Emilie Kip Baker - "Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools"

J.M. Stone - "Studies from Court and Cloister"

Richard Jefferies - "The Life of the Fields"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Old Portraits, Part 1, From Volume VI.,"

Underground

S >> Suelette Dreyfus >> Underground




Learning on-line was slow and almost as difficult. Most hackers used
300 or 1200 baud modems. Virtually all access to these big, expensive
machines was illegal. Every moment on-line was a risky proposition.
High schools never had these sorts of expensive machines. Although
many universities had systems, the administrators were usually miserly
with time on-line for students. In most cases, students only got
accounts on the big machines in their second year of computer science
studies. Even then, student accounts were invariably on the
university's oldest, clunkiest machine. And if you weren't a comp-sci
student, forget it. Indulging your intellectual curiosity in VMS
systems would never be anything more than a pipe dream.

Even if you did manage to overcome all the roadblocks and develop some
programming experience in VMS systems, for example, you might only be
able to access a small number of machines on any given network. The
X.25 networks connected a large number of machines which used very
different operating systems. Many, such as Primes, were not in the
least bit intuitive. So if you knew VMS and you hit a Prime machine,
well, that was pretty much it.

Unless, of course, you happened to belong to a clan of hackers like
The Realm. Then you could call up the BBS and post a message. `Hey, I
found a really cool Primos system at this address. Ran into problems
trying to figure the parameters of the Netlink command. Ideas anyone?'
And someone from your team would step forward to help.

In The Realm, Force tried to assemble a diverse group of Australia's
best hackers, each with a different area of expertise. And he happened
to be the resident expert in Prime computers.

Although Force wouldn't give DEFCON to anyone outside The Realm, he
wasn't unreasonable. If you weren't in the system but you had an
interesting network you wanted mapped, he would scan it for you. Force
referred to scans for network user addresses as `NUA sprints'. He
would give you a copy of the NUA sprint. While he was at it, he would
also keep a copy for The Realm. That was efficient. Force's pet
project was creating a database of systems and networks for The Realm,
so he simply added the new information to its database.

Force's great passion was mapping new networks, and new mini-networks
were being added to the main X.25 networks all the time. A large
corporation, such a BHP, might set up its own small-scale network
connecting its offices in Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and
the United Kingdom. That mini-network might be attached to a
particular X.25 network, such as Austpac. Get into the Austpac network
and chances were you could get into any of the company's sites.

Exploration of all this uncharted territory consumed most of Force's
time. There was something cutting-edge, something truly adventurous
about finding a new network and carefully piecing together a picture
of what the expanding web looked like. He drew detailed pictures and
diagrams showing how a new part of the network connected to the rest.
Perhaps it appealed to his sense of order, or maybe he was just an
adventurer at heart. Whatever the underlying motivation, the maps
provided The Realm with yet another highly prized asset.

When he wasn't mapping networks, Force published Australia's first
underground hacking journal, Globetrotter. Widely read in the
international hacking community, Globetrotter reaffirmed Australian
hackers' pre-eminent position in the international underground.

But on this particular day, Par wasn't thinking about getting a copy
of Globetrotter or asking Force to scan a network for him. He was
thinking about that secret. Force's new secret. The secret Parmaster
desperately wanted.

Force had been using DEFCON to scan half a dozen networks while he
chatted to Par on Altos. He found an interesting connection from the
scan, so he went off to investigate it. When he connected to the
unknown computer, it started firing off strings of numbers at Force's
machine. Force sat at his desk and watched the characters rush by on
his screen.

It was very odd. He hadn't done anything. He hadn't sent any commands
to the mystery computer. He hadn't made the slightest attempt to break
into the machine. Yet here the thing was throwing streams of numbers.
What kind of computer was this? There might have been some sort of
header which would identify the computer, but it had zoomed by so fast
in the unexpected data dump that Force had missed it.

Force flipped over to his chat with Par on Altos. He didn't completely
trust Par, thinking the friendly American sailed a bit close to the
wind. But Par was an expert in X.25 networks and was bound to have
some clue about these numbers. Besides, if they turned out to be
something sensitive, Force didn't have to tell Par where he found
them.

`I've just found a bizarre address. It is one strange system. When I
connected, it just started shooting off numbers at me. Check these
out.'

Force didn't know what the numbers were, but Par sure did. `Those look
like credit cards,' he typed back.

`Oh.' Force went quiet.

Par thought the normally chatty Australian hacker seemed astonished.
After a short silence, the now curious Par nudged the conversation
forward. `I have a way I can check out whether they really are valid
cards,' he volunteered. `It'll take some time, but I should be able to
do it and get back to you.'

`Yes.' Force seemed hesitant. `OK.'

On the other side of the Pacific from Par, Force thought about this
turn of events. If they were valid credit cards, that was very cool.
Not because he intended to use them for credit card fraud in the way
Ivan Trotsky might have done. But Force could use them for making
long-distance phone calls to hack overseas. And the sheer number of
cards was astonishing. Thousand and thousands of them. Maybe 10000.
All he could think was, Shit! Free connections for the rest of my
life.

Hackers such as Force considered using cards to call overseas computer
systems a little distasteful, but certainly acceptable. The card owner
would never end up paying the bill anyway. The hackers figured that
Telecom, which they despised, would probably have to wear the cost in
the end, and that was fine by them. Using cards to hack was nothing
like ordering consumer goods. That was real credit card fraud. And
Force would never sully his hands with that sort of behaviour.

Force scrolled back over his capture of the numbers which had been
injected into his machine. After closer inspection, he saw there were
headers which appeared periodically through the list. One said,
`CitiSaudi'.

He checked the prefix of the mystery machine's network address again.
He knew from previous scans that it belonged to one of the world's
largest banks. Citibank.

The data dump continued for almost three hours. After that, the
Citibank machine seemed to go dead. Force saw nothing but a blank
screen, but he kept the connection open. There was no way he was going
to hang up from this conversation. He figured this had to be a freak
connection--that he accidentally connected to this machine somehow,
that it wasn't really at the address he had tried based on the DEFCON
scan of Citibank's network.

How else could it have happened? Surely Citibank wouldn't have a
computer full of credit cards which spilled its guts every time
someone rang up to say `hello'? There would be tonnes of security on a
machine like that. This machine didn't even have a password. It didn't
even need a special character command, like a secret handshake.

Freak connections happened now and then on X.25
networks. They had the same effect as a missed voice phone
connection. You dial a friend's number--and you dial it correctly--but
somehow the call gets screwed up in the tangle of wires and exchanges
and your call gets put through to another number entirely. Of course,
once something like that happens to an X.25 hacker, he immediately
tries to figure out what the hell is going on, to search every shred
of data from the machine looking for the system's real address.
Because it was an accident, he suspects he will never find the machine
again.

Force stayed home from school for two days to keep the connection
alive and to piece together how he landed on the doorstep of this
computer. During this time, the Citibank computer woke up a few times,
dumped a bit more information, and then went back to sleep. Keeping
the connection alive meant running a small risk of discovery by an
admin at his launch point, but the rewards in this case far exceeded
the risk.

It wasn't all that unusual for Force to skip school to hack. His
parents used to tell him, `You better stop it, or you'll have to wear
glasses one day'. Still, they didn't seem to worry too much, since
their son had always excelled in school without much effort. At the
start of his secondary school career he had tried to convince his
teachers he should skip year 9. Some objected. It was a hassle, but he
finally arranged it by quietly doing the coursework for year 9 while
he was in year 8.

After Force had finally disconnected from the CitiSaudi computer and
had a good sleep, he decided to check on whether he could reconnect to
the machine. At first, no-one answered, but when he tried a little
later, someone answered all right. And it was the same talkative
resident who answered the door the first time. Although it only seemed
to work at certain hours of the day, the Citibank network address was
the right one. He was in again.

As Force looked over the captures from his Citibank hack, he noticed
that the last section of the data dump didn't contain credit card
numbers like the first part. It had people's names--Middle Eastern
names--and a list of transactions. Dinner at a restaurant. A visit to
a brothel. All sorts of transactions. There was also a number which
looked like a credit limit, in come cases a very, very large limit,
for each person. A sheik and his wife appeared to have credit limits
of $1 million--each. Another name had a limit of $5 million.

There was something strange about the data, Force thought. It was not
structured in a way which suggested the Citibank machine was merely
transmitting data to another machine. It looked more like a text file
which was being dumped from a computer to a line printer.

Force sat back and considered his exquisite discovery. He decided this
was something he would share only with a very few close, trusted
friends from The Realm. He would tell Phoenix and perhaps one other
member, but no-one else.

As he looked through the data once more, Force began to feel a little
anxious. Citibank was a huge financial institution, dependent on the
complete confidence of its customers. The corporation would lose a lot
of face if news of Force's discovery got out. It might care enough to
really come after him. Then, with the sudden clarity of the lightning
strike photo which hung on his wall, a single thought filled his mind.

I am playing with fire.


`Where did you get those numbers?' Par asked Force next time they were
both on Altos.

Force hedged. Par leaped forward.

`I checked those numbers for you. They're valid,' he told Force. The
American was more than intrigued. He wanted that network address. It
was lust. Next stop, mystery machine. `So, what's the address?'

That was the one question Force didn't want to hear. He and Par had a
good relationship, sharing information comfortably if occasionally.
But that relationship only went so far. For all he knew, Par might
have a less than desirable use for the information. Force didn't know
if Par carded, but he felt sure Par had friends who might be into it.
So Force refused to tell Par where to find the mystery machine.

Par wasn't going to give up all that easily. Not that he would use the
cards for free cash, but, hey, the mystery machine seemed like a very
cool place to check out. There would be no peace for Force until Par
got what he wanted. Nothing is so tempting to a hacker as the faintest
whiff of information about a system he wants, and Par hounded Force
until the Australian hacker relented just a bit.

Finally Force told Par roughly where DEFCON had been scanning for
addresses when it stumbled upon the CitiSaudi machine. Force wasn't
handing over the street address, just the name of the suburb. DEFCON
had been accessing the Citibank network through Telenet, a large
American data network using X.25 communications protocols. The
sub-prefixes for the Citibank portion of the network were 223 and 224.

Par pestered Force some more for the rest of the numbers, but the
Australian had dug his heels in. Force was too careful a player, too
fastidious a hacker, to allow himself to get mixed up in the things
Par might get up to.

OK, thought the seventeen-year-old Par, I can do this without you. Par
estimated there were 20000 possible addresses on that network, any one
of which might be the home of the mystery machine. But he assumed the
machine would be in the low end of the network, since the lower
numbers were usually used first and the higher numbers were generally
saved for other, special network functions. His assumptions narrowed
the likely search field to about 2000 possible addresses.

Par began hand-scanning on the Citibank Global Telecommunications
Network (GTN) looking for the mystery machine. Using his knowledge of
the X.25 network, he picked a number to start with. He typed 22301,
22302, 22303. On and on, heading toward 22310000. Hour after hour,
slowly, laboriously, working his way through all the options, Par
scanned out a piece, or a range, within the network. When he got bored
with the 223 prefix, he tried out the 224 one for a bit of variety.

Bleary-eyed and exhausted after a long night at the computer, Par felt
like calling it quits. The sun had splashed through the windows of his
Salinas, California, apartment hours ago. His living room was a mess,
with empty, upturned beer cans circling his Apple IIe. Par gave up for
a while, caught some shut-eye. He had gone through the entire list of
possible addresses, knocking at all the doors, and nothing had
happened. But over the next few days he returned to scanning the
network again. He decided to be more methodical about it and do the
whole thing from scratch a second time.

He was part way through the second scan when it happened. Par's
computer connected to something. He sat up and peered toward the
screen. What was going on? He checked the address. He was sure he had
tried this one before and nothing had answered. Things were definitely
getting strange. He stared at his computer.

The screen was blank, with the cursor blinking silently at the top.
Now what? What had Force done to get the computer to sing its song?

Par tried pressing the control key and a few different letters.
Nothing. Maybe this wasn't the right address after all. He
disconnected from the machine and carefully wrote down the address,
determined to try it again later.

On his third attempt, he connected again but found the same irritating
blank screen. This time he went through the entire alphabet with the
control key.

Control L.

That was the magic keystroke. The one that made CitiSaudi give up its
mysterious cache. The one that gave Par an adrenalin rush, along with
thousands and thousands of cards. Instant cash, flooding his screen.
He turned on the screen capture so he could collect all the
information flowing past and analyse it later. Par had to keep feeding
his little Apple IIe more disks to store all the data coming in
through his 1200 baud modem.

It was magnificent. Par savoured the moment, thinking about how much
he was going to enjoy telling Force. It was going to be sweet. Hey,
Aussie, you aren't the only show in town. See ya in Citibank.

An hour or so later, when the CitiSaudi data dump had finally
finished, Par was stunned at what he found in his capture. These
weren't just any old cards. These were debit cards, and they were held
by very rich Arabs. These people just plopped a few million in a bank
account and linked a small, rectangular piece of plastic to that
account. Every charge came directly out of the bank balance. One guy
listed in the data dump bought a $330,000 Mercedes Benz in
Istanbul--on his card. Par couldn't imagine being able to throw down a
bit of plastic for that. Taking that plastic out for a spin around the
block would bring a whole new meaning to the expression, `Charge it!'

When someone wins the lottery, they often feel like sharing with their
friends. Which is exactly what Par did. First, he showed his
room-mates. They thought it was very cool. But not nearly so cool as
the half dozen hackers and phreakers who happened to be on the
telephone bridge Par frequented when the master of X.25 read off a
bunch of the cards.

Par was a popular guy after that day. Par was great, a sort of Robin
Hood of the underground. Soon, everyone wanted to talk to him. Hackers
in New York. Phreakers in Virginia. And the Secret Service in San
Francisco.


Par didn't mean to fall in love with Theorem. It was an accident, and
he couldn't have picked a worse girl to fall for. For starters, she
lived in Switzerland. She was 23 and he was only seventeen. She also
happened to be in a relationship--and that relationship was with
Electron, one of the best Australian hackers of the late 1980s. But
Par couldn't help himself. She was irresistible, even though he had
never met her in person. Theorem was different. She was smart and
funny, but refined, as a European woman can be.

They met on Altos in 1988.

Theorem didn't hack computers. She didn't need to, since she could
connect to Altos through her old university computer account. She had
first found Altos on 23 December 1986. She remembered the date for two
reasons. First, she was amazed
at the power of Altos--that she could have a live conversation on-line
with a dozen people in different countries at the same time. Altos was
a whole new world for her. Second, that was the day she met Electron.

Electron made Theorem laugh. His sardonic, irreverent humour hit a
chord with her. Traditional Swiss society could be stifling and
closed, but Electron was a breath of fresh air. Theorem was Swiss but
she didn't always fit the mould. She hated skiing. She was six feet
tall. She liked computers.

When they met on-line, the 21-year-old Theorem was at a crossroad in
her youth. She had spent a year and a half at university studying
mathematics. Unfortunately, the studies had not gone well. The truth
be told, her second year of university was in fact the first year all
over again. A classmate had introduced her to Altos on the
university's computers. Not long after she struck up a relationship
with Electron, she dropped out of uni all together and enrolled in a
secretarial course. After that, she found a secretarial job at a
financial institution.

Theorem and Electron talked on Altos for hours at a time. They talked
about everything--life, family, movies, parties--but not much about
what most people on Altos talked about--hacking. Eventually, Electron
gathered up the courage to ask Theorem for her voice telephone number.
She gave it to him happily and Electron called her at home in
Lausanne. They talked. And talked. And talked. Soon they were on the
telephone all the time.

Seventeen-year-old Electron had never had a girlfriend. None of the
girls in his middle-class high school would give him the time of day
when it came to romance. Yet here was this bright, vibrant girl--a
girl who studied maths--speaking to him intimately in a melting French
accent. Best of all, she genuinely liked him. A few words from his
lips could send her into silvery peals of laughter.

When the phone bill arrived, it was $1000. Electron surreptitiously
collected it and buried it at the bottom of a drawer in his bedroom.

When he told Theorem, she offered to help pay for it. A cheque for
$700 showed up not long after. It made the task of explaining
Telecom's reminder notice to his father much easier.

The romantic relationship progressed throughout 1987 and the first
half of 1988. Electron and Theorem exchanged love letters and tender
intimacies over 16000 kilometres of computer networks, but the
long-distance relationship had some bumpy periods. Like when she had
an affair over several months with Pengo. A well-known German hacker
with links to the German hacking group called the Chaos Computer Club,
Pengo was also a friend and mentor to Electron. Pengo was, however,
only a short train ride away from Theorem. She became friends with
Pengo on Altos and eventually visited him. Things progressed from
there.

Theorem was honest with Electron about the affair, but there was
something unspoken, something below the surface. Even after the affair
ended, Theorem was sweet on Pengo the way a girl remains fond of her
first love regardless of how many other men she has slept with since
then.

Electron felt hurt and angry, but he swallowed his pride and forgave
Theorem her dalliance. Eventually, Pengo disappeared from the scene.

Pengo had been involved with people who sold US military
secrets--taken from computers--to the KGB. Although his direct
involvement in the ongoing international computer espionage had been
limited, he began to worry about the risks. His real interest was in
hacking, not spying. The Russian connection simply enabled him to get
access to bigger and better computers. Beyond that, he felt no loyalty
to the Russians.

In the first half of 1988, he handed himself in to the German
authorities. Under West German law at the time, a citizen-spy who
surrendered himself before the state discovered the crime, and thus
averted more damage to the state, acquired immunity from prosecution.
Having already been busted in December 1986 for using a stolen NUI,
Pengo decided that turning himself in would be his best hope of taking
advantage of this legal largesse.

By the end of the year, things had become somewhat hairy for Pengo and
in March 1989 the twenty-year-old from Berlin was raided again, this
time with the four others involved in the spy ring. The story broke
and the media exposed Pengo's real name. He didn't know if he would
eventually be tried and convicted of something related to the
incident. Pengo had a few things on his mind other than the six-foot
Swiss girl.

With Pengo out of the way, the situation between Theorem and the
Australian hacker improved. Until Par came along.

Theorem and Par began innocently enough. Being one of only a few girls
in the international hacking and phreaking scene and, more
particularly, on Altos, she was treated differently. She had lots of
male friends on the German chat system, and the boys told her things
in confidence they would never tell each other. They sought out her
advice. She often felt like she wore many hats--mother, girlfriend,
psychiatrist--when she spoke with the boys on Altos.

Par had been having trouble with his on-line girlfriend, Nora, and
when he met Theorem he turned to her for a bit of support. He had
travelled from California to meet Nora in person in New York. But when
he arrived in the sweltering heat of a New York summer, without
warning, her conservative Chinese parents didn't take kindly to his
unannounced appearance. There were other frictions between Nora and
Par. The relationship had been fine on Altos and on the phone, but
things were just not clicking in person.

He already knew that virtual relationships, forged over an electronic
medium which denied the importance of physical chemistry, could
sometimes be disappointing.

Par used to hang out on a phone bridge with another Australian member
of The Realm, named Phoenix, and with a fun girl from southern
California. Tammi, a casual phreaker, had a great personality and a
hilarious sense of humour. During those endless hours chatting, she
and Phoenix seemed to be in the throes of a mutual crush. In the
phreaking underground, they were known as a bit of a virtual item. She
had even invited Phoenix to come visit her sometime. Then, one day,
for the fun of it, Tammi decided to visit Par in Monterey. Her
appearance was a shock.

Tammi had described herself to Phoenix as being a blue-eyed, blonde
California girl. Par knew that Phoenix visualised her as a
stereotypical bikini-clad, beach bunny from LA. His perception rested
on a foreigner's view of the southern California culture. The land of
milk and honey. The home of the Beach Boys and TV series like
`Charlie's Angels'.

When Tammi arrived, Par knew instantly that she and Phoenix would
never hit it off in person. Tammi did in fact have both blonde hair
and blue eyes. She had neglected to mention, however, that she weighed
about 300 pounds, had a rather homely face and a somewhat down-market
style. Par really liked Tammi, but he couldn't get the ugly phrase
`white trash' out of his thoughts. He pushed and shoved, but the
phrase was wedged in his mind. It fell to Par to tell Phoenix the
truth about Tammi.

So Par knew all about how reality could burst the foundations of a
virtual relationship.

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