Hackers spied for K.G.B.

Press, 4 March 1989, Page 11

Hackers spied for K.G.B.

NZPA-Reuter Bonn A television network said five West German computer hackers had been arrested for giving passwords and secrets from Western military and industrial computers to the Soviet K.G.B. A federal prosecutor’s spokesman partially confirmed the espionage case, reported by the A.R.D. television network, but said only three hackers were arrested on suspicion. The spokesman, Alexander Prechtel, said two hackers in West Germany and one in West Berlin were being held on suspicion of infiltrating computer networks worldwide to obtain secret data for an East Bloc spy agency. A.R.D.’s “Panorama” public-af-fairs programme said the hackers provided the K.G.B. with pass-

word codes and secret data from military, industrial and research computer networks in the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Among the systems infiltrated, it said, were the United States Defence Department’s general staff data bank 0.P.T.1.M.1.5., the United States nuclear arms laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the United States space agency, N.A.S.A., and various United States military supply depots. The hackers, using home computers, also penetrated data banks of the French-Italian arms maker Thomson, the West European nuclear research centre C.E.R.N. in Geneva, the European Space Agency and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear

Physics in West Germany, it said. Information on state-of-the-art computer programs and blueprints for making microchips was stolen from West European electronics companies, “Panorama” said. West German security police raided six homes in West Berlin, Hanoyer and Hamburg on Thursday in search of evidence, the television report said. The “Panorama” report said five hackers were arrested, although an A.R.D. statement released before the report aired said three were arrested. “Panorama” said the K.G.B. recruited the hackers in 1985 and paid them several hundred thousand marks. One hacker was a drug addict and also received drugs, it reported.