Terminal Compromise Part 97

"Don't bother, my friend," said a long haired German youth of about twenty.

"Excuse me?"

"I see you are looking for marks, yes?"

"Well, yes. I wanted to see who made these . . ."

"I make them, he makes them, we all make them," he said almost giddily. "This is not available from Radio Shack," he giggled.

"Who needs them from the establishment when they are so easy to build."

Scott knew that electronics was indeed a garage operation and that many high tech initiatives had begun in entrepreneur's bas.e.m.e.nts. The thought of home hobbyists building equipment which the military defends against was anathema to Scott. He merely shook his head and moved on, thanking the makers of the eavesdropping machines for their demonstrations.

Over in a dimly lit corner, dimmer than elsewhere, Scott saw a number of people fiddling with an array of computers and equip- ment that looked surprisingly familiar. As he approached he experienced an immediate rush of d ja vu. This was the same type of equipment that he had seen on the van before it was blown up a couple of months ago. Tempest busting, he thought.

The group was speaking in German, but they were more than glad to switch to English for Scott's benefit. They sensed his interest as he poked around the a.s.sorted monitors and antennas and test equipment.

"Ah, you are interested in Van Eck?" asked one of the German hackers. They maintained a clean cut appearance, and through discussion Scott learned that they were funded as part of a university research project in Frankfurt.

Scott watched and listened as they set up a compelling demonstra- tion. First, one computer screen displayed a complex graphic picture. Several yards away another computer displayed a foggy image that cleared as one of the students adjusted the antenna attached to the computer.

"Aha! Lock!" one of them said, announcing that the second comput- er would now display everything that the first computer did. The group played with color and black and white graphics, word proc- essing screens and spreadsheets. Each time, in a matter of seconds, they 'locked' into the other computer successfully.

Scott was duly impressed and asked them why they were putting effort into such research. "Very simple," the apparent leader of the Frankfurt group said. "This work is cla.s.sified in both your country and mine, so we do not have access to the answers we need. So, we build our own and now it's no more cla.s.sified. You see?"

"Why do you need it?"

"To protect against it," they said in near unison. "The next step is to build efficient methods to fight the Van Eck."

"Doesn't Tempest do that?"

"Tempest?" the senior student said. "Ha! It makes the computer weigh a thousand pounds and the monitor hard to read. There are better ways to defend. To defend we must first know how to attack. That's basic."

"Let me ask you something," Scott said to the group after their lengthy demonstration. "Do you know anything about electromag- netic pulses? Strong ones?"

"Ya. You mean like from a nuclear bomb?"

"Yes, but smaller and designed to only hurt computers."

"Oh, ya. We have wanted to build one, but it is beyond our means."

"Well," Scott said smugly, "someone is building them and setting them off."

"Your stock exchange. We thought that the American government did it to prove they could."

An hour of ensuing discussion taught Scott that the technology that the DoD and the NSA so desperately spent billions to keep secret and proprietary was in common use. To most engineers, and Scott could easily relate, every problem has an answer. The challenge is to accomplish the so-called impossible. The engi- neer's pride.

Jon, the Flying Dutchman finally rescued Scott's stomach from implosion. "How about lunch? A few of the guys want to meet you. Give you a heavy dose of propaganda," he threatened.

"Thank G.o.d! I'm famished and haven't touched the stuff all day.

Love to, it's on me," Scott offered. He could see Doug having a cow. How could he explain a thousand dollar dinner for a hundred hungry hackers?

"Say that too loud," cautioned the bearded Dutchman, "and you'll have to buy the restaurant. Hacking isn't very high on the pay scale."

"Be easy on me, I gotta justify lunch for an army to my boss, or worse yet, the beancounters." Dutchman didn't catch the idiom.

"Never mind, let's keep it to a small regiment, all right?"

He never figured out how it landed on his shoulders, but Scott ended up with the responsibility of picking a restaurant and successfully guiding the group there. And Dutchman had skipped out without notifying anyone. d.a.m.ned awkward, thought Scott. He a.s.sumed control, limited though it was, and led them to the only restaurant he knew, the Sarang Mas. The group blindly and happi- ly followed. They even let him order the food, so he did his very best to impress them by ordering without looking at the menu. He succeeded, with his savant phonetic memory, to order exactly what he had the night prior, but this time he asked for vastly greater portions.

As they were sating their pallets, and commenting on what a wonderful choice this restaurant was, Scott popped the same question to which he had previously been unable to receive a concise answer. Now that he had met this bunch, he would ask again, and if lucky, someone might respond and actually be com- prehensible.

"I've been asking the same question since I got into this whole hacking business," Scott said savoring goat parts and sounding quite nonchalant. "And I've never gotten a straight answer. Why do you hack?" He asked. "Other than the philosophical credo of Network is Life, why do you hack?" Scott looked into their eyes.

"Or are you just plain nosy?"

"I b.l.o.o.d.y well am!" said the one called Pinball who spoke with a thick Liverpudlian accent. His jeans were in tatters, in no better shape than his sneakers. The short pudgy man was mid- twenty-ish and his tall crewcut was in immediate need of reshap- ing.

"Nosy? That's why you hack?" Asked Scott in disbelief.

"Yeah, that's it, mate. It's great fun. A game the size of life." Pinball looked at Scott as if to say, that's it. No hidden meaning, it's just fun. He swallowed more of the exqui- site food.

"Sounds like whoever dies with the most hacks wins," Scott said facetiously.

"Right. You got it, mate." Pinball never looked up from his food while talking.

Scott scanned his luncheon companions for reaction. A couple of grunts, no objection. What an odd a.s.sortment, Scott thought. At least the Flying Dutchman had been kind enough to a.s.semble an English speaking group for Scott's benefit.

"We each have our reasons to hack," said the one who called himself Che2. By all appearance Che2 seemed more suited to a BMW than a revolutionary cabal. He was a well bred American, dressed casually but expensively. "We may not agree with each other, or anyone, but we have an underlying understanding that permits us to cooperate."

"I can tell you why I hack," said the sole German representative at the table who spoke impeccable English with a thick accent "I am a professional ethicist. It is people like me who help gov- ernments formulate rules that decide who lives and who dies in emergency situations. The right or wrong of weapons of ma.s.s destruction. Ethics is a social moving target that must con- stantly be re-examined as we as a civilized people grow and strive to maintain our innate humanity."

"So you equate hacking and ethics, in the same breath?" Scott asked.

"I certainly do," said the middle aged German hacker known as Solon. "I am part of a group that promotes the Hacker Ethic. It is really quite simple, if you would be interested." Scott urged him to continue. "We have before us, as a world, a marvelous opportunity, to create a set of rules, behavior and att.i.tudes towards this magnificent technology that blossoms before our eyes. That law is the Ethic, some call it the Code." Kirk had called it the Code, too.

"The Code is quite a crock," interrupted a tall slender man with disheveled white hair who spoke with an upper crust, ever so proper British accent. "Unless everybody follows it, from A to Zed, it simply won't work. There can be no exceptions. Other- wise my friends, we will find ourselves in a technological Lord of the Flies."

"Ah, but that is already happening," said a gentleman in his mid- fifties, who also sported a full beard, bushy mustache and long well kept salt and pepper hair to his shoulders. "We are already well on the road to a date with Silicon Armageddon. We didn't do it with the Bomb, but it looks like we're sure as h.e.l.l gonna do it with technology for the ma.s.ses. In this case computers."

Going only by 'Dave', he was a Philosophy Professor at Stanford.

In many ways he spoke like the early Timothy Leary, using tech- nology instead of drugs as a mental catalyst. Scott though of Dave as the futurist in the group.

"He's right. It is happening, right now. Long Live the Revolu- tion," shouted Che2. "Hacking keeps our personal freedoms alive.

I know I'd much prefer everyone knowing my most intimate secrets than have the government and TRW and the FBI and the CIA control it and use only pieces of it for their greed-sucking reasons. No way. I want everyone to have the tools to get into the Govern- ment's Big Brother computer system and make the changes they see fit."

Scott listened as his one comment sp.a.w.ned a heated and animated discussion. He wouldn't break in unless they went too far afield, wherever that was, or he simply wanted to join in on the conversation.

"How can you support freedom without responsibility? You contra- dict yourself by ignoring the Code." Solon made his comment with Teutonic matter of factness in between mouthfuls.

"It is the most responsible thing we can do," retorted Che2. "It is our moral duty, our responsibility to the world to protect our privacy, our rights, before they are stripped away as they have been since the Republicans bounced in, but not out, over a decade ago." He turned in his chair and glared at Scott. Maybe thirty years old, Che2 was mostly bald with great bushes of curly dark brown hair encircling his head. The lack of hair emphasized his large forehead which stood over his deeply inset eyes. Che2 called the Boston area his home but his cosmopolitan accent belied his background.

The proper British man known as Doctor Doctor, DRDR on the BBS's, was over six foot five with an unruly frock of thick white hair which framed his ruddy pale face. "I do beg your pardon, but this so violates the tenets of civilized behavior. What this gentleman proposes is the philosophical ant.i.thesis of common sense and rationality. I suggest we consider the position that each of us in actual fact is working for the establishment, if I may use such a politically pa.s.s descriptor." DRDR's comment hushed the table. He continued. "Is it not true that security is being installed as a result of many of our activities?"