The electronic mail box in which it was held was owned by a student
The electronic mail box in which it was held was owned by a student. It is not known how many other people have already read it, but it is known that the material has been transferred to at least one other site by the student.The Prime Minister’s telephone details constitute one small part of data that was taken off the BT computer. It is understood that there are other sites on the Internet at which other secret data can be accessed.The Prime Minister’s information was held on the Internet on the computer of an educational establishment. The Independent reported on Thursday that thousands of secret telephone numbers and addresses, kept on the company’s central database, had been leaked. John Major told the Commons on Thursday that having made inquiries, BT was “satisfied there was no hacking of the system, nor any evidence that confidential information referred to in the [Independent] article has ever been on the Internet”.
But last night, the Independent was able to access on the Internet telephone records of 10 Downing Street, including private direct-line numbers and lines. Anyone on the Internet could potentially gain access to the same electronic documents. A computer security consultant in the presence of senior members of Independent staff connected with the Internet late yesterday Within seconds, a file was located and opened It gave details of the Prime Minister’s telephones The material had been “parked” on the net on 13 November.
Units of the USS Nassau Mediterranean Amphibious Group have been directed to shorten scheduled port visits to Toulon. They will be available if needed to support UN, Nato and US military personnel, the Pentagon said. The Marines should arrive off Bosnia early next week, NBC News reported, adding that Washington hopes their presence will be enough to scare the Serbs into ending their siege of Bihac.. . Secret information taken from British Telecom’s main computer is available on the Internet, the computer network accessible by 35m people around the globe. It is supposed to contain internal safeguards against unlawful hacking.A BT spokesman said last night: “We were made aware of this apparent breach of security some weeks ago and a high-level investigation is currently under way.”(Photograph omitted).
About 2,000 Marines and sailors have been ordered to move into the Adriatic Sea as a precautionary measure, a Pentagon official said yesterday, Reuter reports. He was given passwords by permanent members of staff, and discovered that these passwords gave them access to the full range of information on the computer. The computer database, the Customer Services System, was designed by the American company Cincinnati Bell. He stopped communicating with Mr Fleming in August and it is not known if he remains active.It is also apparent that some of the numbers billed to the intelligence services are, in fact, operated by apparently private businesses.
Two numbers chosen at random were answered with company names. It also emerged that MI5 phone bills are being paid not by the Home Office but by the Ministry of Defence.Other information taken from the computer includes the location of missile bases and military command and control centres in the UK; the private line numbers of John and Norma Major at Downing Street; and private lines for Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace.It would be extremely difficult to tap any of the unlisted lines identified in the documents. Secure passwords giving access to the system were left lying around BT computer offices. Mr Fleming verified that this was possible by working on a short-term contract for BT, through an employment agency, and gaining access to the computer.One of Britain’s leading computer security experts, Ian James, who was for 10 years a senior officer in the Fraud Squad and now gives advice to some of Britain’s biggest companies, said last night: “If you are telling me that that computer has been hacked into, it is the most serious breach of security I have ever heard of. It is thought he was able to access the material with astonishing ease. One MI5 location is described as “shoe shops” and another as “textile warehouseman” Various MI6 locations are also identified. Its training establishment – the school for spies – sits next to a pub in a nondescript building on a busy street in south London.The Independent has been able to verify the authenticity of the information which runs to hundreds of thousands of words and numbers and appears as internal BT records taken straight off the computer.The hacker would not have been able to alter the records, simply read them.
