ad info




CNN.com
 MAIN PAGE
 WORLD
 U.S.
 LOCAL
 POLITICS
 WEATHER
 BUSINESS
 SPORTS
 TECHNOLOGY
 SPACE
 HEALTH
 ENTERTAINMENT
 BOOKS
 TRAVEL
 FOOD
 ARTS & STYLE
 NATURE
 IN-DEPTH
 ANALYSIS
 myCNN

 Headline News brief
 news quiz
 daily almanac

  MULTIMEDIA:
 video
 video archive
 audio
 multimedia showcase
 more services

  E-MAIL:
Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists.
Enter your address:
Or:
Get a free e-mail account

 DISCUSSION:
 message boards
 chat
 feedback

  CNN WEB SITES:
CNN Websites
 AsiaNow
 En Español
 Em Português
 Svenska
 Norge
 Danmark
 Italian

 FASTER ACCESS:
 europe
 japan

 TIME INC. SITES:
 CNN NETWORKS:
Networks image
 more networks
 transcripts

 SITE INFO:
 help
 contents
 search
 ad info
 jobs

 WEB SERVICES:

  Transcripts

WorldView

Investigators Follow Internet Trail to New Victim in Hacker Attack

Aired February 12, 2000 - 8:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: We begin in the United States, where federal investigators are linking a second California university to this week's massive computer hacking attack. The University of California at Santa Barbara tells CNN one of its servers was used in the attack on the CNN.com Web site.

CNN's Greg LeFevre reports investigators are following the hackers' trail of Internet evidence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GREG LEFEVRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The web of victim computers spreads across California's academic landscape. The latest: a remote marine research campus operated by Stanford University near Monterey, California.

STEPHEN HANSEN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: I am glad that we did find it quickly and were able to deal with it in short order.

LEFEVRE: About 50 of the Stanford computers were fooled into helping route the hacker signals across the Internet. The denial-of- service attacks on the Web's most heavily used sites include eBay, Amazon, CNN.com, Buy and Yahoo!.

Hackers plant a tiny program into the hacked computer and later order it to throw millions of requests at the Web site, blocking anyone else from using it.

(on camera): Universities are in a tough spot. Schools want professors and students to have easy access to these machines to share research information. That free access also makes these systems sitting ducks for hackers.

(voice-over): Stanford joins University of California Santa Barbara as victims of so-called "zombie computers," unmanned computers perhaps unknowingly slaves to the command of hackers.

KEVIN SCHMIDT, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA: If you go to a university, you have many different constituent groups. You've got different research groups, you've got people who are here for one year, you've got visiting research faculty.

LEFEVRE: None of the denial-of-service attacks penetrated the Web sites. Not so at RealNames, where the company says this week a hacker broke into its files that contained credit card numbers. RealNames customers use software that speeds up Web surfing. As many as 15,000 credit cards were involved. The company alerted its customers and the credit card companies.

Sources tell CNN the denial-of-service hacks were not sophisticated, but they were done using ready-made programs, that with so many attacks, one of them is bound to leave traces.

Greg LeFevre, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

  ArrowCLICK HERE FOR TODAY'S TOPICS AND GUESTS
ArrowCLICK HERE FOR CNN PROGRAM SCHEDULES
SEARCH CNN.com
Enter keyword(s)   go    help

Back to the top   © 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.