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The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet.

Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated.

Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving attacks on computer systems serving the American military, NASA and research laboratories.

The break-ins exploited security holes on those systems that the authorities say have now been plugged, and beyond the Cisco theft, it is not clear how much data was taken or destroyed. Still, the case illustrates the ease with which Internet-connected computers - even those of sophisticated corporate and government networks - can be penetrated and also the difficulty in tracing those responsible.

Government investigators and other computer experts sometimes watched helplessly while monitoring the activity, unable to secure some systems as quickly as others were found compromised.

The case remains under investigation. But attention is focused on a 16-year-old in Uppsala, Sweden, who was charged in March with breaking into university computers in his hometown. Investigators in the American break-ins ultimately traced the intrusions back to the Uppsala university network.

The F.B.I. and the Swedish police said they were working together on the case, and one F.B.I. official said efforts in Britain and other countries were aimed at identifying accomplices. "As a result of recent actions" by law enforcement, an F.B.I. statement said, "the criminal activity appears to have stopped."

The Swedish authorities are examining computer equipment confiscated from the teenager, who was released to his parents' care. The matter is being treated as a juvenile case.

Investigators who described the break-ins did so on condition that they not be identified, saying that their continuing efforts could be jeopardized if their names, or in some cases their organizations, were disclosed.

Computer experts said the break-ins did not represent a fundamentally new kind of attack. Rather, they said, the primary intruder was particularly clever in the way he organized a system for automating the theft of computer log-ins and passwords, conducting attacks through a complicated maze of computers connected to the Internet in as many as seven countries.

The intrusions were first publicly reported in April 2004 when several of the nation's supercomputer laboratories acknowledged break-ins into computers connected to the TeraGrid, a high-speed data network serving those labs, which conduct unclassified research into a range of scientific problems.

The theft of the Cisco software was discovered last May when a small team of security specialists at the supercomputer laboratories, trying to investigate the intrusions there, watched electronically as passwords to Cisco's computers were compromised.

After discovering the passwords' theft, the security officials notified Cisco officials of the potential threat. But the company's software was taken almost immediately, before the company could respond.

Shortly after being stolen last May, a portion of the Cisco programming instructions appeared on a Russian Web site. With such information, sophisticated intruders would potentially be able to compromise security on router computers of Cisco customers running the affected programs.

There is no evidence that such use has occurred. "Cisco believes that the improper publication of this information does not create increased risk to customers' networks," the company said last week.

The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH. The program is used in many computer research centers for a variety of tasks, ranging from administration of remote computers to data transfer over the Internet.

The intruder probed computers for vulnerabilities that allowed the installation of the corrupted program, known as a Trojan horse, in place of the legitimate program.

In many cases the corrupted program is distributed from a single computer and shared by tens or hundreds of users at a computing site, effectively making it possible for someone unleashing it to reel in large numbers of log-ins and passwords as they are entered.

Once passwords to the remote systems were obtained, an intruder could log in and use a variety of software "tool kits" to upgrade his privileges - known as gaining root access. That makes it possible to steal information and steal more passwords.

The operation took advantage of the vulnerability of Internet-connected computers whose security software had not been brought up to date.

In the Cisco case, the passwords to Cisco computers were sent from a compromised computer by a legitimate user unaware of the Trojan horse. The intruder captured the passwords and then used them to enter Cisco's computers and steal the programming instructions, according to the security investigators.

A security expert involved in the investigation speculated that the Cisco programming instructions were stolen as part of an effort to establish the intruder's credibility in online chat rooms he frequented.

Last May, the security investigators were able to install surveillance software on the University of Minnesota computer network when they discovered that an intruder was using it as a staging base for hundreds of Internet attacks. During a two-day period they watched as the intruder tried to break into more than 100 locations on the Internet and was successful in gaining root access to more than 50.

When possible, they alerted organizations that were victims of attacks, which would then shut out the intruder and patch their systems.

As the attacks were first noted in April 2004, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, found that her own computer had been invaded. The researcher, Wren Montgomery, began to receive taunting e-mail messages from someone going by the name Stakkato - now believed by the authorities to have been the primary intruder - who also boasted of breaking in to computers at military installations.

"Patuxent River totally closed their networks," he wrote in a message sent that month, referring to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. "They freaked out when I said I stole F-18 blueprints."

A Navy spokesman at Patuxent River, James Darcy, said Monday said that "if there was some sort of attempted breach on those addresses, it was not significant enough of an action to have generated a report."

Monte Marlin, a spokeswoman for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, whose computers Stakkato also claimed to have breached, confirmed Monday that there had been "unauthorized access" but said, "The only information obtained was weather forecast information."

The messages also claimed an intrusion into seven computers serving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A computer security expert investigating the case confirmed that computers at several NASA sites, including the propulsion laboratory, had been breached. A spokesman said the laboratory did not comment on computer breaches.

Ms. Montgomery, a graduate student in geophysics, said that in a fit of anger, Stakkato had erased her computer file directory and had destroyed a year and a half of her e-mail stored on a university computer.

She guessed that she might have provoked him by referring to him as a "quaint hacker" in a communication with system administrators, which he monitored.

"It was inconvenient," she said of the loss of her e-mail, "and it's the thing that seems to happen when you have malicious teenage hackers running around with no sense of ethics."

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/technology/10cisco.html?hp&ex=
1115697600&en=4dfe5a615a7107aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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Interest in the spirit world and UFOs is growing, and entrepreneurs are making money from it by providing high-tech ghost-hunting gear

To the right person, it would be downright eerie. Electronics equipment -- electromagnetic-field detectors, white-noise generators, infrared motion sensors -- jumping off store shelves for no apparent reason. Groups of otherwise sensible people paying good money to spend a night in a soon-to-be-closed movie theater. Folks on the Internet trolling for brass dowsing rods and crystals that ward off negativity. This is the lucrative business end of the paranormal.

Skeptics may scoff at ghosts and UFOs, but the profits some businesses are making off the spirit world are no mere phantoms. Scores of small businesses, selling ghost-hunting equipment, ghost investigation services, and even ghost counseling, are booming outside of their prime season, Halloween. Several companies recently introduced new devices billed as ghost detectors. And a cable TV show dedicated to ghost hunting is conjuring up viewers for the Sci-Fi Channel.

The business is thriving thanks to enthusiasts such as Justin Faulk, an electrical engineering student at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. The 21-year-old has been a ghost hunter for three years, prowling abandoned buildings, haunted houses, and cemeteries. Faulk owns $2,500 worth of ghost-detecting gear, including equipment designed to check for changes in electrical fields that might indicate either the presence of UFOs -- or defects in home wiring.

Faulk says he recently took his gear out to an abandoned hospital that's said to be haunted. He walked into empty rooms with peeling paint that invoked intense feelings of fear. He saw pebbles tossed across a narrow hallway from an unseen source -- but no definite signs of ghosts. "In most haunted places, there are no knives flying out of the cabinet, like in the movies," laughs Faulk, who is thinking of going into business making ghost detectors himself.

How big is the paranormal market getting? It's hard to tell, as most businesses in the field are small, privately owned, and don't report revenues. But owners say they're getting a boost from the reality show Ghost Hunters, which debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel last October and has been renewed for additional episodes. In the program, two plumbers moonlight as ghost hunters. The Sci-Fi Channel said the show was attracting 1.4 million total viewers six weeks into its run, a 37% increase over the time slot's previous occupant.

The paranormal boomlet is such that some small businesses are actually starting to make a decent living at it (previously, most ghost hunters investigated for free, and home owners who hired them were warned that real ghost hunters wouldn't smoke or drink during their overnight quests).

Alamo City Paranormal in San Antonio, Tex., -- said to be one of the most haunted regions of the country -- claims to own $80,000 worth of special ghost-detecting gear and charges $50 and up for its investigations. It also offers para-counseling services (that's where a counselor talks to, say, a child who believes there's a ghost living under her bed), as well as popular ghost tours of downtown San Antonio, haunted, the story goes, by the spirits of hundreds of soldiers who died in the 1836 battle of the Alamo.

Between 15 to 20 ghost seekers show up for nightly San Antonio tours, which run an hour and a half and cost $10 for adults, reports Martin Leal, Alamo City Paranormal's owner. A favorite part of the tour, Leal says, is when the tourists get to play around with the ghost detectors for 20 minutes or so. Leal says revenues, which have been flattish for years, grew 21% in 2004. He's now trying to take his association of a dozen local companies charging for ghost-hunting services, called the American Alliance of Professional Ghost Hunters, nationwide.

More serious amateurs can hang onto the detection gear longer during numerous ghost-hunting overnighters, offered by the likes of Bump in the Night Tour Co. in Illinois, run by two authors of ghost books. Lured by the possibility of spending a sleepless night watching for spirits in a haunted movie theater, a witch cave, or a cemetery, enthusiasts flock to these tours, so most of them sell out months in advance.

Then there's all that equipment. There's science, albeit shaky, behind the devices on offer. UFOs might disturb an area's electromagnetic field, some believe. Ghosts can cause fluctuations in magnetic fields, radio waves, or light. Much of the gear that ghost hunters use measures these things -- but hasn't been designed specifically with ghosts in mind. However, they add scientific credibility to the pursuit. ("You don't believe in ghosts? Look at this magnificent magnetic-field readout. Look at this beautiful pie chart. Would technology lie?")

Many of those selling the gear for the paranormal market are believers, while others are skeptical about everything except the bottom line. At Hamburg (N.J.)-based Abate Electronics, orders for detectors had doubled from 2003 to 2004, to about 300 units, says owner Frank Abate, a retired Air Force engineer who claims to have seen a UFO and have had an out-of-the-body experience. His devices, priced at $29.99 and up, depending on features, can sound an alarm when detecting changes in the magnetic field, just so you don't miss a ghost wafting by. Its light indicator starts flashing, too, which "is fun for the kids," he says.

Considered the Jaguar of ghost detectors is AlphaLab's TriField Natural EM Meter, selling for around $300 and measuring magnetic, radio-wave, and electric-field changes. The company, which sells about 200 such detectors a year, is considering making a detector that can draw an image based on the changes in the electromagnetic field it's detecting, says CEO David Lee, who has a PhD. in physics. Lee says he doesn't believe in ghosts but is undecided on the existence of UFOs.

In April, a Japanese company called Solid Alliance released a purported ghost detector complete with embedded memory and lights that flash in a different pattern depending on what the gadget has detected. Douglas Krone, CEO of Solid Alliance's U.S. distributor, Dynamism, is a bit unsure whether the device, selling for $119 and up, is for real or a joke: The Japanese inventors wouldn't tell him how it works.

To be safe, Krone clings to his healthy skepticism: "It's just a small plastic toy made in China," he says. "They're just fun-loving engineers who love to dream up stuff." Yet, Krone says, he's been inundated with inquiries from ghost hunters and paranormal magazines.

Indeed, lots of skeptics choose to pooh-pooh the high-tech readouts. The James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., run by the magician known for his debunking of paranormal claims, offers a $1 million reward to a person who proves the existence of the paranormal. Over the years, Randi has been all over the world testing applicants. He claims to have disproved all self-proclaimed mediums and even Uri Geller who, under Randi's watchful eye, couldn't bend his spoons.

"People move into old houses, they hear creaking noises at night, and they say they have a ghost," says Randi. "But it's simply an old house."

It's the high-tech equipment of the ghost hunters that Randi has no patience with, though. "These sensitive instruments will react to anything: Your cell phone, the fillings in your teeth, a lightning storm hundreds of miles away," he says.

But that's not stopping people such as Faulk, the Oklahoma State student, who has been hard at work designing a better, ghost-specific detector that he hopes to start selling later this year. "The market isn't huge, but the people who are [ghost hunting] will appreciate it," he figures. "I'm not going to retire at 25." However, if the ghost business maintains its uptrend, he might be wrong about that.

Source: Business Week
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2005/
tc20050512_6388_tc024.htm 

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Some say it looks like the Hound of the Baskervilles, others mention the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote.

But this, apparently, is the beast that has brought terror to an upmarket town and caused anxious residents to look over their shoulders at night.

Cynics claim it is the product of fertile imaginations - or one or two gin and tonics too many.

But more than 20 sightings have been reported in the last few weeks, leading to a local illustrator compiling an artist's impression.

Amateur photographers, meanwhile, have been descending on the area in the hope of getting a shot.

Dubbed The Beast of Green Drive, the mysterious creature has been spotted roaming in thick woodland at a beauty spot.

About as tall as a collie dog but with huge ears, a large mouth and a lolloping gait, the peculiar animal has caused a frenzy of chatter in the normally sedate Lytham St Anne's, Lancashire.

The creature, according to witnesses, is seen mainly in the largely wooded area of Green Drive, where there is plenty of brush and scrub to conceal a large animal.

Sandra Sturrock, who was walking her dog when she came face-to-face with the beast, said: "I caught sight of something large ahead of us. It was like a large collie, light in colour with large sticking-up ears.

"It was watching me and my dog. I stood completely still for several minutes trying to see it more closely. I called my dog and put him on the lead and slowly inched towards the animal to get a better look but it ran off. I then went to where it had been and my dog went mad, sniffing all round the area."

She added: "I have never seen anything like this before.

"I lived in Cheshire for ten years and frequently saw foxes and the odd deer.

"They usually disappear quite quickly and do not remain watching you.'

Huge ears and a large mouth

Willie Davidson, 59, a painter and decorator, said: "I was playing bowls near Green Drive when I heard a snarl behind me. It was like a monster out of Doctor Who and it needs tracking down."

Another woman, who did want to be named, said: 'I was walking along the drive when I saw it in the fields alongside.

"I have no idea what it was. I could tell it was the size of a Labrador, but looked more like a hare. It can't have been either - it was surreal."

One theory is that it could be a muntjac deer, one of the last remaining from a herd brought to Lytham Hall by the local squire over a century ago.

Illustrator Sam Shearon came up with his drawing after speaking to several witnesses.

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: 'We have checked local zoos and farms, but nothing seems to be missing. It is very bizarre.

"We have handed it over to the RSPCA to investigate."

Apparent sightings of animals not native to the UK have been on the increase in recent years.

Panthers are occasionally reported, with police marksmen called in last year after a farmer said he saw a large black cat on his land in Anglesey, North Wales.

At RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall, three members of staff spotted a large black cat - similar to a puma or panther - through their nightvision lenses.

Also in Cornwall, the infamous Beast of Bodmin is still believed to be roaming farmland killing sheep and lambs.

Experts at Chester Zoo were baffled after being shown the drawing of the The Beast of Green Drive.

A spokesman said last night: "It does not look like any mammal currently alive. It looks more like a mythical beast to us."

Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=347643
&in_page_id=1770

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LANDERS - Bob Green is the noble grand humbug of the Billy Holcomb Chapter of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus.

He says he believes that an alien from the planet Venus dropped by this San Bernardino County desert community half a century ago and provided instructions for building a combination time machine and fountain of youth.

When Bob Green says he believes something, it may or may not be true.

"We believe because it is absurd," he said. "That's our credo."

About 200 of the 400 members of the Holcomb chapter, serving Riverside and San Bernardino counties, turned out in Landers recently to dedicate a historical marker that they - and the Morongo Basin Historical Society - erected at Belfield Boulevard and Linn Road.

About 50 yards away stands the Integratron, the incomplete dream of George Van Tassel, a former test pilot for Howard Hughes who hosted 17 UFO conventions at nearby Giant Rock that attracted as many as 10,000 people at a time.

He started work on the Integratron in 1953 - although the plaque says 1957 - after announcing that the plans had been impressed in his mind by Solganda, a visitor from Venus.

Van Tassel built it without the use of metal fasteners, a little at a time.

"He was very tenacious and adamant about getting it done," says his grandson, Matthew Boone, 39, who lives in a mobile home nearby. "The only problem with getting it done was that we didn't really have any money of our own. As the donations would come in, he would do another stage of the project."

The Integratron "was probably about 75 percent completed," Boone said, when Van Tassel died in 1978.

Boone watched some of the construction, but Van Tassel didn't leave him a set of plans. There was no printed set.

"There was a reason for that," Boone said. "That prevented any kind of espionage or the government getting involved or anything like that.

"Every time something needed to be completed, they (the Venusians) would plant it in his brain so he alone knew what to do."

The lack of plans also has left much to the speculation and imagination of Integratron visitors. The device has become a tourist attraction.

The current owner-managers, San Francisco Bay-area sisters Joanne and Nancy Karl, offer tours of the place and "sound baths" in a second-floor room with bone-vibrating acoustics.

Following the dedication, guests were invited to tour the Integratron, described by creator George Van Tassel as "a machine, a high voltage, electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge the cell structure."

Green, who describes E Clampus Vitus as equal parts historical preservationists and partiers, said the plaque will allow the public "to know what the Integratron is all about. A lot of people come out here on their dirt bikes and just blow by this place. They see the white dome, but they have no idea what it is."

The organization, which traces its roots tongue-in-cheek to the Gold Rush days, has put up plaques at obscure historical sites throughout California. The Holcomb chapter has plaques at the World War II camps used during training of tank troops under Gen. George Patton. There is also a "Clamper" plaque at a local water well, at a schoolhouse in Twentynine Palms and at the Western movie sets of Pioneertown.

The Clampers wore bright red souvenir T-shirts to last weekend's Integratron dedication. They gathered around the marker, some in lawn chairs and many with a beer in hand.

It was quite appropriate, Nancy Karl told them, "that when the Integratron received such an honor, that it would be done with crazy fun."
Van Tassel started working on the Integratron in 1953, although the dedication plaque at the site says 1957.

Bob Short was not laughing.

The 74-year-old UFO believer comes all the way from Cornville, Ariz. to visit the Integratron and pay his respects to the aliens he says first sent him from the San Fernando Valley to Giant Rock in 1952.

"My UFO sources actually showed me how to get here," he insists. "I put myself into a kind of an altered state, like a meditative state, and they communicated with my brain. They would put things in my head and I would write them down. They finally said to me, 'We want you to go to Giant Rock. If you want to know the truth about us, go to the big rock in the desert.' I said, 'What big rock?' They didn't answer."

Then one day, he said, he headed out toward the San Bernardino County desert and challenged the aliens to give him directions.

"I got into Joshua Tree about 10 o'clock at night," Short said. "I heard this voice, just like you're talking to me, say 'Turn left.' So I did."

A few more voices later, he found himself at a café near Van Tassel's landing strip. It was there, he said, that he got a look at V-shaped formations of alien spaceships.

"I never actually saw any live aliens. That's the truth," he said. "No, wait a minute. I take that back. In April 1964, they came up to our table during a (UFO) convention. One of them was wearing a lumberjack shirt, a lumberjack cap and he had a pipe in his mouth, but there was no tobacco in it. He said, 'We understand you get your communications from Venus.' He kind of looked at us with this odd look on his face."

Boone said he never saw alien beings either, but did see their spaceships.

He described one of them as a silver disc with a gold dome on top and a "platelet" on the bottom.

It hovered 500 feet above the ground.

He said the historical marker may help efforts to preserve the Integratron.

"When I'm 89 years old, if I am lucky enough to live that long, I'd sure like to see it still standing here for generations to come," he said.

Source: The Press Enterprise
http://www.pe.com/breakingnews/local/stories/PE_News_Local_S_space09.a2131.html