Young Hacker Penetrates Military, NASA Nets

SAN
FRANCISCO, May 9 – The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a
Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming
instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the
Internet.
       
Now federal
officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that
the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive
operation involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based
in Europe in which thousands of computer systems were similarly
penetrated.
       
Investigators
in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year
pursuing the case involving attacks on computer systems serving the
American military, NASA and research laboratories.

The
case
remains under investigation. But attention is focused on a 16-year-old
in Uppsala, Sweden, who was charged in March with breaking into
university computers in his hometown. Investigators in the
American break-ins ultimately traced the intrusions back to the Uppsala
university network.
 
The Swedish authorities are examining computer equipment confiscated
from      the teenager, who was released to his
parents’ care. The matter is being treated as a juvenile case.

 While our kids can’t even figure out how to send us an email once in a while…

from the New York Times