From: hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 06:24:53 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Public report of the EU crack.
Message-ID: <9608051858.AA08707@Etna.ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>From the Sunday times:- 

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/stifgnnws01015.html?youra-c


AMERICAN intelligence agents have hacked into
the computers of the European parliament and
European commission as part of an international
espionage campaign aimed at stealing economic and
political secrets, according to investigators, write
Tim Kelsey and David Leppard. 

The European parliament has called in British
communications experts to improve its security and
to block further attempts by American govern ment
agents to spy on its workings. 

Security officials at the parliament's Luxembourg
offices say they have discovered several recent
instances in which its communications system was
compromised by American hacking. They have also
found evidence that the Americans used information
obtained from hacking to help them in negotiations
last year on the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (Gatt). 

Lord Plumb, leader of the British Tory MEPs in the
European parliament, said he was shocked by the
disclosure. "I will be taking this up directly with the
American ambassador [to the European Union]," he
said. 

The CIA has already been accused by the Japanese
and French governments of hacking into their
communications networks in an attempt to obtain
confidential trade secrets. 

The European parliament's computer network links
more than 5,000 MEPs, officials, researchers and
other staff to each other, and to the European
commission headquarters in Brussels and the council
of ministers. 

Traffic across the network by telephone and
computers includes details of the private medical
and financial records of many MEPs and officials,
and discussion documents on confidential issues,
including trade, tariff and quota agreements. The
records of closed committees of inquiry into BSE
and fraud are also stored on the system. 

European parliament sources say the Americans
accessed the network by compromising the
information exchanges that link the parliament's
internal networks with the Internet and external
users. 

The devices, called "routers", filter entry to the
European parliament's network. It is understood the
Americans were able to obtain access to what is
called the simple network management protocol
(SNMP), the language that enables the networks to
talk to each other. They were able to exploit the fact
that parts of the system were manufactured by two
American firms. 

The breach came to light when officials believed
that American negotiators had been given advance
warning of confidential European Union positions
in last year's trade negotiations. "It was established
that the system had been penetrated just days before
the talks," an EU source said. "Our principal
concern is not to establish what has already been
copied but to ensure that it does not happen again.
This is an on-going problem." 

A spokeswoman for Antonio Cavaco, director of
data processing at the commission, confirmed that
allegations of hacking had been investigated.
However, she said she was unable to provide any
details. 
[end]

I consider the political dimension of this affair to 
be more significant that the technical. This brings the
US and the French into the same category of anti-crypto
government with a habit of poking its nose into other
people business and getting caught.

		Phill