An intruder has penetrated the same nationwide computer network hit by a destructive "worm" program in 1988, but so far no damage has been detected, a federally funded computer alert center said Monday.
In a warning sent to the Internet's "hundreds of thousands" of users, the Computer Emergency Response Team, known as CERT, said the intruder has electronically "broken into" several computer systems and "several dozen more attempts were made last Thursday and Friday.""We don't think the intruder is a (computer) program. Current evidence indicates it is one person sitting at a computer terminal and manually trying" to enter various computer systems by stealing secret passwords, said Terry McGillen, a spokesman for CERT.
No serious damage had been reported as of Monday afternoon, McGillen said, but government investigators were still searching for the hacker behind the intrusion.
The New York Times quoted unnamed investigators as saying the intruder hit computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Texas and Digital Equipment Corp.
The invader had not stolen into any Defense Department computer programs, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen said Monday.
Internet was one of the two national computer networks stricken in November 1988 by an electronic "worm."