interview. “Since I was going to retire, I was going to teach someone of my knowledge and guide him,” he said, claiming to know ways into about 400 Defense Department computer systems.