German hacker in Berlin known as Boris Floricic, aka Tron, disappeared while walking home from his parents' home one day. He was found several days later hanging from a belt in a park.
Among his possessions, authorities found correspondence from NDS. NDS later said it had offered Boris a job, which he had rejected. Prior to his death, Boris had obtained source code and information about hacking access cards that were being used in a German satellite TV system. His friends in the German hacker group, Chaos Computer Club, were convinced that he'd met with foul play...
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Chaos Computer Club
BERLIN -- Tempers flared at Sunday's Chaos Communication Congress session, and the death of a famous Chaos Computer Club member was the flashpoint.
The conference assembles computer enthusiasts from around the world for three days of hacking, discussions, and workshops on topics ranging from alternative operating systems to TCP/IP penetration to the state of the hacker ethic.
This year, the mysterious disappearance of German hacker Boris Floricic -- also known as Tron -- on 17 October and the discovery of his body in a Berlin park five days later has been Topic A.
CCC spokesman Andy Mueller-Maguhn presented a timeline of events surrounding Floricic's death. A heated discussion centered on two points that continue to rile CCC members.
First was a refusal by the Berlin police to waive the 48-hour waiting period before referring the case to the Bureau of Missing Persons. Second was the decision by the police to file charges against Tron.
By 20 October, the 26-year-old hacker was not only officially missing, but also under suspicion of committing computer fraud. Tron's computer, laptop, and all his equipment and files were confiscated.
Two police officers unofficially addressed the issues Sunday. They said that the missing-person investigation was not compromised by the criminal case, since they were being handled separately.
Responding to emotional outbursts from Tron's friends calling suicide out of the question, officer Klaus Ruckschnat reminded the crowd that the official line was still "apparent suicide." That is, the police have not yet ruled out the possibility that Tron was murdered.
Padeluun, a longstanding member of the CCC, gently suggested that "sometimes things are what they seem." In other words, just as the police weren't ruling out murder, the CCC should not rule out suicide.
Mueller-Maguhn outlined the areas of Tron's work that may have got him in trouble with any number of parties. The young hacker cracked phone cards and digital set-top boxes for pay TV, and his university dissertation was on ISDN-related cryptography.
"Tron may have underestimated the financial value of the information he uncovered," said Mueller-Maguhn. "He was always direct and honest, but also naive."
The CCC settled on no unified position regarding Tron's fate, but some audience members agreed that if a lesson is to be learned from his death, it is to publish valuable information widely as soon as it's discovered. Or risk life and limb.
Earlier, CCC co-founder Wau Holland shared his personal observations on a decade and a half of CCC history and controversy. Among its "accomplishments," the CCC had cracked the German postal network, planted a Trojan horse in NASA's computer system, and seen the death of one of its own before.
"In every case," said Holland, "the club has retained its independence. We don't take sides."
Other conference events this week include a lockpicking contest, a robot-building contest, and a report on "Hacking the KGB: 10 Years After."
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/ ... 8/12/17050
Rupert Murdoch Firm Goes on Trial for Alleged Tech Sabotage
TV pirates, ex-spies, and a hacker that mysteriously commits suicide. Just some of the characters behind a lawsuit over access cards in the global pay-TV war.
by Kim Zetter, for Wired Apr 21 2008
Did a Rupert Murdoch company go too far and hire hackers to sabotage rivals and gain the top spot in the global pay-TV war?
This is the question a jury will be facing in a spectacular five-year-old civil lawsuit that is finally being tried this month in California but which has, oddly, received little notice from U.S. media.
The case involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin hacker who had been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death.
On the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar's Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network's programming for free.
NagraStar and one of its parent companies, EchoStar, are seeking about $101 million for damages for piracy, copyright infringement, misconduct and unfair competition. The list of witnesses in the case includes EchoStar's founder and CEO Charlie Ergen; several hackers and pirates; and Reuven Hazak, an Israeli who heads security for NDS and is a former deputy head of Shabak, or Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency (the equivalent of Britain's MI5)...
But rather than deal with its security breach, NDS hired Tarnovsky and other pirates who had compromised its system to help the company hack and pirate its competitors' cards and even out the playing field, it is alleged.
In addition to Tarnovsky, the company also hired Oliver Kommerling, a hacker known for writing the primer on cracking smartcards. Kommerling has acknowledged in an affidavit that he helped NDS set up a research lab in Haifa, Israel, where NagraStar's smartcard was allegedly cracked by NDS engineers.
NDS didn't hire only hackers, however. According to EchoStar/NagraStar, it also hired a handful of other people with colorful pasts who they say had a role in hacking and pirating EchoStar/NagraStar. There was Reuven Hazak, who had been deputy head of Israel's Shin Bet during the notorious Bus 300 incident (when two Palestinian terrorists who hijacked an Israeli bus were killed in custody by a Shin Bet agent. Hazak eventually blew the whistle on the subsequent cover-up).
NDS also hired a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer named John Norris and a former Scotland Yard commander named Ray Adams. Finally, it hired a former would-be terrorist, Yossi Tsuria, who became chief technical officer of its lab in Israel. Tsuria was part of a radical group of Jewish Israelis in the 1980s that plotted to bomb the Dome of the Rock -- a shrine that sits on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims.
NDS has maintained in public statements that Hazak, Norris and its other security officers were hired to help it track down hackers and pirates and get them arrested. But EchoStar and NagraStar allege that Hazak and Norris played central roles in committing hacking and piracy as well.
In late 1997, NDS researchers in Israel reportedly cracked the NagraStar card after about six months of effort, using an electron microscope.
NagraStar became aware its card was hacked in late 1998 when meeting with DirecTV to discuss the pay-TV company's desire to switch from the hacked NDS cards to NagraStar's cards. But DirecTV employees surprised NagraStar at the meeting when they informed NagraStar that its cards had also been hacked.
EchoStar/NagraStar claim that NDS, aware that DirecTV was about to abandon its cards in favor of NagraStar cards, cracked NagraStar's card to discourage DirecTV from making the switch.
After NDS cracked its rival's card, Tarnovsky and his associates allegedly created and sold counterfeit NagraStar cards through a piracy site based in Canada, among others, that allowed pirates to access Dish Network programs for free. Tarnovsky is also accused of later posting on the Canadian site the code, secret keys and instructions for hacking the microprocessor on EchoStar's access cards, allowing pirates to flood the market with even more cards. He has denied the allegations. Hazak and Norris are accused of providing Tarnovsky with the code so he could post it online, but NDS maintains this didn't happen.
According to court documents, the sabotage scheme worked remarkably well throughout 1998 and 1999 as counterfeit NagraStar cards flooded the market.
It was around this time, however, that a German hacker in Berlin known as Boris Floricic, aka Tron, disappeared while walking home from his parents' home one day. He was found several days later hanging from a belt in a park.
Among his possessions, authorities found correspondence from NDS. NDS later said it had offered Boris a job, which he had rejected. Prior to his death, Boris had obtained source code and information about hacking access cards that were being used in a German satellite TV system. His friends in the German hacker group, Chaos Computer Club, were convinced that he'd met with foul play...
Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/t ... ndex1.html
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