IP: French computer hacker charges $250,000 phone bill to FBI

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Declan McCullagh typed:


And this is the agency that demands to be trusted with your encryption
keys?




Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:45:56 -0500
To: fight-censorship-announce () vorlon mit edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: FC: French computer hacker charges $250,000 phone bill to FBI
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Thursday February 27 3:06 PM EST


Computer Hacker Made Calls at FBI Expense


PARIS - A French computer hacker who made $250,000 in phone calls at the
expense of the U.S. FBI plans to write a book about his feat and open a
computer
security business, according to French justice officials.


Anthony Zboralski, 21, has signed a book deal with a major French
publishing firm and will be devoting his future to battling computer piracy
-- a field he evidently
knows quite well -- thanks to his trial on piracy charges in a Paris court,
the officials said.


"He seems a little childlike, a dreamer. He doesn't appear to be someone
who will end up a courtroom fixture," assistant prosecutor Georges
Dobrouchkess told
Reuters.


The court Monday fined Zboralski $8,850, gave him a suspended 18-month jail
sentence and put him on probation for two years for fraud and fraudulent
access to
a computer network on charges he cracked the FBI's conference-calling
system and used it to chat with friends around the world for several months
in late 1994.


The FBI, which uncovered the fraud, was not a party to the case. But French
counter-intelligence services have been closely monitoring his
achievements, his lawyer
told the court.


Prosecutors said he was able to make calls at FBI expense by first
obtaining the name of an FBI representative in France from the U.S. Embassy
in Paris.


Then, posing as the official, he contacted the FBI in Washington, asking
for information on how to connect himself to the FBI computer network.

--
found at http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/970227/tech/stories/hacker_1.html




-------------------------
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/




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     Stanton McCandlish
        mech () eff org

          Electronic Frontier Foundation

      Program Director