Is hacking a war game?

In the two hours that intruders compromised the ISP's main web server, they were able to temporarily alter the ISP's website and manipulate e-mail.

	At least one person believes the war games are more than games.

Meinel's self-promotion and strongly expressed opinions on the subject of hacking probably help to explain why some participants didn't stop at the planned target. Earlier this month, one hacker bypassed the designated system, gained root access at the server level and erased the operating system itself. The attack took the Internet service provider, Rt66 Internet, based in Albuquerque, N.M., off-line four hours, and about 50 of its telnetting, or direct shell accounts, offline for 36 hours. In another case, a wargame contestant gained control and shut down the system completely.

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Assaults continued last week
On April 10, Rt66 lost control of its main administrative computer for approximately 45 minutes, said Mark Schmitz, vice president of Engineering International, and co-founder of Rt66. "On Sunday night, April 12, 1998, we were attacked again, this time our main Web server and DNS machine, chili.rt66.com, was compromised," Schmitz explained in an e-mail to the Rt66's backbone provider, ANS. "The hackers had that machine for about 2 hours, until we detected the break-in, and removed the machine from the Net, and regained control."

For about 20 minutes that day, the attackers temporarily redirected Rt66 visitors to an altered Web site. And they used a dormant account formerly belonging to Meinel to send out e-mail pretending to be her. The mail included a fake apology and what claimed to be certain private information.

Meinel described the incident as "despicable"
"On Easter I was also hit with massive credit card fraud," Meinel reported in her April 13 issue of the "Happy Hacker Digest." Meinel insisted the credit information was not associated or even available through Rt66. Meinel's critics have a variety of complaints. Some challenge the concept of her game itself as "dangerous," and "irresponsible," while others take issue with Meinel's technical skills. Meinel criticisms date long before the King of the Hill contest.

The wargame was resurrected Monday after a short sabbatical. Rt66 is presently adding additional computers and security features.

"We are in the process of installing a new firewall to protect our internal machines, and are monitoring our public servers 24/7 to ensure that even if they are compromised they will not be used to attack other sites on the net," Schmitz said in an e-mail to ANS.