COMPUTER CASE TAKES A TWIST By Danna Dykstra Coy This article appeared in the Telegram-Tribune Newspaper, San Luis Obispo, CA. March 29, 1991. Permission to electronically reproduce this article was given by the newspaper's senior editor. ***** A suspected computer hacker says San Luis Obispo police overreacted when they broke into his house and confiscated thousands of dollars of equipment. "I feel violated and I'm angry" said 34-year-old engineer Ron Hopson. All of Hopson's computer equipment was seized last week by police who believed he may have illegally tried to "hack" his way into an office computer belonging to two San Luis Obispo dermatologists. Police also confiscated equipment belonging to three others. "If police had known more about what they were doing, I don't think it would have gone this far," Hopson said. "They've treated me like a criminal, and I was never aware I was doing anything wrong. It's like a nightmare." Hopson, who has not been arrested in the case, was at work last week when a neighbor called to tell him there were three patrol cars and two detective cars at his house. Police broke into the locked front door of his residence, said Officer Gary Nemeth, and broke down a locked door to his study where he keeps his computer. "They took my stuff, they rummaged through my house, and all the time I was trying to figure out what I did, what this was about. I didn't have any idea." A police phone tap showed three calls were made from Hopson's residence this month to a computer at an office shared by doctors James Longabaugh and Jeffery Herten. The doctors told police they suspected somebody was trying to access the computer in their office at 15 Santa Rosa St. Their system, which contains patient records and billing information, kept shutting down. The doctors were unable to access their patients' records, said Nemeth. They had to pay a computer technician at least $1,500 to re-program their modem, a device that allows computers to communicate through telephone lines. Hopson said there is an easy explanation for the foul-up. He said he was trying to log-on to a public bulletin board that incorrectly gave the doctors number as the key to a system called "Cygnus XI". Cygnus XI enabled people to send electronic messages to one another, but the Cygnus XI system was apparently outdated. The person who started it up moved from the San Luis Obispo area last year, and the phone company gave the dermatologists his former number, according to Officer Nemeth. Hopson said he learned about Cygnus XI through a local computer club, the SLO- BYTES User Group. "Any of the group's 250 members could have been trying to tap into the same system", said Robert Ward, SLO-BYTES club secretary and computer technician at Cal Poly. In addition, he suspects members gave the phone number to fellow computer buffs and could have been passed around the world through the computer Bulletin-Board system. "I myself might have tried to access it three or four times if I was a new user," he said. "I'd say if somebody tried 50 times, fine, they should be checked out, but not just for trying a couple of times." Police said some 200 calls were made to the doctors modem during the 10 days the phone was tapped. "They say, therefore, its obvious somebody is trying to make a game of trying to crack the computer code", said Hopson. "The only thing obvious to me is a lot of people have that published number. Nobody's trying to crack a code to gain illegal access to a system. I only tried it three times and gave up, figuring the phone was no longer in service." Hopson said he tried to explain the situation to the police. "But they took me to an interrogation room and said I was lying. They treated me like a big-time criminal, and now they won't give me back my stuff." Hopson admitted he owned several illegally obtained copies of software confiscated by police. "But so does everybody," he said, "and the police have ever right to keep them, but I want the rest of my stuff." Nemeth, whose training is in police work and not computer crimes, said this is the first such case for the department and he learning as he goes along. He said the matter has been turned over to the District Attorney's Office, which will decide whether to bring charges against Hopson and one other suspect. The seized belongings could be sold to pay restitution to the doctors who paid to re-program their system. Nemeth said the police are waiting for a printout to show how many times the suspects tried to gain access to the doctors' modem. "You can try to gain access as many times as you want on one phone call. The fact a suspect only called three times doesn't mean he only tried to gain access three times." Nemeth said he is aware of the bulletin board theory. "The problem is we believe somebody out there intentionally got into the doctors' system and shut it down so nobody could gain access, based on evidence from the doctors' computer technician," said Nemeth. "I don't think we have that person, because the guy would need a very sophisticated system to shut somebody else's system down." At the same time, he said, Hopson and the other suspects should have known to give up after the first failed attempt. "The laws are funny. You don't have to prove malicious intent when you're talking about computer tampering. The first attempt you might say was an honest mistake. More than once, you have to wonder." Police this week filled reports with the District Attorney's Office regarding their investigation of Hopson and another San Luis Obispo man suspected of computer tampering. Police are waiting for Stephen Brown, a deputy district attorney, to decide whether there is enough evidence against the two to take court action. If so, Nemeth said he will file reports involving two other suspects, both computer science majors from Cal Poly. All computers, telephones, computer instruction manuals, and program disks were seized from three houses in police searches last week. Hundreds of disks containing about $5,000 worth of illegally obtained software were also taken from the suspects' residences. Police and the District Attorney's Office are not naming the suspects because the case is still under investigation. However, police confirmed Hopson was one of the suspects in the case after he called the Telegram-Tribune to give his side of the story. ###