Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 19

'Par, the Secret Service is here, searching the motel.'

'I know. I saw them.'

'They've already searched the room next to yours.' Par nearly died.

The agents had been less than two metres from where he was standing and he hadn't even known it. That room was where John stayed. It was connected to his by an inner door, but both sides were locked.

'Move into John's room and lay low. Gotta go.' Nibbler hung up abruptly.

Par put his ear to the wall and listened. Nothing. He unlocked the connecting inner door, turned the k.n.o.b and pressed lightly. It gave.

Someone had unlocked the other side after the search. Par squinted through the crack in the door. The room was silent and still. He opened it--no-one home. Scooping up his things, he quickly moved into John's room.

Then he waited. Pacing and fidgeting, he strained his ears to catch the sounds outside. Every bang and creak of a door opening and closing set him on edge. Late that night, after the law enforcement officials had left, Nibbler called him on the house phone and told him what had happened.

Nibbler had been inside the computer chalet when the Secret Service showed up with a search warrant. The agents took names, numbers, every detail they could, but they had trouble finding any evidence of hacking. Finally, one of them emerged from the chalet triumphantly waving a single computer disk in the air. The law enforcement entourage hanging around in front of the chalet let out a little cheer, but Nibbler could hardly keep a straight face. His younger brother had been learning the basics of computer graphics with a program called Logo. The United States Secret Service would soon be uncovering the secret drawings of a primary school student.

Par laughed. It helped relieve the stress. Then he told Nibbler his escape plan, and Nibbler agreed to arrange matters. His parents didn't know the whole story, but they liked Par and wanted to help him. Then Nibbler wished his friend well.

Par didn't even try to rest before his big escape. He was as highly strung as a racehorse at the gate. What if the Secret Service was still watching the place? There was no garage attached to the main motel building which he could access from the inside. He would be exposed, even though it would only be for a minute or so. The night would provide reasonable cover, but the escape plan wasn't fool-proof.

If agents were keeping the motel under observation from a distance they might miss him taking off from his room. On the other hand, there could be undercover agents posing as guests watching the entire complex from inside their room.

Paranoid thoughts stewed in Par's mind throughout the night. Just before 5 a.m., he heard John's car pull up outside. Par flicked off the light in his room, opened his door a crack and scanned the motel grounds. All quiet, bar the single car, which puffed and grunted in the still, cold air. The windows in most of the buildings were dark.

It was now or never.

Par opened the door all the way and slipped down the hallway. As he crept downstairs, the pre-dawn chill sent a s.h.i.+ver down his spine.

Glancing quickly from side to side, he hurried toward the waiting car, pulled the back door open and dove onto the seat. Keeping his head down, he twisted around, rolled onto the floor and closed the door with little more than a soft click.

As the car began to move. Par reached for a blanket which had been tossed on the floor and pulled it over himself. After a while, when John told him they were safely out of the town, Par slipped the blanket off his face and he looked up at the early morning sky. He tried to get comfortable on the floor. It was going to be a long ride.

At Asheville, John dropped Par off at an agreed location. Par thanked him and hopped into a waiting car. Someone else from his extensive network of friends and acquaintances took him to Charlotte.

This time Par rode in the front pa.s.senger seat. For the first time, he saw the true extent of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Hugo. The small town where he had been staying had been slashed by rain and high winds, but on the way to the Charlotte airport, where he would pick up a flight to New York, Par watched the devastation with amazement. He stared out the car window, unable to take his eyes off the storm's trail of havoc.

The hurricane had swept up anything loose or fragile and turned it into a missile on a suicide mission. Whatever mangled, broken fragments remained after the turbulent winds had pa.s.sed would have been almost unrecognisable to those who had seen them before.

Theorem worried about Par as he staggered from corner to corner of the continent. In fact, she had often asked him to consider giving himself up. Moving from town to town was taking its toll on Par, and it wasn't that much easier on Theorem. She hadn't thought going on the lam was such a great idea in the first place, and she offered to pay for his lawyer so he could stop running. Par declined. How could he hand himself in when he believed elimination was a real possibility?

Theorem sent him money, since he had no way of earning a living and he needed to eat. The worst parts, though, were the dark thoughts that kept crossing her mind. Anything could happen to Par between phone calls. Was he alive? In prison? Had he been raided, even accidentally shot during a raid?

The Secret Service and the private security people seemed to want him so badly. It was worrying, but hardly surprising. Par had embarra.s.sed them. He had broken into their machines and pa.s.sed their private information around in the underground. They had raided his home when he wasn't even home. Then he had escaped a second raid, in North Carolina, slipping between their fingers. He was constantly in their face, continuing to hack blatantly and to show them contempt in things such as his voicemail message. He figured they were probably exasperated from chasing all sorts of false leads as well, since he was perpetually spreading fake rumours about his whereabouts. Most of all, he thought they knew what he had seen inside the TRW system. He was a risk.

Par became more and more paranoid, always watching over his shoulder as he moved from city to city. He was always tired. He could never sleep properly, worrying about the knock on the door. Some mornings, after a fitful few hours of rest, he woke with a start, unable to remember where he was. Which house or motel, which friends, which city.

He still hacked all the time, borrowing machines where he could. He posted messages frequently on The Phoenix Project, an exclusive BBS run by The Mentor and Erik Bloodaxe and frequented by LOD members and the Australian hackers. Some well-known computer security people were also invited onto certain, limited areas of the Texas-based board, which immediately elevated the status of The Phoenix Project in the computer underground. Hackers were as curious about the security people as the security people were about their prey. The Phoenix Project was special because it provided neutral ground, where both sides could meet to exchange ideas.

Via the messages, Par continued to improve his hacking skills while also talking with his friends, people like Erik Bloodaxe, from Texas, and Phoenix, from The Realm in Melbourne. Electron also frequented The Phoenix Project. These hackers knew Par was on the run, and sometimes they joked with him about it. The humour made the stark reality of Par's situation bearable. All the hackers on The Phoenix Project had considered the prospect of being caught. But the presence of Par, and his tortured existence on the run, hammered the implications home with some regularity.

As Par's messages became depressed and paranoid, other hackers tried to do what they could to help him. Elite US and foreign hackers who had access to the private sections of The Phoenix Project saw his messages and they felt for him. Yet Par continued to slide deeper and deeper into his own strange world.

Subject: d.a.m.n !!!

From: The Parmaster Date: Sat Jan 13 08:40:17 1990

s.h.i.+t, i got drunk last night and went onto that Philippine system...

Stupid Admin comes on and asks who i am ...

Next thing i know, i'm booted off and both accounts on the system are gone.

Not only this .. but the whole f.u.c.king Philippine Net isn't accepting collect calls anymore. (The thing went down completely after i was booted off!) Apparently someone there had enough of me.

By the way, kids, never drink and hack!

- Par

Subject: gawd From: The Parmaster Date: Sat Jan 13 09:07:06 1990

Those SS boys and NSA boys think i'm a COMRADE .. hehehe i'm just glad i'm still f.u.c.king free.

Bahahaha

- Par

Subject: The Bottom line.

From: The Parmaster Date: Sun Jan 21 10:05:38 1990

The bottom line is a crackdown. The phrack boys were just the start, i'm sure of it.

This is the time to watch yourself. No matter what you are into, whether it's just codes, cards, etc.

Apparently the government has seen the last straw. Unfortunately, with all of this in the news now, they will be able to get more government money to combat hackers.

And that's BAD f.u.c.king news for us. I think they are going after all the 'teachers'--the people who educate others into this sort of thing.

I wonder if they think that maybe these remote cases are linked in any way. The only way they canprobably see is that we are hackers. And so that is where their energies will be put. To stop ALL hackers--and stop them BEFORE they can become a threat. After they wipe out the educators, that is. Just a theory.

- Par

Subject: Connection From: The Parmaster Date: Sun Jan 21 10:16:11 1990

Well, the only connection is disconnection, as Gandalf [a British hacker] would say.

That's what i'm putting on my epitaph.

THE ONLY CONNECTION IS DISCONNECTION ...

Oh well, maybe i'll take a few of the b.u.g.g.e.rs with me when they come for me.

- Par

Subject: Oh well.