ohh ohhhhhhh WiFi Hacking == goto Jail

Kastro

N.C. Man First In Nation Convicted Of Wireless Crime

http://www.channel3000.com/technolo...265/detail.html

N.C. Man First In Nation Convicted Of Wireless Crime
Man Pleads Guilty To Hacking Into Patient Files

POSTED: 11:01 a.m. EST November 5, 2003
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Wireless Internet is becoming more and more popular, and with it come new ways for criminals to take advantage of others.

The first conviction in the nation for wireless cyber crimes came down in North Carolina Tuesday.

Clayton Dillard, 29, of Holly Springs, pleaded guilty to hacking into patient records at Wake Internal Medicine Consultants.

Dillard said he broke the law to prove a point that confidential medical records are vulnerable to computer hackers.

Police said Dillard crossed the line by hacking into more than 2,000 patient files.

"No matter what your intentions are, there is a point that experiment and research stops and criminal activities start," said Patrick Nieman of the Raleigh Police Department.

Police said Dillard used a laptop to break into computers. They said Dillard's guilty plea marks the first time anyone in the United States has been convicted of the crime.

"Moral relativism has no place in this. He violated the law," Nieman said.

On Sept. 9, Wake Internal Medicine Executive Director Steve Lauhoff told WRAL-TV the network is now protected.

"We made the correction and our network, I can say with confidence, is to the highest industry standard right now."

Dillard was sentenced to 18 months probation and ordered to pay $10,000 in fines.

Kastro

http://www.freep.com/news/locoak/nhack11_20031111.htm

Waterford men hacked store files, FBI alleges
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

November 11, 2003



Two young men sitting in a car in the parking lot of a Lowe's home improvement store in Southfield repeatedly hacked into the company's national computer network over the past two weeks, gaining access to credit card numbers and other information, federal prosecutors said Monday.

It's unclear what the two men planned to do with the information.

They may have been engaged in the recent hacker craze known as "wardriving" -- cruising around with a specially equipped laptop and an antenna searching for unsecured wireless networks hooked to the Internet. Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Reynolds said the investigation is under way.

Paul Timmins, 22, and Adam Botbyl, 20, both of Waterford, didn't explain what they were up to when they appeared Monday in U.S. District Court. Magistrate Virginia Morgan told them anything they said could be used against them in court.

Timmins said he is a $38,000-a-year computer network and security specialist for a Southfield software company. Botbyl said he's a student at ITT Technical Institute in Troy. Morgan released both men on $10,000 unsecured bonds.

FBI agent Denise Stemen said in an affidavit that Lowe's alerted the FBI recently that intruders had broken into its computer at company headquarters in North Carolina, altered its computer programs and illegally intercepted credit card transactions.

Stemen said the company's computer system had been hacked repeatedly from Oct. 25 through Nov. 7. She said that the intruders gained access through the national network by logging onto a user account over the wireless network of the Lowe's store in Southfield.

Once in the system, the intruders gained access to Lowe's stores in six states plus the headquarters system, Stemen said.

She said hackers altered the software Lowe's uses to process credit card purchases nationwide. On Nov. 5, the hackers installed a malicious program that disabled several computers at the Long Beach, Calif., store, she said.

Lowe's spokeswoman Chris Ahearn said the company has taken steps to beef up security, but wouldn't elaborate.

In alerting the FBI, Lowe's security said the intruders probably were operating within 1,000 feet of the Southfield store.

FBI agents set up surveillance Friday night and said they spotted the two men sitting with laptops in a Pontiac Grand Prix equipped with antennae. Agents followed the men and apparently arrested them Saturday. Agents also searched their apartments in Waterford.

During their court appearance Monday, Morgan ordered both men not to use computer equipment or access the Internet except at work or school.

The men are charged with causing damage to a protected computer system, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, upon conviction. Reynolds told Morgan that the men, who were arrested on a criminal complaint, are likely to be indicted within a few weeks in Michigan or Charlotte, N.C.

"Wardriving" is named after the old hacker practice called wardialing, the stunt that actor Matthew Broderick made famous in the 1983 film "WarGames." Broderick's character hacked into a military computer and nearly triggered a nuclear war with Russia.



Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490.

Kastro

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8835

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Jun 4 2004 1:04PM


In a rare wireless hacking conviction, a Michigan man entered a guilty plea Friday in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina for his role in a scheme to steal credit card numbers from the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores by taking advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network at a store in suburban Detroit.

Brian Salcedo, 21, faces an a unusually harsh 12 to 15 year prison term under federal sentencing guidelines, based largely on a stipulation that the potential losses in the scheme exceeded $2.5 million. But Salcedo has agreed to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of one or more other suspects, making him eligible for a sentence below the guideline range.

One of Salcedo's two codefendants, 20-year-old Adam Botbyl, is scheduled to plead guilty Monday, assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Martins confirmed. Botbyl faces 41 to 51 months in prison, but also has a cooperation deal with the prosecutors, according to court filings. The remaining defendant, 23-year-old Paul Timmins, is scheduled for arraignment on June 28th.

In 2000, as a juvenile, Salcedo was one of the first to be charged under Michigan's state computer crime law, for allegedly hacking a local ISP.

According to statements provided by Timmins and Botbyl following their arrest, as recounted in an FBI affidavit filed in the case, the pair first stumbled across an unsecured wireless network at the Southfield, Michigan Lowe's last spring, while "driving around with laptop computers looking for wireless Internet connections," i.e., wardriving. The two said they did nothing malicious with the network at that time.

It was six months later that Botbyl and his friend Salcedo hatched a plan to use the network to steal credit card numbers from the hardware chain, according to the affidavit.

FBI Stakeout
The hackers used the wireless network to route through Lowe's corporate data center in North Carolina and connect to the local networks at stores in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Dakota, Florida, and two stores in California. At two of the stores -- in Long Beach, California and Gainseville, Florida -- they modified a proprietary piece of software called "tcpcredit" that Lowe's uses to process credit card transactions, building in a virtual wiretap that would store customer's credit card numbers where the hackers could retrieve them later.

At some point, Lowe's network administrators and security personnel detected and began monitoring the intrusions, and called in the FBI. In November, a Bureau surveillance team staked out the Southfield Lowe's parking lot, and spotted a white Grand Prix with suspicious antennas and two young men sitting inside, one of them typing on a laptop from the passenger seat, according to court documents. The car was registered to Botbyl.

After 20 minutes, the pair quit for the night, and the FBI followed them to a Little Ceasar's pizza restaurant, then to a local multiplex. While the hackers took in a film, Lowe's network security team poured over log files and found the bugged program, which had collected only six credit card numbers.

FBI agents initially identified Timmins as Botbyl's as the passenger in the car, apparently mistakenly, and both men were arrested on November 10th. Under questioning, Botbyl and Timmins pointed the finger at Salcedo. Timmins had allegedly provided the two hackers with an 802.11b card, and had knowledge of what his associates were up to.

Botbyl and Timmins, known online as "noweb4u" and "itszer0" respectively, are part of the Michigan 2600 hacker scene -- an informal collection of technology aficionados.

The Lowe's wi-fi system was installed to allow scanners and telephones to connect to the store's network without the burden of cables, according to the indictment.

NutJob

Aren’t these more fraud cases than hacking? Not much of a challenge breaking into an unsecured wifi network.



Plus stealing credit cards is not the type of behavior of any real hacker.


Not condoneing this either.