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 Jan/Feb. 1998 Systems
Can Hackers Break into Print? by Arik Hesseldahl
No one was more surprised to read about John Elway's new nipple ring than John Elway. On September 22, the Broncos quarterback was eating breakfast with his family as he studied The Denver Post's coverage of the previous day's 38-20 win against the Cincinnati Bengals. Eighth in a collection of nine vignettes on the game was a report headlined elway's ring, hinting that the normally staid star was taking a page from the book of basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman. It read: "In the locker room following the game, Elway displayed a discreet gold ring that adorns his left nipple," and went on to quote him: "It was a gift from my wife."
The Elway item had all the appearances of being a legitimate nugget for Schefter's often-wacky column. It was provocative, included a pithy quote, and arrived in the right place at the right time. Scarbrough said that whoever sent the story attached a series of computer commands that placed it in the appropriate file directory for sports stories sent by remote. He has several theories about the item's source: a former employee, a current staffer, or a competitor who was looking over Schefter's shoulder at the stadium. But evidence for any theory is virtually non-existent. Theoretically, anyone with a computer and a modem plus a little inside knowledge of how a particular system works could break into print. But newspaper editors and computer technicians around the country say such incidents are rare, and that the key to preventing them is communication between editor and reporter. "We get lots of bogus items on our system," says John Hamlin, news systems director for The Oregonian. There's no way to filter out bad items and separate them from good items. That's what we pay editors for." Hamlin says that a modem and the address of The Oregonian's mainframe computer is all one needs to submit a bogus story. But editors generally have no reason to touch stories sent to the remote bin unless they are expecting something from a specific reporter, he said. "There is no password protection on our remote system," says Barry Abisch, news technology manager for Gannett Suburban Newspapers in White Plains, New York. "We make it as easy as possible for our reporters to file a story." But to do so you need to have a little information that only a staffer would know, such as the names of certain file directories, and the exact commands to send the story to the right place. After a story is filed, Abisch says, reporters usually call in to make sure it arrived safely. Ed Holzinger, systems editor of the San Jose Mercury News says it's possible that a determined hacker could infiltrate his newspaper's system, but that it would take a lot of trial and error. After three unsuccessful tries to log into the system, the computer automatically closes the connection and temporarily disables the phone port being used. "At most of the newspapers I've worked at," says Holzinger, "copy flow is not particularly logical unless you're an insider." It is insiders, or ex-insiders, however, who can cause the big problems. In November federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged a former Forbes employee with breaking into the magazine's computer system and causing what the company estimates was more than $100,000 in damage. George Parente, who was briefly employed as a computer specialist at Forbes, denies the break-in. But according to The New York Times, FBI agents found confidential Forbes salary and planning documents at his Queens home, as well as documents on computer hacking and sabotage. One was called "The Trojan Horse Construction Kit," which promises to "completely pulverize" a computer's operating system. Hesseldahl is a freelance writer living in New York.
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