A Tale of Two Spies: The Outside Hacker and the Trusted Insider

Abstract

Abstract From 1986 to 1988, several computer hackers located in Hannover, Germany worked their way into more than 40 computer systems here in the United States, mostly military and federal government research-related systems. They downloaded hundreds of files consisting of thousands of pages of material, looking for military secrets pertaining to the latest weapons and other defense systems. They sold these printouts to a Soviet KGB agent in East Berlin. Although they managed to penetrate scores of computers during this two-year period, not one page of the material they stole was classified. Sensitive information, yes, but all of it publicly available. In February 1989, a young 22-year-old U.S. soldier, Michael A. Peri, abruptly left his unit in Fulda, Germany and calmly climbed the barbed-wire fence separating East and West Germany. In his black duffel bag was a laptop computer he had stolen from his unit, along with several floppy disks. Two of the disks contained hundreds of pages of classified U.S. se...