Judge blasts Army over poor efforts to protect Web site

January 5, 2000 1:02 p.m. EST
www.nandotimes.com

MILWAUKEE - A federal judge criticized the U.S. Army's efforts to keep its public World Wide Web site secure after a 20-year-old man said it was easy to hack into it.

The judge commented as Chad D. Davis pleaded guilty Tuesday to gaining unauthorized access to the site and altering its contents.

Davis said he had hacked into the Army computer using information freely available on the Internet. He replaced the Army's opening Web page with the "signature page" of Global Hell, a nationwide group of hackers to which he belonged.

Stadtmueller said the Army's effort, or lack of it, to keep its Web site secure could affect the amount of restitution Davis is ordered to pay. The judge directed Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Klumb to get more information on the matter by the time Davis is sentenced in March.

Davis exploited a security flaw in a computer program used in building the Web site, according to federal court documents in the case.

Klumb said the Army had installed a "patch" for the shortcoming before Davis broke in. But there was a period during the summer when the Web site was being moved from one server to another when the patch was not installed on the new server, Klumb said, allowing Davis to break in.

Pentagon spokeswoman Nancy Ray said Wednesday that hacking is electronic vandalism.

"It's against the law. That's why the person was in court," Ray said.

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Copyright © 2000 Associated Press

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