UK: TEENAGE HACKER TAPS INTO U.S. DEFENCE SECRETS.

Date: Jan 3, 1995

LONDON, Jan 3 (Reuter) - A British teenager allegedly hacked into sensitive U.S. government computers and was able to monitor secret communications over the North Korean nuclear crisis last spring, the Independent newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The boy tapped into several defence computers for seven months in what U.S. officials conceded was one of the most serious breaches of computer security in recent years, the paper said.

The 16-year-old, after reading the messages, put them on a bulletin board on the Internet, an international computer network accessible to 35 million users.

A British hacker who read the messages told the Independent they contained information about firing sites in North Korea and field intelligence.

"He kept detailed logs of communication traffic. He really couldn't believe his luck. The Americans thought he was a spy but he told them he was just doing it for fun," the hacker told the Independent.

The boy, nicknamed "Datastream" by other Internet users, was finally caught by special U.S. investigators because he left his terminal on-line to a U.S. defence computer overnight.

British police arrested the boy in July and prosecutors are expected to decide this month whether he can be charged, the Independent said.

In a statement to the paper, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations acknowledged the hacker could have accessed and read the Korean files.

(c) Reuters Limited 1995. All rights reserved.