Terminal Compromise

Scott no longer had any trouble accepting that. "So the securi- ty guy's job," one short balding middle aged American hacker said, "is to keep us out. I'm a cracker." What's that? "The cracker is kind of like a safecracker, or lock picker. It's my job to figure out how to get into the computers." Scott had to stifle a giggle when he found out that this slight man's handle was appropriately Waldo.

Waldo went on to explain that he was a henpecked CPA who needed a hobby that would bore his wife to tears. So he locked himself in the bas.e.m.e.nt, far away from her, and got hooked on computers. He found that rummaging through other computers was an amusing alternative to watching Honeymooner reruns while his wife kvetched. After a while, he said he discovered that he had a talent for cracking through the front doors of computers. On the professional hacker circuit that made Waldo a valuable commodity.

The way it works, he explained, was that he would trade access codes for outlines of the contents of the computers. If he wanted to look further, he maintained a complete indexing system on the contents of thousands of computers world wide. He admit- ted it was the only exciting part of his life. "The most fun a CPA has," he said calmly, "is cutting up client's credit cards.

But me," he added proudly, "I've been in and out of the IRS computers more times than Debbie did it in Dallas."

"The IRS computers? You've been in there?"

"Where else does a CPA go, but to the scene of the crime." Waldo laughed at his joke. "At first it was a game, but once I got into the IRS backplane, which connects the various IRS districts together, the things I found scared me. No one is in control over there. No one. They abuse taxpayers, basically honest taxpayers who are genuinely in trouble and need some understand- ing by their government. Instead they are on the receiving end of a vicious attack by a low level government paper slave who gets his thrills by seizing property. The IRS is immune from due process." Scott immediately thought of Tyrone and his const.i.tu- tional ravings the other night.

"The IRS's motto is, 'guilty until we cash the check'. And IRS management ignores it. Auditors are on a quota basis, and if they don't recover their allotted amounts of back taxes, they can kiss their jobs goodbye." The innocent looking Waldo, too, had found a cause, a raison d'

tre, for hacking away at government computers.

"You know that for a fact?" Asked Scott. This alone was a major story. Such a policy was against everything the Const.i.tution stood for. Waldo nodded and claimed to have seen the internal policy memoranda. Who was in charge? Essentially, said Waldo, no one. It was anarchy.

"They have the worst security of any agency that should by all rights have the best. It's a crime against American citizens.

Our rights and our privacy have shriveled to nothing." Waldo, the small CPA, extolled the virtues of fighting the system from within. From within he could battle the computers that had become the system.

"Have you ever, shall I say, fixed files in the IRS computers?"

"Many times," Waldo said proudly. "For my clients who were being screwed, sometimes I am asked to help. It's all part of the job," he said of his beloved avocation.

"How many systems have you cracked?" Asked Scott, visibly im- pressed.

"I am," Waldo said modestly, "the best. I have cracked 1187 systems in 3 years. 1040 was my personal goal for a while, then 1099, but it's kind of open ended now."

"That's almost one a day?"

"You could look at it like that, but sometimes you can get into 10 or twenty in one day. You gotta remember," Waldo said with pride, "a lot of homework goes into this. You just don't decide one day to crack a system. You have to plan it."

"So how do you do it?"

"O.K., it's really pretty simple. D'you speak software?"

"Listen, you make it real simple, and I won't interrupt. OK?"

"Interrupt. Hah! That's a good one. Here, let me show you on the computer," Waldo said as he leaned over to peck at the keyboard.

"The first step to getting into computers is to find where they are located, electronically speaking, O.K.?" Scott agreed that you needed the address of the bank before you could rob it.

"So what we do is search for computers

he entered the numbers carefully. "That's Stamford. By the way, I wrote this software myself." Waldo spoke of his software as a proud father would of his first born son. Scott patted him on the back, urging him to continue.

"So we ask the computer to call every number in the 203-968 area sequentially. When the number is answered, my computer records whether a voice, a live person answered, or a computer answered or if it was a fax machine." Scott never had imagined that hacking was so systematic.

"Then, the computer records its findings and we have a complete list of every computer in that area," Waldo concluded.

"That's 10,000 phone calls," Scott realized. "It must cost a fortune and take forever?"

"Nah, not a dime. The phone company has a hole. It takes my program less than a second to record the response and we're off to the next call. It's all free, courtesy of TPC," Waldo bragged.

"TPC?" Questioned Scott.

"The Phone Company," Waldo chuckled.

"I don't see how you can do the entire country that way, 10,000 calls at a shot. In New York there must be ten million phones."

"Yes," agreed Waldo, "it is a never ending job. Phone numbers change, computers come and go, security gets better. But you have to remember, there are a lot of other people out there doing the same thing, and we all pool our information. You could ask for the number to almost any computer in the world, and someone in our group, somewhere, will have the number and likely the pa.s.swords."

"Jesus..."

"I run my program at night, every night, when I sleep. On a good night, if the calls are connected quickly enough, I can go through about a thousand phone numbers. I figure roughly a month per prefix."

"I am amazed, simply amazed. Truly impressed," said Scott. "You know, you always kind of imagine these things are possible, but until it stares you in the face it's black magic."

"You wanna know the best part?" Waldo said teasingly. "I get paid for it, too." Waldo crouched over and spoke to Scott secre- tively. "Not everyone here approves, but, I sell lists to junk fax mail-order houses. They want the fax lists. On a good night I can clear a couple hundred while my modem does the dialing."

The underground culture of Scott's day, demonstrating against the war, getting ga.s.sed while marching by George Was.h.i.+ngton Universi- ty, getting thrown out of a Nixon rally at Madison Square Garden seemed so innocent in comparison. He continued to be in awe of the possible applications for a technology not as benign as its creators had intended.

Scott met other hackers; they were proud of the term even with the current negative connotations it carried. He saw how system- ic attacks against the front door to computers were the single biggest challenge to hackers; the proverbial chase before the catch, the romance to many.

At another tabletop laden with computers Scott learned that there are programs designed to try pa.s.swords according to certain rules. Some try every possible combination of letters and num- bers, although that is considered an antique method of brute force. More sophisticated hackers use advanced algorithms which try to open the computer with 'likely' pa.s.swords. It was all very scientific, the approach to the problem, thought Scott.

He met communications gurus who knew more about the switching networks inside the phone company than AT&T engineers. They had complete diagrams and function calls and source code for even the latest software revisions on the 4ESS and the new 5ESS switches.

"Once you're into the phone computers," one phone phreak ex- tolled, "you have an immense amount of power at your fingertips.

Incredible. Let me give you an example."

The speaker was another American, one that Scott would have cla.s.sified as an ex-Berkeley-hippie still living in the past.

His dirty shoulder length hair capped a skinny frame which held his jeans up so poorly that there was no question where the sun didn't s.h.i.+ne.

"You know that the phone company is part of the Tri-Lateral Commission, working with Kissinger and the Queen of England to control the world. Right?" His frazzled speech was matched by an annoying habit of sweeping his stringy hair off his face every few words. "It's up to us to stop them."

Scott listened politely as Janis, (who adopted the moniker from his favorite singer) rewrote history with tortured explanations of how the phone company is the hidden seat of the American government, and how they have been lying to the public for dec- ades. And the Rockefellers are involved too, he a.s.sured Scott.

"They could declare martial law, today, and take over the coun- try. Those who control the communications control the power," he oracled. "Did you know," he took Scott into his confidence, "that phones are always on and they have computers recording everything you say and do in your own home. That's illegal!"

Janis bellowed. Not to mention crazy, thought Scott.

One of Janis' a.s.sociates came over to rescue Scott. "Sorry, he's a little enthusiastic and has some trouble communicating on the Earthly plane." Alva, as he called himself, explained coherent- ly that with some of the newer security systems in place, it is necessary to manipulate the phone company switches to learn system pa.s.swords.

"For example, when we broke into a Bell computer that used CI- CIMS, it was tough to crack. But now they've added new security that, in itself, is flawless, albeit crackable," Alva explained.

"Once you get past the pa.s.swords, which is trivial, the system asks you three unique questions about yourself for final identi- fication. Pretty smart, huh?" Scott agreed with Alva, a voice of apparent moderation. "However, we were already in the phone switch computer, so we programmed in forwarding instructions for all calls that dialed that particular computer. We then inter- cepted the call and connected it to our computer, where we emu- late the security system, and watched the questions and answers go back and forth. After a few hours, you have a hundred differ- ent pa.s.swords to use. There are a dozen other ways to do it, of course."

"Of course," Scott said sarcastically. Is nothing sacred? Not in this world it's not. All's fair in love, war and hacking.

The time flew as Scott learned what a tightly knitted clique the hackers were. The ethos 'honor among thieves' held true here as it did in many adolescent societies, most recently the American Old West. As a group, perhaps even a subculture, they were arduously taming new territory, each with their own vision of a private digital homestead. Each one taking on the system in their own way, they still needed each other, thus they looked aside if another's techno-social behavior was personally dis- tasteful. The Network was big enough for everyone. A working anarchy that heralded the standard of John Paul Jones as their sole commandment: Don't Tread On Me.

He saw tapping devices that allowed the interception of computer data which traveled over phone lines. Line Monitors and Sniffers were commercially available, and legal; equipment that was nomi- nally designed to troubleshoot networks. In the hands of a hack- er, though, it graduated from being a tool of repair to an offensive weapon.

Small hand held radios were capable of listening in to the in- creasingly popular remote RF networks which do not require wires.

Cellular phone eavesdropping devices permitted the owner to scan and focus on the conversation of his choice. Scott examined the electronic gear to find a manufacturer's identification.