Markus Hess

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the physician, see Markus M. Hess .

Markus Hess is a former German hacker .

KGB hack

Markus Hess was involved in the KGB hack in the 1980s along with Karl Koch and others . He appeared under the pseudonym "Urmel" (after the children's book character Urmel from the ice ) in the worldwide network. On June 23, 1987, Markus Hess's home and workplace in Hanover were searched after Clifford Stoll of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California became aware of the hacker who had broken into the laboratory's computers. In a trial before the Higher Regional Court in Celle , in which Clifford Stoll also testified, Hess and others were sentenced to various suspended sentences in 1990 .

Goals of the hacks

Calculators that Markus Hess hacked:

• SRI International - Menlo Park , California
• US Army Darcom - Seckenheim
• Fort Bruckner Army Base - Japan
• US Army 24th Infantry - Fort Stewart , Georgia
• US Navy Coastal Systems Computer - Panama City , Florida
• US Air Force - Ramstein
• MIT MX Computer , Cambridge , Massachusetts
• OPTIMUS Database - United States Department of Defense
• Air Force Systems Command - El Segundo , California
• Anniston Army Depot - Anniston , Alabama

Cinematic reception

The story of Markus Hess is partially told in the film 23 - Nothing is as it seems . For dramaturgical reasons, Hess is combined into one person (David) in the film with Hans Heinrich Huebner (pseudonym "Pengo"), who was also involved in the KGB hack. Thus, the representation in the film does not correspond to the actual events.

The story of Clifford Stoll was also filmed under the name " The KGB, the Computer, and Me " (1990). The television film first aired in the United States on October 3, 1990 (TV). The film was produced on location by the WGBH Educational Foundation for the US television documentary series Nova . The episode is about 60 minutes long and also contains a short interview with the hacker Pengo ( Hans Heinrich Hübner ) and some recordings by Markus Hess that were taken during the trial in Celle.

The story of the discovery of the hack is also taken up in the documentary series Mysteries in the Museum (season 5, episode 10). The incident is described in detail on the basis of an exhibit - the oscilloscope, which enabled the hacker's distance to be estimated from Bell Laboratories. As a result, Clifford Stoll himself has a say.

literature

• Thomas Ammann, Matthias Lehnhardt, Gerd Meißner & Stephan Stahl: Hackers for Moscow. German computer spies in the service of the KGB. Wunderlich, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-8052-0490-6 .
• Katie Hafner , John Markoff : Cyberpunk. Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Simon & Schuster, New York NY et al. 1995, ISBN 0-684-81862-0 ( A Touchstone Book ).
• Stanley H. Kremen: Apprehending The Computer Hacker. The Collection and Use of Evidence . Computer Forensics Online. 1998.
• Hans-Christian Schmid , Michael Gutmann : 23. The story of the hacker Karl Koch. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-08477-4 (dtv 8477).
• Clifford Stoll: Stalking the Wily Hacker (PDF; 210 kB) . In: Communications of the ACM . 31, No. 5, May 1988.
• Clifford Stoll : Cuckoo's Egg . The hunt for the German hackers who cracked the Pentagon. With a recent afterword by the author. 5th edition, updated new edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-13984-8 ( Fischer 13984).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ How did you live? In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1990, pp. 181-184 ( Online - Jan. 29, 1990 ).
2. ↑ German spied on Pentagon (newspaper article in Tagesspiegel )
3. ↑ ! Newsflash! - Spies or hackers - The trial ( February 20, 2010 memento on the Internet Archive ) of the Chaos Computer Club