Date: Wed, 21 Jun 89 22:43:43 -0700
From: davy@riacs.edu
Subject: Air Force satellite positioning system cracked

Taken from the San Jose Mercury News, 6/21/89 (from the Kansas City Star):

Teen hacker hits satellite guide system

  A 14-year-old Prarie Village, Kan., boy, using a small home computer,
cracked an Air Force satellite-positioning system and browsed the confidential
files of at least 200 companies, officials say.
  The teen-ager, a computer hacker since the age of 8, apparently did not dam-
age the computer systems he easily entered during the past six months.  He
hoped to use his know-how to persuade the companies to hire him as a computer
security consultant, police said.
  At least two military investigators and representatives of several companies,
including Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, showed up at a meeting this month
in Johnson County to try to find out how he did it.
  Dialing unauthorized long-distance access codes, authorities say, the teen-
ager linked his Apple computer with systems throughout the country.  He spec-
ialized in cracking the H-P 3000, a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer widely used
by businesses and the federal government.
  At one point, authorities say, he gained access to an unclassified Air Force
computer system.

[Other than in the first paragraph, there's no more mention of what, if
 anything, the kid did to the satellite positioning system.  The comment that
 he was hoping to be hired seems intriguing to me; I wonder if there's now a
 wave of "interview by cracking" starting up? --Dave]

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