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Saturday Morning News

California University's Equipment Linked to Hacker Attacks

Aired February 12, 2000 - 8:01 a.m. ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Experts say this week's attack on CNN's Web site utilized equipment at a California university, and another university's equipment was used in the attack on eBay.

CNN's Jim Hill says universities are easy springboards for hackers to launch their attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Cyber suspicion was first aroused Tuesday night at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Computer programmer Kevin Schmidt says he made a routine check of the school's network monitoring system here in the engineering department. He says he found a large amount of information that flowed out of one computer located in a campus laboratory.

KEVIN SCHMIDT, COMPUTER PROGRAMMER: It appears that somebody issued it some instructions, gave it some sort of program designed to send unauthorized traffic to the CNN Web site.

HILL: Knowing that CNN and a number of corporate Web sites had been temporarily shut down by a flood of requests for information, the university talked with CNN and the FBI Wednesday morning. The university says someone had apparently used scanning software to check the university's network and found a machine that didn't have the proper safeguards.

PROF. BOB SUGAR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SANTA BARBARA: There are devices or programs which allow hackers to scan very broadly large numbers of computers looking for weaknesses which will allow them to break in and there are known weaknesses and so they know what to look for.

HILL (on camera): Computer experts here on the Santa Barbara campus say large universities can be a hacker's target of choice.

(voice-over): This is because schools often use computers in creative ways, including for research and experimentation in which safeguards or so-called firewalls simply get in the way.

SCHMIDT: There's a good chance that .1 percent out there is going to be vulnerable and with the automated tools that the hackers tend to use, they're probably going to find that .1 percent. HILL: The vulnerable computer has been turned off. But experts say it was likely just one of many computers in many locations which were unwitting accomplices in the attacks on corporate Web sites.

Jim Hill, CNN, Santa Barbara, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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