Police Beat

Tom Collins
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 14, 1996

A male student was arrested Nov. 2 after he allegedly broke into a campus computer system.
Police reports gave this chronology of the events leading to the arrest:
On Oct. 15, the student, Gerald J. Lyon, 19, a resident of Yuma Hall, 1107 E. North Campus Drive, called an employee in the Yuma Residence Hall Computer Center expressing his interest in becoming a volunteer computer monitor. Lyon never actually signed up, however.
Despite this, Lyon called another lab employee asking for the password to the lab's UNIX system. He told the employee he had been given access privileges to the system, though he really had not.
Computer lab employees told police Lyon accessed the UNIX system and changed the root password sometime Oct. 15. Employees told police that, with the root password, the whole computer system can be accessed.
Computer employees changed the password, and within 24 hours, Lyon changed the password again. Lyon was warned Oct. 22 not to change the password again or action would be taken by the Honors Center, which runs the lab. Lyon was sent an e-mail message that asked him to leave the machines alone.
Computer lab employees then shut down the UNIX computer in Yuma Oct. 25 to keep Lyon out of the system.
Lyon then entered the Yavapai computer lab Oct. 27 and accessed another UNIX computer called Zooropa. Lab employees received e-mail from root@zooropa that read: "You assume that we are so incompetent that your pitiful attempts at security will keep us from accessing the machines. The assumption is incorrect and insulting."
A lab employee changed the password again Oct. 29, then disconnected the keyboard and the network cords from the Yavapai UNIX computer.
A lab employee went to Lyon's room on Oct. 30 demanding the password to the computer by 5 p.m. that day.
The surveillance camera in Yavapai showed Lyon entered the lab at 4 p.m. and went to the UNIX computer. Lyon got a keyboard from another computer and accessed the UNIX computer.
A lab employee tried to access the Yavapai UNIX at 4:20 p.m. from a site outside the Yavapai computer lab but could not get in. He called the Yavapai lab to find out who was using the computer. The videotape indicated Lyon noticed the telephone call, police reports stated. The tape showed Lyon get up from the computer and look out in the hall, returning to the computer briefly before leaving, police reports stated. Lyon left the computer on.
Lyon also failed to turn in the password by the deadline, according to police reports.
Police contacted Lyon Nov. 2 in the Gould-Simpson Building. Lyon denied changing any computer passwords before Oct. 30. According to police reports, Lyons told police it probably was a mistake to use a computer he did not have access privileges to.
As police talked to Lyon, he became "fidgety" and said he wanted to go home and go to bed, police reports stated. Police then arrested Lyon.
When police searched Lyon, they found two false identification cards, one from Arizona and one from Oregon. He said he had not used the cards but got them to see if he could do it.
Lyon was booked into Pima County Jail on one count of third degree burglary, one count of first degree computer fraud, one count of aggravated criminal damage, one count of theft of services by control and two counts of forgery.

A male student reported being assaulted by his girlfriend Tuesday outside Old Main, 1200 E. University Blvd.
At 7 p.m., the student and his girlfriend, also a student, came to campus because she had a class. She got out of the car, and the student slid over to the driver seat.
The girlfriend went to the her class, then returned to the car five minutes later, the student told police.
When she returned, she yelled the student's name and hit him with a "rock or a brick," the student told police. The girlfriend then pulled the student out of the car and left him in the road. She drove off.
The student told police he had no idea why his girlfriend had struck him and that she had never done it before. He said they had not had an argument.
The student told police he wanted to press charges.
Police attempts to contact the girlfriend were unsuccessful.

Police Beat is compiled from official University of Arizona Police Department reports.