Monday, July 1, 2002		Feature

POLISH prosecutors said they were searching for a computer hacker believed by the USA to have penetrated NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) causing damage reportedly estimated at $1 million. The search was focusing on Poznan in the west of Poland, a country that has a tradition of code breaking dating back to helping crack Nazi Germany's Enigma encryption machine during World War II.

But regional prosecutor Miroslaw Adamski declined to confirm a newspaper report that US cybercops had followed an electronic trail to a computer used by a Poznan high school graduate.

"We started our investigation earlier this month after receiving information from the US embassy," Adamski told Reuters. "At the moment, we don't want to confirm any of the accusations."

Adamski did, however, say investigators were examining computers from which the electronic break-in was believed to have originated. Newspapers reported that a liaison officer from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was aiding the probe in a bid to ascertain how much data had been taken from NASA.

No comment was immediately available from the US Embassy.