"In November 1991, a systems administrator for the Cray Supercomputer at the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Facility at NASA Ames Research Center, advised that intrusions had been made into "front-end" computers supporting the Cray. The NAS is devoted to research on critical technologies, mainly in the area of high-mach 3D wind tunnel simulations. The hacker(s) gained entry via a Thinking Machines, Sun work station (tme.sun), inserted a trojan horse program, and began cracking passwords. As a result of this activity, NASA was forced to shut down the front-end computers at the NAS for a week, while systems were re-booted and re-loaded with clean system files. Additionally, all passwords on the system had to be changed. The total loss was estimated at between $57,000 and $500,000, depending on valuation of services expended. The lower figure represents in-house costs, while the latter reflects the value of corrective work based on a service contracted to an outside source. This constitutes a violation of 18 USC §1030, which the Northern District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office has agreed to consider for prosecution."