U.S. Navy caught hacking into British marine charity Web site

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  U.S. Navy caught hacking
  into British marine
  charity Web site 

  By Kristi Essick 
  InfoWorld Electric 

  Posted at 3:07 PM PT, May 8, 1998 
  The U.S. Navy has been caught attempting to
  break in to secure areas of a World Wide Web
  site sponsored by a U.K. marine-mammal
  preservation charity, according to officials at the
  organization. 

  The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
  (WDCS) -- which operates an online shopping
  site aimed at generating money for the welfare of
  the animals at http://www.wdcs-shop.com --
  said it was alerted to the attempted break-in last
  week by its site-hosting company, Merchant
  Technology Ltd. 

  "We were working late one night, and a
  command line request came in wanting to access
  unauthorized areas of the site," said Andy Fisher,
  marketing manager for Merchant. "We were
  amazed to find out it was the Pentagon." 

  Merchant built and manages the secure
  electronic-commerce site for the conservation
  society and routinely keeps an eye on who visits.
  If users attempt to gain access to unauthorized
  areas, the company is alerted to the source of the
  incoming request. 

  At 9:45 p.m. GMT on April 28, Fisher said,
  workers at Merchant were shocked to see an
  incoming attempt to breach security by a user
  identified as donhqns1.hq.navy.mil. 

  Merchant got in touch with WDCS immediately,
  only to find out that the charity had been
  contacted by the Navy a few weeks earlier. The
  Navy was interested in obtaining a report the
  group is working on that details the efforts of
  Russian animal experts to train dolphins in the
  Black Sea for military tasks, such as finding and
  attaching probes to submarines, Fisher said. 

  A WDCS representative said that there is
  nothing secret about the Russian government's
  activities in this area but that the document does
  contain information about the export of the
  trained dolphins to foreign countries. The group
  declined to give the Navy a copy of the report
  only because it was not complete at the time.
  Once it is made final, the report will be published
  and the Navy can then examine it, the
  representative said. 

  The WCDS said that it is confused about why the
  Navy would attempt to break in to its Web site. 

  "I think whoever it was within the U.S. Navy
  facility would have better things to do rather than
  try and hack into our computers," said Chris
  Stroud, the organization's director of campaigns,
  in a statement. "If they were seeking reports on
  the Black Sea, we shall be freely publishing these
  in the near future anyway." 

  The WCDS previously has commented
  unfavorably on Navy activities such as its
  low-frequency sonar trials off Hawaii and on
  ship collisions with endangered whales, the
  group said. 

  Merchant says it is "100 percent sure" the
  hacking attempt originated from the Navy.
  WDCS has notified the U.S. Embassy in London
  and the relevant U.K. authorities, the
  organization said. 

  "We hope that the U.S. authorities have some
  rational explanation for this incident," Stroud
  said. 

  "The Navy has not yet received a formal
  complaint on the issue," said a Navy official, who
  declined to be named. "Until the Navy receives a
  formal complaint with details, there's not much
  we can do to proceed further." 

  Merchant Technology Ltd., in Bath, England, can
  be reached at 44 (1225) 481 015. The Whale and
  Dolphin Conservation Society, also in Bath, can
  be reached at 44 (1225) 334 511 or
  http://www.wdcs.org. 

  Kristi Essick is a London correspondent for the
  IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.