September 5, 1983

The number of young people roaming without authorization through some of the nation's most sophisticated computer systems runs into the hundreds and possibly thousands, according to computer crime experts. Further, they say, the number is growing hand-in-hand with the boom in personal computers. These electronic explorations are no longer the province of a few highly skilled computer science experts. The relatively low cost of computer equipment and the existence of electronic bulletin boards that permit the fast, nationwide exchange of information have opened up the pathways to a vast universe of curious young people who often have only a rudimentary knowledge of the field. Many Americans discovered that some young people were tapping into sophisticated systems from home computers in their bedrooms and basements in early August, when it was reported that a half-dozen Milwaukee youths had gained access to about 60 computers, including one at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and an unclassified one at the nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M. Many computer enthusiasts scoff at the Milwaukee group.

A Soviet general gave an account today of the incident involving the Korean Air Lines 747 that implied that a Soviet fighter pilot could have confused the airliner with an RC- 135 reconnaissance plane of the kind used by American forces off the Pacific coast of the Soviet Far East. Col. Gen. Semyon F. Romanov, chief of the main headquarters staff of the air-defense forces, said that as the pilot of the Soviet fighter sought to guide the airliner to a Soviet airfield, the 747 ''flew with extinguished lights, and its outlines resemble much those of the American reconnaissance plane RC- 135.'' Tass Quotes Australian Paper It was the second time in 24 hours that a Soviet statement on the incident has hinted that the Soviet action might have resulted from a mistaken identification of the airliner as a United States spy plane. On Saturday, the official press agency Tass quoted an Australian daily, The Sydney Morning Herald, as saying the Korean airliner ''could have been taken in the Soviet Union for a spy plane since in radars it looks like an intelligence plane of the U.S. Air Force.'' Still quoting the Australian paper, Tass said the Korean 747 could also have been confused with ''a U.S. E4B bomber,'' apparently a reference to the E4B aircraft used as an airborne command post by the Strategic Air Command.

News Analysis JERUSALEM, Sept. 4 - In withdrawing from the Shuf Mountains overlooking Beirut, Israel has formally abandoned the most ambitious effort of its war in Lebanon, aimed at ridding the country of Syrian forces and bolstering a stable, pro-Israeli government with the power to police Lebanese territory. In manner and timing, the army's partial pullout, which began Saturday night and continued through today, contradicted some basic elements of the Israeli strategy developed by Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister at the time, when Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982. Mr. Sharon's expansive goal went far beyond the stated task of clearing the Palestine Liberation Organization from artillery and rocket range of northern Israeli towns and kibbutzim. His broader purpose was to free all of Lebanon from P.L.O. and Syrian troops, to install a tough Christian government that would sign a peace treaty with Israel and to turn secured territory over gradually to that government's armed forces.

Heavy fighting erupted in the mountains overlooking the Lebanese capital today as Christian and Druse militias scrambled for positions evacuated hours earlier by Israeli troops pulling back from the Beirut area. For the entire day and into the evening, the dull thud of artillery resounded throughout the greater Beirut area. Early this evening the police reported that 34 were killed and 25 were wounded in the day's fighting. Military officers and the Beirut state radio said heavy fighting involving artillery, machine guns and tanks broke out in several areas of the mountains east of here, where Christian and Druse villages exist in close and uneasy proximity.

Senior Reagan Administration officials said today that, two hours before shooting down a South Korean airliner off its coast, the Soviet Union spotted a United States reconnaissance plane in the general area and apparently thought that both aircraft were American reconnaissance planes. But White House and State Department officials insisted that whatever initial confusion might have existed, the reconnaissance plane, an RC-135, was 1,000 miles from the scene of the shooting down of the South Korean 747 jetliner. They said the Soviet military had had ample time to discern that the plane they tracked into their airspace was a commercial jetliner. The Administration continued to maintain that there was no way the Russians could have mistaken the identity of the plane at the time they shot it down. Both The Associated Press and United Press International quoted Administration officials as saying that at one stage the reconnaissance plane had come within 75 miles of the Korean airliner.