Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 21

Subject: Hmm, Par From: Phoenix Date: Thu Feb 01 10:22:46 1990

At least you arent getting shot at.

Subject: Par, why don't you ...

From: Ravage Date: Thu Feb 01 10:56:04 1990

Why not just go out and say 'hi' to the nice gentleman? If i kept seeing the same people tooling around my neighborhood, i would actively check them out if they seemed weird.

Subject: Par, jump 'em From: Aston Martin Date: Tue Feb 06 18:04:55 1990

What you could do is go out to one of the vans sitting in the street (you know, the one with the two guys sitting in it all day) with a pair of jumper cables. Tell them you've seen them sitting there all day and you thought they were stuck. Ask them if they need a jump.

- Aston

Between these strange messages, Par often posted comments on technical matters. Other hackers routinely asked him questions about X.25 networks. Unlike some hackers, Par almost always offered some help. In fact, he believed that being 'one of the teachers' made him a particular target. But his willingness to teach others so readily, combined with his relatively humble, self-effacing demeanour, made Par popular among many hackers. It was one reason he found so many places to stay.

Spring arrived, brus.h.i.+ng aside a few of the hards.h.i.+ps of a winter on the run, then summer. Par was still on the run, still dodging the Secret Service's national hunt for the fugitive. By autumn, Par had eluded law enforcement officials around the United States for more than a year. The gloom of another cold winter on the run sat on the horizon of Par's future, but he didn't care. Anything, everything was bearable. He could take anything Fate would dish up because he had something to live for.

Theorem was coming to visit him again.

When Theorem arrived in New York in early 1991, the weather was bitterly cold. They travelled to Connecticut, where Par was staying in a share-house with friends.

Par was nervous about a lot of things, but mostly about whether things would be the same with Theorem. Within a few hours of her arrival, his fears were a.s.suaged. Theorem felt as pa.s.sionately about him as she had in California more than twelve months before. His own feelings were even stronger. Theorem was a liferaft of happiness in the growing turmoil of his life.

But things were different in the outside world. Life on the run with Theorem was grim. Constantly dependent on other people, on their charity, they were also subject to their petty whims.

A room-mate in the share-house got very drunk one night and picked a fight with one of Par's friends. It was a major row and the friend stormed out. In a fit of intoxicated fury, the drunk threatened to turn Par in to the authorities. Slurring his angry words, he announced he was going to call the FBI, CIA and Secret Service to tell them all where Par was living.

Par and Theorem didn't want to wait around to see if the drunk would be true to his word. They grabbed their coats and fled into the darkness. With little money, and no place else to stay, they walked around for hours in the blistering, cold wind. Eventually they decided they had no choice but to return to the house late at night, hopefully after the drunk had fallen asleep.

They sidled up to the front of the house, alert and on edge. It was quite possible the drunk had called every law enforcement agency his blurry mind could recall, in which case a collection of agents would be lying in wait. The street was deadly quiet. All the parked cars were deserted. Par peered in a darkened window but he couldn't see anything. He motioned for Theorem to follow him into the house.

Though she couldn't see Par's face, Theorem could feel his tension.

Most of the time, she revelled in their closeness, a proximity which at times seemed to border on telepathy. But at this moment, the extraordinary gift of empathy felt like a curse. Theorem could feel Par's all-consuming paranoia, and it filled her with terror as they crept through the hall, checking each room. Finally they reached Par's room, expecting to find two or three Secret Service agents waiting patiently for them in the dark.

It was empty.

They climbed into bed and tried to get some sleep, but Theorem lay awake in the dark for a little while, thinking about the strange and fearful experience of returning to the house. Though she spoke to Par on the phone almost every day when they were apart, she realised she had missed something.

Being on the run for so long had changed Par.

Some time after she returned to Switzerland, Theorem's access to Altos shrivelled up and died. She had been logging in through her old university account but the university eventually killed her access since she was no longer a student. Without access to any X.25 network linked to the outside world, she couldn't logon to Altos. Although she was never involved with hacking, Theorem had become quite addicted to Altos. The loss of access to the Swiss X.25 network--and therefore to Altos--left her feeling very depressed. She told Par over the telephone, in sombre tones.

Par decide to make a little present for Theorem. While most hackers broke into computers hanging off the X.25 networks, Par broke into the computers of the companies which ran the X.25 networks. Having control over the machines owned by Telenet or Tymnet was real power. And as the master of X.25 networks, Par could simply create a special account--just for Theorem--on Tymnet.

When Par finished making the account, he leaned back in his chair feeling pretty pleased with himself.

Account name: Theorem.

Pa.s.sword: ParLovesMe!

Well, thought Par, she's going to have to type that in every time she gets on the Tymnet network. Altos might be filled with the world's best hackers, and they might even try to flirt with Theorem, but she'll be thinking of me every time she logs on, he thought.

Par called her on the telephone and gave her his special present. When he told her the pa.s.sword to her new account, Theorem laughed. She thought it was sweet.

And so did the MOD boys.

Masters of Deception, or Destruction--it depended on who told the story--was a New York-based gang of hackers. They thought it would be cool to hack Altos. It wasn't that easy to get Altos sh.e.l.l access, which Theorem had, and most people had to settle for using one of the 'guest' accounts. But it was much easier to hack Altos from a sh.e.l.l account than from a 'guest' account. Theorem's account would be the targeted jump-off point.

How did MOD get Theorem's Altos pa.s.sword? Most probably they were watching one of the X.25 gateways she used as she pa.s.sed through Tymnet on her way to Altos. Maybe the MOD boys sniffed her pa.s.sword en route. Or maybe they were watching the Tymnet security officials who were watching that gateway.

In the end it didn't matter how MOD got Theorem's pa.s.sword on Altos.

What mattered was that they changed her pa.s.sword. When Theorem couldn't get into Altos she was beside herself. She felt like a junkie going cold turkey. It was too much. And of course she couldn't reach Par. Because he was on the run, she had to wait for him to call her.

In fact she couldn't reach any of her other friends on Altos to ask for help. How was she going to find them? They were all hackers. They chose handles so no-one would know their real names.

What Theorem didn't know was that, not only had she lost access to Altos, but the MOD boys were using her account to hack the Altos system. To the outside world it appeared as though she was doing it.

Theorem finally managed to get a third-hand message to Gandalf, a well-known British hacker. She sought him out for two reasons. First, he was a good friend and was therefore likely to help her out. Second, Gandalf had root access on Altos, which meant he could give her a new pa.s.sword or account.

Gandalf had established quite a reputation for himself in the computer underground through the hacking group 8lgm--The Eight-Legged Groove Machine, named after a British band. He and his friend, fellow British hacker Pad, had the best four legs in the chorus line. They were a world-cla.s.s act, and certainly some of the best talent to come out of the British hacking scene. But Gandalf and, to a lesser extent, Pad had also developed a reputation for being arrogant. They rubbed some of the American hackers the wrong way. Not that Pad and Gandalf seemed to care. Their att.i.tude was: We're good. We know it. b.u.g.g.e.r off.

Gandalf disabled Theorem's account on Altos. He couldn't very well just change the pa.s.sword and then send the new one through the extended grapevine that Theorem had used to get a message through to him. Clearly, someone had targeted her account specifically. No way was he going to broadcast a new pa.s.sword for her account throughout the underground. But the trouble was that neither Par nor Theorem knew what Gandalf had done.

Meanwhile, Par called Theorem and got an earful. An angry Par vowed to find out just who the h.e.l.l had been messing with her account.

When the MOD boys told Par they were the culprits, he was a bit surprised because he had always been on good terms with them. Par told them how upset Theorem had been, how she gave him an earful. Then an extraordinary thing happened. Corrupt, the toughest, baddest guy in MOD, the black kid from the roughest part of New York, the hacker who gave s.h.i.+t to everyone because he could, apologised to Par.

The MOD guys never apologised, even when they knew they were in the wrong. Apologies never got anyone very far on a New York City street.

It was an att.i.tude thing. 'I'm sorry, man' from Corrupt was the equivalent of a normal person licking the mud from the soles of your shoes.

The new pa.s.sword was: M0Dm0dM0D. That's the kind of guys they were.

Par was just signing off to try out the new pa.s.sword when Corrupt jumped in.

'Yeah, and ah, Par, there's something you should know.'

'Yeah?' Par answered, anxious to go.

'I checked out her mail. There was some stuff in it.'

Theorem's letters? Stuff? 'What kind of stuff?' he asked.

'Letters from Gandalf.'

'Yeah?'