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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Most Computer Hackers Never Get Caught Most Are Showoffs Having Fun, Not `Dark-Side’ Professionals

Associated Press

The reputed “Billy the Kid” of computer hackers, finally hunted down by a potent cyberposse, was a talented showoff but not the worst threat to the world’s vast network of computer data, experts say.

Kevin D. Mitnick was arrested Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C., after he allegedly had spent two years stealing thousands of data files and more than 20,000 credit card numbers from computers.

Mitnick falls into one of three categories of hackers: the creative showoff more content to break into databases for fun, not profit, experts say.

“There is another class of hacker entirely - the professional, whether it’s industrial espionage or a foreign agent,” Steven Bellovin, a network security scientist for AT&T, said Thursday.

“They get in, find what they want and get out. Nobody hears about them. Nobody knows how common it was,” he said.

But most hackers are what Bellovin calls “cookbook hackers,” computer buffs who pluck a variety of recipes for breaking codes and tapping telephone systems off the global Internet computer network.

They don’t have a clue about what they’re doing and basically coast along the Internet, twisting doorknobs to see what doors to other computer systems fly open.

“The small number of hackers that are providing the tools are more of a danger to the Internet,” Bellovin said.

Mitnick, who once broke into a top-secret military defense system as a teenage prank, also is unusual because he got caught. Bellovin said studies have shown that less than 5 percent of the intrusions into a computer system by an outsider are detected.

The hunt for Mitnick was more of a high-profile cat-and-mouse game watched almost with relish by experts in the virtual world.

“What has been going on has been a fantastic duel between Kevin and some of the hottest minds in computer enforcement,” said John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Washington. “He’s Billy the Kid.”

“It’s sort of amazing, the amount of horsepower that was assembled to bring him in,” Barlow said.

Still, Barlow said, some of the data allegedly stolen by Mitnick could have shown people how to abuse the cellular telephone system.

“He’s got some stuff that would be extremely valuable in the wrong hands,” Barlow said. “He lives by his own code, and society is being protected more by his own code than by law enforcement.”

James Settle, who until last April was head of the FBI’s National Computer Crime Squad, said thousands of people probably have the same skill as Mitnick.

“The problem law enforcement has is you have technology that law enforcement does not understand,” Settle said. “The criminal element has not even started to exploit the technology. God help everybody when they do.”

“I keep waiting for the dark-side hackers to become an obvious problem, but they seem, so far, not to have emerged,” Barlow said. “The showoffs are doing it.”

Mitnick, 31, was charged with computer fraud and illegal use of a telephone access device, punishable by 35 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He also is wanted in California for allegedly violating probation on a previous hacking conviction.