2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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created_at: '2015-11-14T12:41:20.000Z'
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title: Confession of a C0dez Kid (2001)
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url: http://readtext.org/history/confession-of-codez-kid/
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author: tux
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points: 42
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 13
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1447504880
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_tux
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- story_10565456
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objectID: '10565456'
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2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
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year: 2001
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2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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What seems like a long time period at age thirteen seems significantly
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shorter when you’re over double that age. With that in mind, the entire
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“hacker phenomenon” should be viewed as an extreme bit of ephemera,
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the result of a naive convergence between technology and what can be
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stereotyped as 1980’s teenage angst and rebellion. The “hacker kid” made
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famous in every 1980’s movie became (in a matter that Jean Baudrillard
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would be proud of) not only a reflection of ourselves, but an ideal we
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aspired to as well… and was really only a viable archetype for less than
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ten years. This should be kept in mind by any third-party who’s
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attempting to put this scene in some sort of historical perspective.
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While there might be “hackers” in some sense even in the new millennium,
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this file specifically relates experiences of those of us who saw John
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Hughes movies at an actual movie theater back in the 80’s. (“Hackers”
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generally meaning self-described phone phreaks and those who obtained
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unauthorized access to corporate computer networks, not just people good
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with computers).
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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These ramblings were inspired by my recent discovery of some old BBS
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buffers and text files I had booted up on my old Apple IIe while
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recently visiting my parents’ house. Luckily (or unluckily) for you, I
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have a near-photographic memory of all of these events. (Too bad my
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post-high school years are rather hazy…) ;)
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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This surely has thousands of corollaries from around the country. My
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question is: where are you all now?
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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My father had been transferred to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado
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Springs, CO at the beginning of the summer in 1986, right during some
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extreme hormonal changes on my behalf. I was twelve years old at the
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time, and had absolutely nothing to do, with no kids in my neighborhood.
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In lieu of this, my mother signed me up for a BASIC programming class
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for “gifted” (or perhaps just geeky) kids at one of the local high
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schools. Of course, the class was really more about playing video games
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and networking with other fledgling geeks than it was about programming.
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But the last day of class was devoted to something I’d always been
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interested in: the modem.
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I’d been fascinated by modems for years and finally my father had
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purchased a “NetWorker” modem during late 1984 for our Apple IIe, but
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due to only having one local BBS to our old house in Iowa and my
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father’s unwillingness to pay for CompuServe I had quickly lost
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interest in it. To call this modem primitive by today’s standards would
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be an understatement; while it lacked the classic acoustic coupler
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design (made famous by “WarGames”, therefore becoming engrained in the
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public mind as what a modem looked like) it did not have any sort of
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auto-connection feature. This meant that when you dialed in and heard a
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carrier tone, you had to press a switch exterior to the computer to
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connect to the desired baud rate (110 or 300). This 300-baud monstrosity
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was about the cheapest modem on the market, but at $200 (in 1984
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dollars) was still relegated to at least middle-class youth and their
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associated parents.
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We briefly touched on the subject of bulletin-board systems (BBSes) and
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our instructor provided the numbers for a couple of local systems, which
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I proceeded to call when I got home. They were fairly typical and boring
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for the time: systems frequented by off-duty COBOL programmers run on a
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variety of home-grown systems, perhaps TRS-80’s or something running
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CP/M, exchanging messages on the dry subjects of sports and politics.
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However, I did manage to stumble on a list of other local bulletin
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boards, and of course the ones that intrigued me were ones with the
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following names:
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Valhalla (?)
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Elite Connection 548-9519
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Underground Star 390-0783
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Adventurer’s Cove 598-6669
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At the time, there was not nearly the stigma associated with “hacking”
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or piracy in the general computer community that there is now, and there
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was very little concern about what the “proper” uses of computers were
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in the general BBS community. Many people were not even aware they were
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breaking the law by having pirated software around the house, and
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software was freely copied at computer users’ groups and the like. Many
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older BBSers were 60’s types with some sort of anti-establishment bent,
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and even in 1986, you were still considered more than just a little
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weird if you had anything to do with computers. Even sysops of
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“respectable” boards (the ones where old guys talked about politics)
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might know a bit about making a Blue Box or have a copy of the latest
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game you wanted. I would imagine that thousands of other people were
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therefore exposed to what is now called “computer crime” in such a
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benign, clueless way.
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Calling the aforementioned boards would end up causing a dramatic change
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in my life, but I had no idea at the time. The first system I ended up
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calling was “Valhalla”, a “part-time” BBS (the type that was NEVER up
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during its purported hours of operation, usually run by a junior-high
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school kid who didn’t have the money for his own phone line.) But on
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this particular occasion, the board happened to be up. I dialed in and
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proceeded to log in as normal; the Sysop (one “Loki Odinsson”) ended up
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breaking into chat mode immediately and offered to verify my access on
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the spot and call me back voice. He was running a part-time BBS off of a
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Commodore 64 with one floppy disk drive, and apparently I was his only
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user thus far along with his best friend, who had chosen the handle
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“Thor Odinsson”. The details of the conversation are hazy, but I do
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remember him making allusions to “hacking MCI” and him somehow providing
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me with a list of long-distance Commodore 64 pirate BBSes, with exotic
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names like “The Gates Of Hell” and “Underground Empire”.
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I proceeded to call “The Gates of Hell” next. (Even the name sounded
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frightening to a white suburban 12 year old), logged in, and remember
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navigating through the message boards, where people cursed at each other
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on “The War Board”, engaged in the then-raging Apple II vs. Commodore 64
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debate, and wrote stories on the “Sex Board” (I’m sure in retrospect, a
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bunch of sex stories by what surely were a bunch of 15 year old virgins
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would be highly comical.)
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Scared of the phone bill, I logged off after ten minutes, and proceeded
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to call the other numbers local to me. The Elite Connection was next,
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and its new user log in page had tons of scary information about
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“entrapment” and how each user must provide their actual voice number
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for verification. I did as I was told, curious to see if anyone would
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actually call me. (No one ever did.) The message boards on the Elite
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Connection were filled with vague references about hacking and
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phreaking, and the system did not seem terribly active. However, there
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did seem to be a raging local war between the “Warlock” (the sysop of
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the Underground Star) and “The Master Kracker”, a local Apple pirate,
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each of which saying they were going to kick each others’ asses and the
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like. “The Warlock” also seemed to misspell every other word in his
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posts, for some sort of dramatic effect. This also seemed to be an
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extension of the Apple vs. Commodore 64 thing, with the Elite
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Connection’s C64 using sysop “Night Runner” backing The Warlock with
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Apple II pirate “The Assassin” backing The Master Kracker. The Apple
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users were part of some local group called “PPPG” (Pikes’ Peak Pirates’
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Guild.) The C64 vs. Apple thing was very predominant during this time
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period, and was (IMO) steeped in class conflict. In retrospect, the C64
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was not a bad computer, and had much better graphics/sound and
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(important for every teenage geek) consequently, video games. But the
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Apple was more predominant in upper-middle class America, with all of
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the logical consequences not worth going into here.
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At this point, I was getting tired, so I proceeded to log off and call
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the Underground Star, which was filled with more of the same sort of
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thing. A couple of days later, I called the Elite Connection back, and
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made a solicitation for anyone who wanted to trade “APPLE GAMES”. I had
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made posts on BBSes before, but still had no idea how to transfer files
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over the modem. When I called back the next day, I had an e-mail from
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:“The Assassin”, whose real name was John, to give him a call at
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574-2872. I gave him a call, and as it turned out he was a sophomore at
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the same high school I had gotten my introduction to BBSes at. He was
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also lacking a 1200 baud modem, which at the time meant being restricted
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access to all forms of pirate BBSes due to its slow speed. Being a
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300-baud only user in 1986 was the equivalent of being an untouchable in
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India; you generally only associated with other untouchables and no one
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wanted much to do with you.
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John was friendly and patient with me, and he had many new games that I
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wanted. He sent me a copy of “Dalton’s Disk Disintegrator” which allowed
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for the compression of an entire Apple II floppy into one file, and then
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we did a 300-baud transfer of the Activision game “Hacker”, which took
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about two hours. If you’ve never seen text slow by at 300 baud, suffice
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to say that most college graduates can probably read text faster than
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300 baud can scroll by.) He also sent me a copy of a couple of other
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programs he seemed very impressed with himself for owning - “Time Bomb”
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and “Microhacker”. He also made references to “hacking MCI” and I asked
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him for further clarification. The clarification went something like
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this:
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“Dial 630-TIME, and start entering codes starting with 10000, followed
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by a number. If the number goes through, you have a good code. If not,
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redial and start with 10001, etc.” In retrospect, dialing codes
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incrementally, starting with the same value every time, was incredibly
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bad advice, although no one ever seemed to get busted by MCI locally.
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After we had finally transferred “Hacker” after a couple of abortions
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and said conversation, “The Assassin” had started to grow a bit
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impatient with me, probably annoyed by this 12 year old kid who kept
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asking him what other games he had. (He proved a bit short with me on
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subsequent phone calls to his house.) However, now I was armed with the
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knowledge on how to make free phone calls, plus I had a couple of
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weird-sounding “hacker” programs in the form of Microhacker and Time
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Bomb. Microhacker was a tool written by a Denver local to hack
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“MetroPhone” (I had no idea what that was) which didn’t work due to
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its requiring a modem with autoconnect capabilities, and “Time Bomb”
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allowed you to format someone’s disk after a specified number of boots
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and display what was invariably a smart-ass message, something that
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would allow for much jocularity with the kids at school who always
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wanted to come over and copy games from me. The Assassin also gave me a
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copy of Ascii Express, which allowed exchange of files with the Xmodem
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protocal in addition to being one of the most obscure, hard-to-learn,
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and powerful terminal programs ever developed.
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I decided to call 630-TIME. I dialed the number, and after several
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second a weird droney sounding tone greeted me. I dialed 10000, followed
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by a random long-distance number in Denver. The number immediately rang,
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and a stock corporate-announcer female voice stated that “The access
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code you have entered is not valid.” This voice was a bit unnerving, so
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I did not try to “hack” any more codes that night.
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Since I had nothing to do, I started calling the Elite Connection,
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Underground Star, and several other local boards on an almost daily
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basis, although I didn’t make that many other voice connections due to
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my owning an Apple II, and most of the bulletin boards local to me were
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Commodore 64 in nature. This quickly proved to be boring, as most of the
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boards didn’t get more than a few posts in a day. As the summer dragged
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on, I became more impertinent and started to lose fear of “hacking MCI.”
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Finally, one day the sysop of the Elite Connection, Night Runner, broke
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in after I had tried ©hatting with him. He also proved to be mostly
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friendly and offered a “PHREAK CODE” (I was mostly using an old Apple
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II+ computer, and did not have a lower-case modification key) as well as
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telling me to call a better board in the Dallas, TX area that was more
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active and dedicated to hacking, the “Thieve’s Underground” (sic.) In
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hindsight, he was probably just sick of me calling every single day and
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tying up his line. He also offered me access to the “Elite\!” (sic)
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section of his BBS, where people would post information on hacking and
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phreaking, piracy, and other things.
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Somewhat nervous, I called 630-TIME and entered the code Night Runner
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had offered, followed by the number for the Thieve’s Underground. Unlike
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previous attempts, the number did not immediately ring, but hung there
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for some time until a remote ring could be heard (we were not even on
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ESS1A in Colorado Springs at that time, and it sometimes took 20 or more
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seconds to dial a LOCAL number - we were in Crossbar, with a couple of
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areas even in Step by Step. If I had even known about a Blue Box at the
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time, I could have actually used that instead of these MCI codes). - I
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then got carrier and proceeded to connect to the Thieve’s Underground.
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It was definitely the most hardcore BBS I had ever seen at the time,
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again requiring a “real phone number” for verification and certification
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that “you are not a member of any law enforcement agency”. Additionally,
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it required you to define some “hacker terms” which I failed at
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miserably: what was COSMOS? What was TELENET?
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Needless to say, I was rejected from the Thieve’s Underground. But from
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that point forward, I was determined to find out what exactly the terms
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were that I didn’t understand. But of course, I was still concerned with
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getting all of the new games I didn’t have access to and that would only
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be possible with the fabled 1200 baud modem.
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In the meantime I’d also been granted access on a board called “Skeleton
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Island” in Richmond, VA, (I believe at 303-747-8920) a board that was a
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complete throwback to what looked like it must have been about 1982. The
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sysop, “The Skeleton”, was running custom-built software on an Apple II
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computer with a ten megabyte hard disk, completely devoted to text
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files\! It was here that I first started reading about the history of
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hacking, as amongst all of the files there were all-caps transcriptions
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of old TAP Magazine articles, some of the first things I had read about
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hacking. (The board wasn’t exactly updated regularly, so what were
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considered “newer” hack/phreak periodicals such as PHRACK were left
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out.) In TAP Magazine’s mind, evil was personified in the form of the
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pre-antitrust Bell Corporation, and I read about how Bell harassed its
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employees as well as phreaks, even driving one to suicide. I read about
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how to construct a Blue Box and a Black Box, Cheshire Catalyst’s
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“Hacker’s Anthem”, and some file called “A Man Called Boris” about a
|
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|
|
|
Russian expatriate who was ripping off the Soviet government by
|
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|
|
|
thousands of dollars by insuring mail to dissidents, who would be
|
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|
|
|
refused delivery, forcing the government to pay up. There was some
|
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|
|
|
article on how to coat stamps with Elmer’s Glue and reuse them, as well
|
|
|
|
|
as a huge BBS list from about 1983, and information on removing
|
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|
|
copywrite protection from games.
|
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|
|
|
|
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|
|
It’s undoubtedly true that no small amount of kids were influenced by
|
|
|
|
|
the anti-establishment, libertarian philosophies that permeated these
|
|
|
|
|
types of boards. The range of anti-authoritarianism ran the gamut from
|
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|
|
|
left-wing socialism to good ‘ol boy giving the middle finger to the US
|
|
|
|
|
government, but libertarianism was the dominant theme. In addition, it
|
|
|
|
|
still wasn’t that risky to engage in hacking and phreaking, so it had
|
|
|
|
|
the allure of a restricted activity without the risk. The demographic
|
|
|
|
|
was pure 1980’s - almost strictly white adolescents, with no small
|
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|
|
|
amount of passive (or even overt) racism. Certainly, no effort was made
|
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|
|
|
to incorporate this raw teenage angst into a more far-reaching critique
|
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|
|
|
of power or authority of any sort, but it did make it “OK” to feel
|
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|
|
pissed off at the world around you. Hackers were basically punks and
|
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|
|
|
misfits with computers, and were usually smarter than the rest of their
|
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|
|
|
peers. Being exposed to what seemed like such powerful information did
|
|
|
|
|
not help many of us adjust to life in the “real world”, where you had to
|
|
|
|
|
learn some sort of bounds of acceptable behavior. But in the beginning,
|
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|
|
it was merely benign curiosity about the world that got almost every kid
|
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|
|
|
who has a story like this involved with “computer crime”, not some sort
|
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|
|
of malicious intent - that was what always confused the authorities.
|
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|
I had continued down the boring path of being a 300 baud, mostly local
|
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|
|
|
user, calling the same boards too many times, although I did learn how
|
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|
|
|
to scan our local Telenet ports for remote systems, although I had
|
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|
|
|
little idea how to hack into them (I did obtain access with a couple of
|
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|
|
|
typical username/password combinations like JOHN/JOHN and TEST/TEST),
|
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|
|
|
completely clueless as to what I was doing, especially with what to do
|
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|
|
|
once in the system.
|
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|
|
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I continued my path in 300-baud loserdom until Christmas of 1986, at
|
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|
|
|
which point I received a 1200 baud “Prometheus ProModem” as my Christmas
|
|
|
|
|
present. It wasn’t the Apple-Cat that I wanted, but to have 1200 baud
|
|
|
|
|
was incredibly exciting nonetheless. Now I could actually call “real”
|
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|
|
|
BBSes, (most of which would either hang up immediately or echo an
|
|
|
|
|
insulting message like “Call back when you get a real modem” if
|
|
|
|
|
attempting to connect at 300 baud). After some consternation (Ascii
|
|
|
|
|
Express stopped giving me my “-\>” prompt I was used to with the new
|
|
|
|
|
modem, expecting the Hayes “AT” command set instead) with configuration,
|
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|
|
|
I proceeded to call “The Roadhouse BBS” in Anaheim, California, which
|
|
|
|
|
had always refused to let me “Run AE” at 300 baud, but let me in with no
|
|
|
|
|
problem at 1200 baud. Now I could get all of the latest games - the
|
|
|
|
|
first one I downloaded was “Shard of Spring” - and the MCI code I used
|
|
|
|
|
to call insured that it was all free, free, free.
|
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|
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|
|
This also was my earliest memory of a paranoid way of thinking that I
|
|
|
|
|
still get tinges of to this day - the feeling that every “kodez kid” had
|
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|
|
|
when your phone would ring IMMEDIATELY after you would hang up after
|
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|
|
|
calling for free; that sinking feeling that they were “tracing” you that
|
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|
|
|
whole time, calling you right back to let you know your number was up\!
|
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|
|
Even worse, you’d sometimes start thinking that they “traced” you, but
|
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|
|
|
you wouldn’t know until the police came knocking at your house two weeks
|
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|
|
|
later. There was always an inclination to say that the next time you’d
|
|
|
|
|
use those damn codes would be the last, at least until you realized how
|
|
|
|
|
expensive long distance was back then (even night-time rates were often
|
|
|
|
|
more than $.20 a minute, quite a bit for a 13 year old kid with no job.)
|
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|
|
There was really no way to stop once you started.
|
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|
|
|
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|
|
I wasn’t too worried about the codes though - no one else had been
|
|
|
|
|
busted for using them, although I did receive a scare when someone who
|
|
|
|
|
said they were from the (FBI? Mountain Bell? I can’t remember) called my
|
|
|
|
|
house, saying they were logging all calls to the Elite Connection since
|
|
|
|
|
so many bootleg phone calls had their destination there, and I was
|
|
|
|
|
calling it a lot, even though it was local. I still don’t know if this
|
|
|
|
|
was complete bullshit or not, although that’s my inclination with the
|
|
|
|
|
benefit of hindsight. At the time though, the person calling did seem
|
|
|
|
|
“official”, and if it was a joke on the part of the Sysop, they didn’t
|
|
|
|
|
make an effort to make it very humorous - surely any good teenager would
|
|
|
|
|
have punctuated a hoax like that with a bit of humor. But sadly, even
|
|
|
|
|
the “FBI” calling my house didn’t seem to deter much of the behavior I
|
|
|
|
|
was going to get involved with over subsequent years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I was now determined to get involved in the pirate scene, with its
|
|
|
|
|
promise of unlimited “wares”; games would be available to me right after
|
|
|
|
|
being released on the market\! One of the first boards I called was the
|
|
|
|
|
“Trade Center” in New Jersey (201-256-4202), the headquarters of the
|
|
|
|
|
Apple pirate group “Digital Gang”. Digital Gang, as I remember, was
|
|
|
|
|
composed of about half absolutely brilliant programmers (one in
|
|
|
|
|
particular was named Tom E. Hawk, who did extensive modifications to the
|
|
|
|
|
Dalton’s Disk Disintegrator utility) and a couple of locals in 201 named
|
|
|
|
|
“The Triton” (Eddie) and “High Voltage” (Tony). The former was rumored
|
|
|
|
|
to be a high school dropout, who was some fat rich kid who had a lot of
|
|
|
|
|
money to buy software and run the Trade Center, and “High Voltage” was
|
|
|
|
|
another 14 year old rich kid who lived nearby. I knew that I had to get
|
|
|
|
|
a reference from a “real” pirate board in order to get accepted on other
|
|
|
|
|
pirate boards - you needed references of other boards you called as well
|
|
|
|
|
as other “reputable” pirates to get accepted. I had no idea how to start
|
|
|
|
|
doing this, but you could send a donation to the Trade Center, which I
|
|
|
|
|
assumed would get you access. I sent in a paltry $5 donation and The
|
|
|
|
|
Triton granted me access to the Trade Center, which gave me a slight bit
|
|
|
|
|
of clout in the pirate world. I’d also gotten a lower-case modification
|
|
|
|
|
for my Apple II+, so I could use that computer without that sure sign of
|
|
|
|
|
rodenthood - having to post in all caps.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
With 1200 baud, I immediately started to trade all of the software I
|
|
|
|
|
could get my hands on. I quickly left the realm of some of these 714
|
|
|
|
|
pirate boards I was calling (because they accepted 300 baud users) and
|
|
|
|
|
started calling some of the “top tier” pirate boards in the country.
|
|
|
|
|
Despite an early rejection from Remote Hideout (818-999-3680) I was
|
|
|
|
|
accepted on every other board I called. There was an awesome board in
|
|
|
|
|
213 called the Norse Wanderer that had custom BBS software, and you had
|
|
|
|
|
to be voted on by other users on the board (the sysop actually let me on
|
|
|
|
|
without being voted on, one of the early “breaks” I got in the scene.)
|
|
|
|
|
There was “The Citadel” at 213-493-2011, which was ALWAYS busy but
|
|
|
|
|
always had the latest wares with no credit system - you could call and
|
|
|
|
|
leech for hours if you wanted. There was Club Zero in 213 as well, run
|
|
|
|
|
by Pac-Rat. The Abyss at 818-993-7422 , which I had to call at 300 baud
|
|
|
|
|
due to its being a “202” only board (202 was the Apple-Cat’s proprietary
|
|
|
|
|
half-duplex 1200 baud standard), but which had some great discussions on
|
|
|
|
|
religion, politics, and music, which was sysoped by Dark Cavalier (I’d
|
|
|
|
|
chosen “Dark Sorcerer” as my alias at the time, as it seemed like there
|
|
|
|
|
were a lot of other “Dark whatever” type aliases, i.e., Dark Prophet,
|
|
|
|
|
Dark Dante, etc.) There was Red-Sector-A at 313-591-1024 run by the
|
|
|
|
|
Necromancer (whom a friend of mine and I prank called one time in 1989…
|
|
|
|
|
sorry Ralph\!) and best of all, the Curse at 612-544-3980. The Curse was
|
|
|
|
|
run by ‘The Incognito’ and was a message-only board that was very
|
|
|
|
|
popular. “The Incognito” had lots of really cool modifications to his
|
|
|
|
|
board, as he had taken to programming after being busted for credit card
|
|
|
|
|
fraud (sometime in 1984, I believe - he wrote a text file about it
|
|
|
|
|
called “The Day The Secret Service Raided My House” or something along
|
|
|
|
|
those lines, in addition to authoring “How To Spot A Loser On A BBS”).
|
|
|
|
|
There was an area where you could simulate logging in to vintage-era
|
|
|
|
|
Apple II pirate boards like the South Pole, the Arabian Dezert, and
|
|
|
|
|
Sherwood Forest, as well as hack/phreak boards like Plovernet, World of
|
|
|
|
|
Cryton, and Blottoland. These boards seemed ancient at the time, but in
|
|
|
|
|
fact it had really only been 3 years since they had gone down (again,
|
|
|
|
|
the time-perspective of a 14 year old is very different. 3 years seems
|
|
|
|
|
like nothing to a post-college grad.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There was also a blank “graffiti wall” area, which I remember as being
|
|
|
|
|
the current home of a war between “The Martyr”, a pirate from Braintree,
|
|
|
|
|
MA who ran a board called “Brave New World”, and assorted other pirates
|
|
|
|
|
like Touch Tone and Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I remember anonymous comments
|
|
|
|
|
like the following: evidently The Martyr said he had some sort of
|
|
|
|
|
“connections” and was going to fuck up the other members, which
|
|
|
|
|
solicited comments about The Martyr evidently being in a wheelchair, in
|
|
|
|
|
addition to being incredibly ugly (Sorcerer’s Apprentice said that “I
|
|
|
|
|
can’t wait until your ugly face is in a 34 sector BFILE for all us \]\[
|
|
|
|
|
folks out there and a full-blown GIF for the IIGS people”). In what
|
|
|
|
|
could have been an unrelated incident, Touch Tone made claims to being
|
|
|
|
|
in the Mafia which elicitied similar sorts of disdain. It was all highly
|
|
|
|
|
entertaining.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There were also quite a few “AE” systems still floating around (as well
|
|
|
|
|
as Cat-Fur systems, which didn’t apply to me). This was simply ASCII
|
|
|
|
|
Express in remote mode, where you could call a remote system and
|
|
|
|
|
transfer files back and forth after entering a password. The most famous
|
|
|
|
|
of these was probably the Metal AE at 201-879-6668, (pw: KILL) which to
|
|
|
|
|
my knowledge was the absolute last surviving such system in the country
|
|
|
|
|
(the sysop even kept it running on two floppies after his 10 meg drive
|
|
|
|
|
crashed\!) These systems could be highly entertaining due to their
|
|
|
|
|
graffiti-wall, free flowing nature. A typical 10 or 20 meg AE system
|
|
|
|
|
would probably be 20% software (usually older, but good for picking up
|
|
|
|
|
some older stuff that you missed earlier on), 20-30% textfiles, and a
|
|
|
|
|
bunch of blank two-sector text files people would upload with “file
|
|
|
|
|
names” ragging on other users or sometimes with a really mean or racist
|
|
|
|
|
content to them (remember, things were much less sensitive 10-15 years
|
|
|
|
|
ago, and these are pissed off white suburban kids we’re talking about.)
|
|
|
|
|
The sysop of the Metal AE, Lustfer Death, was also infamous for busting
|
|
|
|
|
into chat mode unexpectedly and asking questions like “Got any codes” or
|
|
|
|
|
“Why do you smoke pot”), the latter evidently just for entertainment
|
|
|
|
|
value.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The whole pirate scene was entertaining, but lost its lustre pretty
|
|
|
|
|
fast, even for a video-game crazy 13 year old. For one, I started
|
|
|
|
|
realizing that most of these games weren’t really that entertaining.
|
|
|
|
|
Most pirates with talent usually got more into programming, which was
|
|
|
|
|
somewhat alluring but I didn’t have much exposure to it, much less the
|
|
|
|
|
patience. Plus, by mid-1987 the number of Apple II games was starting to
|
|
|
|
|
get slower and slower, and the quality of games was getting less and
|
|
|
|
|
less, as it became obvious less original development was going on on the
|
|
|
|
|
Apple, with most of the games being ports from the Commodore 64. It
|
|
|
|
|
started to be pretty clear that the Apple II platform (with the
|
|
|
|
|
exception of the IIGS, which was incredibly expensive and was not Apple
|
|
|
|
|
Corporation’s top priority) was becoming less viable. In addition, it
|
|
|
|
|
seemed to start getting more difficult to obtain codes for our local MCI
|
|
|
|
|
ports, as the whole need for extenders was lessening as “Plus One”
|
|
|
|
|
service became available. I started to get interested in the Amiga
|
|
|
|
|
family of computers, but had to resign myself for having only two Apple
|
|
|
|
|
II series computers in the meantime.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Then, something happened that changed my point of view to the “computer
|
|
|
|
|
underground” forever. Some user had posted regarding a system on the
|
|
|
|
|
Trade Center called “WizNet” that wasn’t just another BBS with a regular
|
|
|
|
|
dial-up line - it was an entire bootleg BBS that had been set up on a
|
|
|
|
|
Prime system out on Telenet, and had a chat room in it. What’s more,
|
|
|
|
|
most of “WizNet”’s users weren’t just software pirates who programmed or
|
|
|
|
|
possibly used phone codes, they were hackers in the true sense, and they
|
|
|
|
|
seemed to be so much more interesting and mysterious than most of the
|
|
|
|
|
pirates in the waning Apple II scene. WizNet (programmed by “The
|
|
|
|
|
Wizard”) would invariably go down a couple of days after it was put up
|
|
|
|
|
as it would be discovered by an unlucky sysadmin, but it was about the
|
|
|
|
|
coolest thing I’d witnessed in the computer scenes yet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At the time, Telenet had just closed a major security flaw which hackers
|
|
|
|
|
called “pad-to-padding” which allowed you to basically dial in to a
|
|
|
|
|
Telenet port and connect recursively to another Telenet port, allowing
|
|
|
|
|
you to”listen in” as a silent guest to whatever the remote user might be
|
|
|
|
|
doing. I unfortunately missed the tail-end of this, but it had resulted
|
|
|
|
|
in a virtual goldmine of network accounts and passwords on Telenet.
|
|
|
|
|
There were tons of “NUI’s” (Network User ID’s) floating around, a few of
|
|
|
|
|
which were shared with all of the known world, which allowed connecting
|
|
|
|
|
to any port on Telenet. And a few of these ports were called “Altos” and
|
|
|
|
|
“Altgers”, two chat systems in Hamburg, Germany, which were frequented
|
|
|
|
|
by hackers all over the world and were linked to by WizNet. These
|
|
|
|
|
quickly became overrun with morons, but until about the summer of 1988
|
|
|
|
|
or so were frequented by all manners of hackers, and at the time, the
|
|
|
|
|
thought that you were conversing with people via a system on another
|
|
|
|
|
continent from all around the world seemed like something out of a
|
|
|
|
|
futuristic cyberpunk novel. Again, this broke down the conceptions that
|
|
|
|
|
you’d typically have as a suburban teenager, only confined to the
|
|
|
|
|
options present at your high school. Suddenly you were talking to
|
|
|
|
|
hackers like Shatter from the UK, or Logex from Mexico, and you might
|
|
|
|
|
find out that the Mexican phone switching system is more advanced than
|
|
|
|
|
the one you’re on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hackers tended to be a little more of a snooty, elitist group than the
|
|
|
|
|
pirates did, and they were more heteregenous in nature. It was a sport
|
|
|
|
|
accessible to anyone with a modem and a terminal; you didn’t need a
|
|
|
|
|
high-speed modem or a gazillion meg hard drive to compete, which was
|
|
|
|
|
natural given my hardware, which was less impressive by the day. But
|
|
|
|
|
generally, you had to know your shit, and the learning curve was pretty
|
|
|
|
|
steep. It wasn’t enough to know how to get into systems, you had to know
|
|
|
|
|
VAX, Primos, or Unix inside and out to garner any respect. And no one
|
|
|
|
|
was really telling you how to get in to these systems to begin with,
|
|
|
|
|
despite the rash of accounts unearthed by the pad-to-pad phenomenon. If
|
|
|
|
|
you wanted to start hacking, you generally had to do three things:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. Find systems to hack. This was accomplished by scanning Telenet or
|
|
|
|
|
Tymnet, or by scanning every night for local systems with a
|
|
|
|
|
“wardialing” utility. Any major metro area would usually yield a
|
|
|
|
|
ton of potentially hack-able systems if you wardialed every night.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Know what system you were in. Generally, there were Unix, VAX/VMS,
|
|
|
|
|
Primos, HP3000, and maybe a few older systems like TOPS-20 (which
|
|
|
|
|
was remarkably hacker-friendly in that it would allow you to view a
|
|
|
|
|
list of valid usernames without being logged in, necessitating only
|
|
|
|
|
the guessing of passwords);
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. Know how to get in. Generally, this was pure trial and error, or you
|
|
|
|
|
could try “social engineering” (i.e., bullshitting the users).
|
|
|
|
|
Mostly, you started with default accounts that you knew would be
|
|
|
|
|
likely to exist on the system, and tried a bunch of passwords until
|
|
|
|
|
you’d get in. Maybe if you were lucky, you’d get an unprotected root
|
|
|
|
|
password - (yeah, right\!).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4. Network with other hackers. To be fair, there were a lot of hackers
|
|
|
|
|
that never called BBSes, solitary weirdos of the Kevin Mitnick
|
|
|
|
|
variety. (I remember hearing of one legendary hacker named “Sir Qix”
|
|
|
|
|
during this time as well who supposedly never saw the light of day).
|
|
|
|
|
But having friends to talk to and teleconference with every day made
|
|
|
|
|
things a lot more fun, and at the end of the day, it was mainly a
|
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|
social scene - albeit a strange one.
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And the teleconference… this was always one of the highlights of the
|
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|
|
hack/phreak experience. If you were diligent, you could find a PBX that
|
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|
|
would allow calls to Alliance Teleconferencing (0-700-456-1000, I
|
|
|
|
|
believe) which would allow you to talk to over fifty people at once.
|
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|
|
|
Alliance conferences could go on for days and days, usually dwindling to
|
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|
|
|
two or three participants in the early morning Pacific time, at which
|
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|
|
|
point the usual suspects were waking up during Eastern time, building
|
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|
|
|
the conference until it reached a dozen people or so the next evening.
|
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There were always rumors of Alliance bills coming to customers in shoe
|
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|
|
|
box sized containers and the like. Alliance did have one defense
|
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|
mechanism, though; those whose numbers showed up too frequently on
|
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|
|
fraudulent bills would get “blacklisted”, which would result in the
|
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|
|
entire conference going down. There were also bridges, which were the
|
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|
|
|
equivalent of unofficial “party lines” in the 80’s sense of the word.
|
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|
You’d dial in to a bridge, and talk to whoever had dialed in as well. I
|
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|
|
|
had a couple of decent conversations on these bridges, but usually
|
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they’d get taken over by “bridge trolls”, usually 13 year olds who
|
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|
|
would get on and play touch-tone music or something equally as annoying.
|
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|
|
|
|
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|
|
|
But as stated before, it wasn’t necessarily easy to get accepted among
|
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|
|
hackers. I did have one thing going for me though, and that was that I
|
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|
|
|
could write at what seemed to be a much higher level than my actual age.
|
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|
|
No one ever seemed to understand how this scene encouraged creativity
|
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|
|
|
and intellectual development like none other. Knowledge was a
|
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|
|
prerequisite for admittance to higher echelons of the hacking circle, as
|
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|
|
you were generally expected to behave and learn as if you were in the
|
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|
|
|
very top of the Bell Curve in terms of IQ. And the topics of
|
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|
|
|
conversation would often extend far beyond computers, reaching into the
|
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|
|
|
realms of history, politics, or music (I was first exposed to all matter
|
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|
|
|
of punk, new wave, and dance music through people in this scene, many of
|
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|
|
whom might have lived somewhere cool like New York City or Los Angeles
|
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|
|
and weren’t relegated to the Whitesnake-style crap I had to deal with on
|
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|
|
the local radio.) I don’t think this drive to increase knowledge was
|
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engenederd by any other youth subculture scene before or since - and it
|
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|
|
is certainly not a byproduct of the American public school system. You
|
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|
|
|
were exposed to youths who were actually reading Nietzsche and
|
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|
|
understanding it - and solely due to intellectual curiosity, not out of
|
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|
some coffeehouse intellectual pretention.
|
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|
|
|
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But of course, being only fourteen years old at the time, my first
|
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|
|
|
exposure to this scene was one of dismal failure in terms of acceptance.
|
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|
|
I met the sysop of the “Dallas Hack Shack” on WizNet, who let me call
|
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|
|
his board and granted me access. Unfortunately, I must have been
|
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|
|
|
ferreted out as a newbie, because my subsequent phone calls revealed
|
|
|
|
|
that my access had been revoked after a single call. However, I’d been
|
|
|
|
|
rejected from BBSes before and this left me undeterred. Later on, I
|
|
|
|
|
remember I was going to be offered an extension into some new group
|
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|
|
|
called “xTension”, run by a rodent-turned-elite named ParMaster. When
|
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|
|
|
asked what my skills were on Altos, I jokingly replied “being elite”
|
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|
|
which was evidently taken seriously by a humorless “Necrovore”, which
|
|
|
|
|
resulted in me being denied access in to the group. How the irony of
|
|
|
|
|
that one escaped him, I never understood. There was obviously a whole
|
|
|
|
|
new realm to explore out there, and I was committed to be a part of it.
|
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|
|
|
Armed with my NUI’s that everyone else in the world had, I started
|
|
|
|
|
scanning Telenet intensely, as well as wardialing every night for local
|
|
|
|
|
systems. I gained access to numerous Unix, VAX, and Primos systems
|
|
|
|
|
through binges of all-night scanning and attacking common
|
|
|
|
|
username/password combinations, which I then shared with others or
|
|
|
|
|
posted to boards. I took a keen liking to Primos systems due to their
|
|
|
|
|
possession of a unique utility - “NETLINK”. NETLINK typically allowed
|
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|
|
|
any Prime system on an x25 network to access any other NUA (Network User
|
|
|
|
|
Address) on the network, so these systems could serve as a launch pad to
|
|
|
|
|
other systems. I remember PRIMOS being very difficult to learn, although
|
|
|
|
|
in retrospect, UNIX is still a lot harder. “Necrovore” actually wrote an
|
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|
|
|
exhaustive compendium of PRIMOS CPL commands, a text file that can be
|
|
|
|
|
found on www.textfiles.com to this day under the “hack” section.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There was another problem brewing, though. It seemed as though my local
|
|
|
|
|
MCI ports, which had been fairly regular sources of free phone calls,
|
|
|
|
|
were almost completely dry. No one seemed to be able to get much out of
|
|
|
|
|
them, and any codes obtained were generally dead within 24 hours. And I
|
|
|
|
|
had growing reservations about doing the typical “autoscanning” with a
|
|
|
|
|
modem from my home, due to heightened security in our then-new digital
|
|
|
|
|
switching system that allowed for easier identification of callers.
|
|
|
|
|
Luckily, I’d found a new service (On my own, although there were many
|
|
|
|
|
others who were already using it) in the form of MidAmerica
|
|
|
|
|
Communications, or 950-1001, a popular service with Rocky Mountain
|
|
|
|
|
region phreaks. The first code I ever tried on this system, 548951,
|
|
|
|
|
ended up lasting me over three (\!) months, and the connections were
|
|
|
|
|
crystal clear. But I did take to hacking these codes by hand from my
|
|
|
|
|
local 7-11’s payphone, as all 950 calls were free. And I did find out a
|
|
|
|
|
couple of years later, when the Secret Service raided my house, that I
|
|
|
|
|
actually had a DNR (Dialed Number Recorder) on my phone line for a brief
|
|
|
|
|
period of time before I took to hand-scanning, but I had conveniently
|
|
|
|
|
stopped scanning at the same time, so my usage was disregarded for some
|
|
|
|
|
reason. At the time, it seemed as though many people were starting to
|
|
|
|
|
see the handwriting on the wall - that Automatic Number Identification
|
|
|
|
|
and enhanced security features found in the new digital switching
|
|
|
|
|
systems were eventually going to render hacking and phreaking unviable.
|
|
|
|
|
But I knew that was at least a couple of years off, and I hoped that I
|
|
|
|
|
would be able to have fun at least until my 18th birthday…
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I’d managed to hack into at least twenty systems that first summer of
|
|
|
|
|
1988, and was feeling quite pleased with myself. I seemed to have a lot
|
|
|
|
|
of newer on-line friends, although I hadn’t met two of the hackers I
|
|
|
|
|
would end up talking to for hours on end every single day yet. (If you
|
|
|
|
|
ever read this, you know who you are). I was particularly proud of
|
|
|
|
|
several Unix systems I broke into in Finland, which I accessed with the
|
|
|
|
|
NUI’s I had and just reeked of exotcisim. There also seemed to be a sort
|
|
|
|
|
of “hacker’s revival” movement, as more people were getting involved
|
|
|
|
|
again after a series of busts that occurred in 1987, the most notable
|
|
|
|
|
being a 17 year old named “Shadow Hawk”, aka Herbert Zinn. The spearhead
|
|
|
|
|
of this movement was on a board called the “Phoenix Project” in Austin,
|
|
|
|
|
TX, run by an extremely knowledgable hacker named The Mentor. The
|
|
|
|
|
Mentor, whose real name was Loyd Blankenship, has been forever
|
|
|
|
|
immortalized as the one who penned the angry “Conscience of a Hacker”
|
|
|
|
|
(which somehow has made it into academic texts on computer security and
|
|
|
|
|
hacking) as well as the “Beginner’s Guide To Hacking”, which no doubt
|
|
|
|
|
influenced hundreds of ne’er-do-wells to undertake hacking as a hobby.
|
|
|
|
|
(He also famously penned the Steve Jackson Cyberpunk game, which
|
|
|
|
|
resulted in Steve Jackson Games being comically raided by the Feds in
|
|
|
|
|
early 1990). The Phoenix Project was about the only place where anyone
|
|
|
|
|
could get access, and questions could be answered by the cream of the
|
|
|
|
|
crop members of the hacker community, the Legion of Doom. I remember one
|
|
|
|
|
file written by The Prophet which was an introductory text on Unix
|
|
|
|
|
hacking that was particularly excellent. There were some new
|
|
|
|
|
technologies, such as 9600 baud modems, that had allowed users to run
|
|
|
|
|
bigger, better boards and transfer more data. This also marked the
|
|
|
|
|
summer that many people I knew started experimenting with one of the
|
|
|
|
|
darker sides of the hacking scene, “carding”, or credit card fraud.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Marijuana is the flame; heroin is the fuse; LSD is the bomb.” -Joe
|
|
|
|
|
Friday on an LSD scare episode of Dragnet
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Generally, the hacker’s entrance into fraud can be compared to the
|
|
|
|
|
classic propaganda of marijuana eventually leading to hard drugs and
|
|
|
|
|
culminating with shooting heroin. What starts off as benign curiosity,
|
|
|
|
|
causing a lot of consternation and paranoia, eventually becomes banal,
|
|
|
|
|
especially in the sped-up, attention-deficit deprived world of the
|
|
|
|
|
teenage hacker. If the hacker has no desire to learn about the systems
|
|
|
|
|
or networks in question, hacking quickly becomes not an end but rather a
|
|
|
|
|
means to bigger and better thrills. Most pirates were content to learn
|
|
|
|
|
about their own computers, dabbling in phone fraud as a means to stay in
|
|
|
|
|
touch with their cohorts. Some hackers did draw the line at credit card
|
|
|
|
|
fraud, merely content to explore the systems they break into. But many…
|
|
|
|
|
and they were not statistically insignificant numbers in terms of the
|
|
|
|
|
whole community… ended up getting bored with breaking into remote
|
|
|
|
|
computer systems and turned to outright theft for bigger thrills.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Theft had always been a part of the hacking experience, at least in
|
|
|
|
|
part. “Dumpster diving” was considered a great way to garner discarded
|
|
|
|
|
passwords and technical manuals, and there were many of us who broke
|
|
|
|
|
into our local Bell office in hopes of finding manuals and technical
|
|
|
|
|
equipment. “Tapping cans” was also popular - you could find those big
|
|
|
|
|
round “cans” on telephone poles and monitor phone calls with a phone and
|
|
|
|
|
a $5 visit to Radio Shack. But the temptation to engage in outright
|
|
|
|
|
fraud was definitely engaged in to no small degree, spurred on by the
|
|
|
|
|
ridiculously easy availabilty of credit card numbers. Most Americans
|
|
|
|
|
seemed unaware that during this time period, anyone who needed to check
|
|
|
|
|
your credit rating (say, the used car dealership where you placed a
|
|
|
|
|
benign inquiry about a purchase last week) could do so through an
|
|
|
|
|
account with TRW or CBI. TRW seemed to be the de facto standard for
|
|
|
|
|
hackers in the early to mid 1980’s, but it seemed to have been
|
|
|
|
|
supplanted by CBI in the later 1980’s. Some enterprising hacker had
|
|
|
|
|
actually figured out the number seed for the generation of CBI accounts,
|
|
|
|
|
which effectively had opened up every CBI account in the country for
|
|
|
|
|
potential abuse. (This also happened with ITT calling cards on the
|
|
|
|
|
infamous 950-0488 extension and American Express credit cards during the
|
|
|
|
|
late 1980’s. It makes you wonder if companies have taken to more
|
|
|
|
|
sophisticated number generation schema in the new millennium.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But at any rate, credit card numbers ran like water, and if you had a
|
|
|
|
|
modicum of clout in the scene (hacking CBI was only marginally harder
|
|
|
|
|
than hacking “codez”) you could feasibly pull the credit card history of
|
|
|
|
|
anyone you didn’t like, especially your high school English teacher that
|
|
|
|
|
was pissing you off and giving you a hard time. And it seemed like for a
|
|
|
|
|
while, EVERYONE was carding everything under the sun. There was some kid
|
|
|
|
|
named Lord Zeus who had at least a dozen US Robotics HST modems, valued
|
|
|
|
|
at $500 a pop. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the hackers in New York City I
|
|
|
|
|
knew, including one “The Guardian” who ran an Amiga pirate board called
|
|
|
|
|
FBI BBS, were carding entire computer systems. There were reports of
|
|
|
|
|
kids getting busted and having tens of thousands of dollars in stolen
|
|
|
|
|
hardware in the closet of their houses, with their parents blissfully
|
|
|
|
|
unaware of what was going on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because carding did seem so easy, most people did take at least one
|
|
|
|
|
crack at it. Generally, the myth on the street was that if you don’t get
|
|
|
|
|
too greedy, and don’t use the same drop address more than once, you
|
|
|
|
|
could get away with it forever. But even in my increasingly warped mind,
|
|
|
|
|
it still seemed a bit hard to justify, so I just stopped trying to
|
|
|
|
|
justify it. I succeeded in carding a $600 1.5 megabyte RAM upgrade for
|
|
|
|
|
the Commodore Amiga (I was the proud new owner of an Amiga 500 computer,
|
|
|
|
|
and RAM was ridiculously high during this period due to a fire at a
|
|
|
|
|
semiconductor plant in Japan) from some company in California, which had
|
|
|
|
|
eventually brought down some heat on my neighborhood, in addition to
|
|
|
|
|
some clothes from Eddie Bauer and some jewelry. In retrospect, I believe
|
|
|
|
|
this was the start of my incurring some seriously bad karma, which
|
|
|
|
|
eventually culminated in my arrest which was to occur only about a year
|
|
|
|
|
and a half later. However, the feeling of getting away with something
|
|
|
|
|
like that - a true high-tech crime - was incredibly thrilling for a
|
|
|
|
|
young teenager still in Junior High school. Mostly, credit card numbers
|
|
|
|
|
were just fun to have lying around, and could be a source of endless
|
|
|
|
|
amusement.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Case in point: party lines and phone sex lines. Phone sex lines, in this
|
|
|
|
|
age of virginity, were not taken seriously at all, but what better fun
|
|
|
|
|
than to call an 800 sex line with someone else’s credit card and harass
|
|
|
|
|
the poor woman on the other end? And how about putting the local Pizza
|
|
|
|
|
Hut on a three-way call with some woman you’ve just requested to
|
|
|
|
|
simulate giving a blow job? At a friend’s request, I left the number of
|
|
|
|
|
a mutual acquaintance who had been pissing us off lately on a gay phone
|
|
|
|
|
sex line, which resulted in him getting dozens of solicitations for gay
|
|
|
|
|
phone sex over a several day period. And everyone I knew in the scene
|
|
|
|
|
was doing all of these things as a matter of course. That wasn’t even
|
|
|
|
|
the start of the possible revenge that could be extracted by a
|
|
|
|
|
knowledgable hacker: some of the elite had access to local LMOS systems,
|
|
|
|
|
and were able to forward phone calls from whatever source they wanted to
|
|
|
|
|
your line if you pissed them off bad enough. Hackers with LMOS access
|
|
|
|
|
were able to turn on the call waiting on the phone line of some sysop
|
|
|
|
|
they didn’t like, making his board disrupted every time someone else
|
|
|
|
|
tried calling in. One hacker we knew, “Fry Guy”, made a bet that he
|
|
|
|
|
could make a payphone local to my friend’s house into a regular phone
|
|
|
|
|
(i.e., not needing a quarter to dial out) and succeeded in doing it
|
|
|
|
|
within several days. I’m sure there were no small number of public high
|
|
|
|
|
school teachers that ended up getting a dozen toilet seats in the mail
|
|
|
|
|
from Sears after failing a certain apathetic computer enthusiast in one
|
|
|
|
|
of their classes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There were kids who were engaged in outright ripoffs and serious fraud -
|
|
|
|
|
kids that inspired serious investigation from the likes of the FBI and
|
|
|
|
|
Secret Service. The most intense example I remember is a Florida hacker
|
|
|
|
|
named “Maximum Overdrive” who had succeeded in his local Western Union
|
|
|
|
|
to the tune of at least fifty thousand dollars. Not only could he get
|
|
|
|
|
the credit card numbers of the people whom he was wiring “from”, when
|
|
|
|
|
Western Union decided to verify by calling their home address he could
|
|
|
|
|
forward the victim’s number to one he specified and pretend to be the
|
|
|
|
|
person wiring the money. It was during this stage in my hacking career
|
|
|
|
|
when I believe my head started to get a little concerned again. I was
|
|
|
|
|
starting to have ethical issues with the wholesale rip-off of
|
|
|
|
|
corporations. Even though I already had an inkling of the American
|
|
|
|
|
corporate power structure and how the “insurance companies just pay for
|
|
|
|
|
it all”, I was still not comfortable associating with individuals who
|
|
|
|
|
seemed to have little desire other than to scam as much free money and
|
|
|
|
|
computer hardware as they could possibly get. This sets the stage for
|
|
|
|
|
what Lord Digital was talking about in his sequel to “Fall Of The Modem
|
|
|
|
|
World” - the stage when the power you have starts to get out of hand.
|
|
|
|
|
When you’re engaging in high-tech grand larceny as a fifteen or sixteen
|
|
|
|
|
year old, you don’t learn the boundaries that other kids your age have
|
|
|
|
|
to learn. You just blow through every barrier that’s presented to you
|
|
|
|
|
and when that’s coupled with fragile adolescent egos, some serious
|
|
|
|
|
emotional and mental maladjustment can be the result.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There was another hacker called the “Video Vindicator” that I also
|
|
|
|
|
talked with a few times (we’d struck up a mutual interest in electronic
|
|
|
|
|
music - I remember him playing the old techno track “Spice” by Eon to me
|
|
|
|
|
over the telephone.) The Video Vindicator was an admitted techno-vandal,
|
|
|
|
|
who liked to crash every system that he broke into. He ran a pretty good
|
|
|
|
|
board in Northern California called the “Shadows Of Iga” and was by all
|
|
|
|
|
accounts, an extremely intelligent kid. But the last I heard of him, he
|
|
|
|
|
got out of California Youth Authority at age 19, stole a car, managed to
|
|
|
|
|
evade jail at least once, and was living “on the run”, writing text
|
|
|
|
|
files about how to fence stole jewelry, break into houses, and the like.
|
|
|
|
|
I had the typical angst-ridden teenage experiences shoplifting and
|
|
|
|
|
engaging in burglarly and generally did not like them - I didn’t seem to
|
|
|
|
|
have the stomach or nerve to engage in serious crime, but in the
|
|
|
|
|
adrenaline and testosterone-riddled time, it was easy to see how people
|
|
|
|
|
were getting pressured into doing more extreme acts by the day. These
|
|
|
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were kids who knew how to encrypt stolen credit cards - straight up
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Cyberpunk Mafia type of shit. These were kids writing programs that
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would decipher the mathematical algorithms that corporations would use
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to generate credit card and calling card numbers, just for fun.
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It seemed like the scene was starting to get a bit sketchier all around.
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In addition to knowing aforementioned fledgling Mafia members, it seemed
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like all sorts of people were getting busted for carding and phone
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fraud. A local user to me had gotten busted by 950-1001, a fate that
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only escaped me because of my temporary moratorium I’d placed on
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scanning for phone codes from my house. I’d ended up taking all of my
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notes and disks with sensitive information on them over to a friend’s
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house, afraid that I was the next one. But of course it never came, and
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another vow to stop what I was doing was left unfulfilled. At the end of
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the day, I was at a point where the scene had consumed my life and none
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of us could do anything else. Fledgling interests in sports and
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academics had long been discarded in favor of complete devotion to the
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hacker subculture, and I had little desire to go back. I was branded as
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the classic “bright but an underachiever” role in school, something I
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knew that all of my peers had also experienced. Everything in my life
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now embraced this one-dimensional anti-authoritarian view, but despite
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my best intentions, everything always seemed to confirm the worst of
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what I had suspected. Kids at my school were generally mean, and I had
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already witnessed all of the typical detritus of the suburban wasteland
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I lived in; parties where there were gang-bangs, 15 year old kids
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smoking weed, drinking Old Milwaukee, and sniffing cocaine. It didn’t
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offer much appeal. But it didn’t matter, because in this scene, you
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truly had a purpose and you truly were someone important. And it wasn’t
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related to ANYTHING that was going on in the real world. You just
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couldn’t expect anyone to go back to the “real world” after being a
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member of the hacker subculture. It seemed like you were a member of
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this secret fraternity, with all of the power (at least in your own
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mind) and crazy aliases and code words out of what seemed like a comic
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book adventure.
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“I’m not crazy, you’re the one that’s crazy…” -Suicidal Tendencies in
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“Institutionalized”
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As one could imagine, most hackers didn’t exactly have the most
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fulfilling home and personal lives, and I was no exception. I was
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threatened at home with being sent to a Christian school if I didn’t
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clean up my act, which never materialized into anything but empty
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threats, but I felt constantly at odds with my parents, who felt like I
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was slipping into some sort of weird drugged Satanic cult or something,
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perhaps due to the long hair and obscure musical taste I’d cultivated.
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Nothing could have been further from the truth; I was actually
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ridiculously drug-free, having only been drunk one time in my life. I
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had no desire to smoke weed or get drunk like a lot of the other kids I
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knew at school were doing. I was mostly angry, and most of my
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non-computer time consisted of listening to the likes of Black Flag or
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Minor Threat.
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Adults might have wanted you to just get your head out of your ass, but
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everything in your life reinforced the following associations: “Real
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World” = boring, angry, stupid, and pointless. “Hacker World” = happy,
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fun, exciting, where your friends were. School was something to be slept
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through if you actually had no choice but to go, which would then be
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followed by another night of all-night teleconferences and the latest
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scene gossip. Most importantly, it was FUN. You knew you were doing
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things that no one else knew how to do. And you were learning more every
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day. I spent endless hours on the phone every day. (What’s up Data
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Wizard, Blue Adept, and PhaZeTech Crew, if you ever read this…) ;)
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However, the handwriting on the wall seemed to be getting more and more
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pronounced. It had started to become pretty obvious to those in the know
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that it wasn’t really safe to scan or use stolen calling card numbers
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from your house at all anymore, as people seemed to be going down for
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that left and right. (Getting busted for phone codes is a notoriously
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lame thing to get caught for anyway.) Like it or not, even the “elite”
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hackers who disdained the “kodez kidz” needed to make free phone calls.
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New technologies like ANI and Caller ID threatened to make the
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activities of wardialing and scanning, long staples of the hacking
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scene, obsolete overnight. (A hacker named Lorax and his brother in
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Michigan had gotten nailed simply for scanning the 800 prefix for
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carrier, along with them stupidly leaving a message for the owner of a
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hacked HP3000 to “please give us a call if you want help with your
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security. He called them, all right) ;)
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It was clear that the whole scene had been based on this ephemeral
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convergence of (1) naive computer security; (2) the availability of
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telecommunications equipment on the mass market and (3) a very
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libertarian culture of computer users who disliked governments and
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regulations of any sort. It was no longer acceptable to talk about
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pirated software on most BBSes like it had been during the nascent scene
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in the early 1980’s period. But I was still having a good time, and was
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starting to get to the point where I was a pretty good hacker. I had
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probably only cracked into fifty systems in my life, but had learned
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quite a bit doing it. And the vague group I knew, PhaZeTech, had a
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system called “Colonial” that was essentially taken over by the group,
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which served as a fertile Unix learning ground. (Perhaps the system
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administrators viewed us as sort of a helpful ant colony and never
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kicked us off, as we ended up doing a bit to maintain the system.) There
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was no reason to think it would stop anytime in the near future, as I’d
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stopped scanning for codes from my house some time in the past.
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But then another “convergence” came back to kick my ass. I’d recently
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been sent an Apple Cat modem by a user named “Zippo Pinhead” on the
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good-faith notion I’d pay him $30 for it, which I never did. (I really
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did mean to, Bob, but I was a broke-ass 16 year old and just never got
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around to it, and you didn’t really seem to care anyway.) I’d always
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wanted the legendary Apple-Cat, due to its ability to mimic any tone, as
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well as scan for codes at least twice as fast as any Hayes modem. The
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temptation to let it scan for codes was just too much, and in addition,
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the bad karma from not paying for it was also a factor. Despite my
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better judgment, I was starting to get REALLY sloppy.
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My sloppiness ended up being epitomized by another really stupid-ass
|
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mistake; leaving my real name and phone number on a board in Arizona
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|
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called “The Dark Side” run by a user named “The Dictator” who as it
|
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|
turned out was running a sting operation for the Secret Service in
|
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|
|
exchange for some computer hardware. (To this date, I hope “The
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|
|
Dictator” is burning in hell, and I hope your life is a complete piece
|
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|
|
of shit, you traitorous loser. How “cool” is that Amiga hardware you got
|
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|
now, seeing as how you exchanged your soul for it, motherfucker?) But
|
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|
|
anyway… I’d seen “The Dictator” around, as he was calling virtually
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every board in existence and advertising his system, so I blindly left
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my number on his system. Naturally, I was immediately corroborated with
|
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the “Dark Sorcerer” who’d been seen around, probably posting some hacked
|
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|
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VAX (incidentally, John Lee, aka “Corrupt”, ruined a hacked VAX I posted
|
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|
|
at 215 379, pw BACKUP/BACKUP, that I had gotten into by trying to run
|
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|
some BBS on it, and this guy ended up on the cover of Wired Magazine.
|
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|
Weird when people you knew threw the scene started becoming minor cause
|
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|
|
celebres in the nascent wannabe-Cyberpunk type scene.) This resulted in
|
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|
|
|
a DNR (Dialed Number Recorder) placed on my line around December of
|
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|
|
1989, and of course I was using my new Apple-Cat to scan for codes
|
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|
|
during that time. I could kick myself for days just thinking about how
|
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|
|
stupid all of this was.
|
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The climax came on January 11, 1990, when two of the following showed up
|
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|
|
at my house: Secret Service agents, local cops, and US West phone
|
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|
|
security guys. And right before my parents were going to church for
|
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|
|
their bell choir practice. Ugh. Not exactly my finest hour. And yes
|
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|
|
kids, they do play “good cop, bad cop” just like in the movies. It was
|
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|
|
somewhat comical, but I felt proud that at least I didn’t start bawling
|
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|
|
or narcing out everyone I had ever known, as a lot of others were prone
|
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|
to do (guess my nerves had been toughened up somewhat.) The charges
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|
|
against me ended up being somewhat impressive, as I’d been using
|
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|
|
multiple 950 services (ooops) all of which were small companies anxious
|
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|
|
to prosecute me, in addition to having some floppies on them with about
|
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|
|
seven hundred credit cards in the form of CBI buffers (double ooops) as
|
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|
|
well as suspicion I’d been involved in a couple of local credit-card
|
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|
|
shenanigans (which never materialized into real charges.) To make
|
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|
|
matters worse, they wanted to confiscate the Apple computer, which I had
|
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|
|
actually done all of the scanning on, which my little sister was
|
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|
|
currently writing a huge paper on. We had to convince them to take my
|
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|
|
Amiga instead. I ended up having to go down to the police station,
|
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|
|
taking a mug shot just like any other criminal, and spending a couple of
|
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|
|
nights in the Zebulon Pike Youth Detention Facility, shooting hoops and
|
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|
|
wondering what was going to happen to me.
|
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|
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The end result: Most of the charges got dropped, and I had to do fifty
|
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|
|
hours’ community service, as well as pay about $3500 in restituion.
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|
Luckily, I ended up doing my “community service” for my youth minister,
|
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|
|
|
an ex-rock and roller who took pride in the fact that he just let me
|
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|
|
read all of the books in his office (my first exposure to Hunter S.
|
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|
|
Thompson, by the way.) It was a small compensation, but at least I
|
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|
didn’t have to load furniture at Goodwill every weekend for two months
|
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|
like a lot of other people I knew who got in trouble.
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And my probation officer thought I was the greatest novelty - here he
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|
|
was dealing with kids who were stealing cars and selling weed, and he
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|
gets this gangly “hacker” out of nowhere.
|
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|
I was pretty much out of the scene immediately, sans a few friends. But
|
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|
|
it didn’t much matter, as the scene was quickly coming to an end anyway.
|
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|
|
The “Operation Sun Devil” busts in early-mid 1990 effectively killed off
|
|
|
|
|
the vestiges of the 1980’s hacker scene, as most of the “elite” members
|
|
|
|
|
of the Legion of Doom and MOD had been snared in this raid. Probably
|
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|
|
almost half of the people I had known had gotten busted, had retired, or
|
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|
|
were simply getting older, getting cars and going to college. There I
|
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|
|
was, sixteen years old, yet the disappointment was something to this day
|
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|
|
|
I feel like only extremely old people feel; like how it must feel when
|
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|
|
half of your friends are dead. I did manage to pull off a few
|
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|
|
|
shenanigans after getting my computer back (my ever-unaware parents let
|
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|
|
me continue to use the computer periodically, for “school work” of
|
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|
|
course). I hacked into our local Water Supply Department VAX and gave
|
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|
|
away the account some time later, which strangely resulted in an article
|
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|
|
in the local paper a month later about how the Water Supply Department
|
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|
|
|
needed a new computer, with my account that had been active forever
|
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|
|
|
strangely cancelled… ;) (to this date, I have no idea if someone I gave
|
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|
|
it out to on the “Magnetic Page” BBS crashed this or something.) I got
|
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|
|
the occasional Alliance call from some old people I knew, and I quickly
|
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|
|
|
found I had little in common with most of them. It seemed like most were
|
|
|
|
|
either drifting off into computer-science major irrelevance, or were
|
|
|
|
|
still able to pull off some capers due to non-busted status. But no one
|
|
|
|
|
seemed to be quite as crazy as they were even a year ago, as security
|
|
|
|
|
was getting better and better and “hacking” was starting to just mean
|
|
|
|
|
hacking voice mail systems. (Although the Tymnet heyday was still to
|
|
|
|
|
come. Does anyone else remember that cheezy chat system “QSD”?) ;)
|
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|
Computers seemed to lose their lustre. All of a sudden I had to be
|
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|
|
normal, go to parties and try to fit in somwhat. The disappointment at
|
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|
|
not being a part of the scene any more was quite a bit to bear. I still
|
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|
|
|
had some calling cards, CBI accounts, and a few token relics of the
|
|
|
|
|
hacker era in order to amuse my “real world” friends, mostly. But by and
|
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|
|
large, everything was gone. Before I knew it, a lot of the people I had
|
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|
|
known were in college, and some of them had dropped out to become
|
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|
|
professional programmers at age 19 or so, already knowing way more than
|
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|
|
most of their professors. After a year or so of re-adjustment, I
|
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|
|
|
attained some sort of normalcy. I used LSD extensively, and later
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|
|
Ecstasy and ketamine. Drugs were sort of an effort to get that “peak
|
|
|
|
|
feeling” that I used to get, and were incredibly entertaining and
|
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|
|
insightful, although they lacked the long-term intellectual stimulation
|
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|
|
that computers were able to provide, eventually becoming somewhat banal
|
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|
|
in their own right. But that, as they say, is a different story. :)
|
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This brings me to the end of this file: if you made it this far, how
|
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|
|
|
come? And where are the rest of the people I used to know in that scene
|
|
|
|
|
now? All grown up, I’d imagine. The ones who didn’t get busted probably
|
|
|
|
|
got their PhD’s and didn’t stray too far from the Republican Party. But
|
|
|
|
|
the ones who were a little more worldly, what happened? Was it a period
|
|
|
|
|
of intense self-scrutiny, reading thousands of books, spending endless
|
|
|
|
|
hours of self-reflection… and was intellectual curiosity what that scene
|
|
|
|
|
was all about?
|
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|
- Author: Dark Sorcerer, C0dez Kid / February 20, 2001
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|
- Original: <http://textfiles.com/history/c0dez.txt>
|