◆ SpookStack

-LEXIS®-NEXIS® View Printable Pa e Page 2 of 2 . Lamo said he broke into the newspaper's main intranet, or internal network, through another network linked to it, In all, he found seven insecure servers. He soon found an unsecured database of employee Social Security numbers, which he used to sign on to the system as various employees who were using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers as passwords, a common convention. He then used the account of an administrative assistant to create a user account for himself with broad privileges. Once he was signed on as an employee, he could have filed his own articles or possibly altered stories written by real New York Times reporters, Lame acknowledged. He once changed an old news article archived on the Yahoo Web site to prove a point. But tampering with New York Times stories "was something that I didn't think it was appropriate to explore,” he said. Besides, he figured that the New York Times editors would stop any unauthorized writing from seeing print. "I'd be surprised if any really heinous changes made it through,” Lamo said. E-mail Carrie Kirby at ckirby@sfchronicle.com. LOAD-DATE: February 28, 2002 _ http://www.nexis.com/research/search/submitViewTagged : 2/28/02 FBI(19-cv-1495)-1626