Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 72

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The beauty of a digital mobile phone, as opposed to the a.n.a.logue mobile phones still used by some people in Australia, is that a conversation is reasonably secure from eavesdroppers. If I call you on my digital mobile, our conversation will be encrypted with the A5 encryption algorithm between the mobile phone and the exchange. The carrier has copies of the Kis and, in some countries, the government can access these copies. They are, however, closely guarded secrets.

SKiMo had access to the database of the encrypted Kis and access to some of the unencrypted Kis themselves. At the time, he never went to the trouble of gathering enough information about the A3 and A8 algorithms to decrypt the full database, though it would have been easy to do so. However, he has now obtained that information.

To SKiMo, access to the keys generated for each of thousands of German mobile phone conversations was simply a curiosity--and a trophy. He didn't have the expensive equipment required to eavesdrop. To an intelligence agency, however, access could be very valuable, particularly if some of those phones belonged to people such as politicians. Even more valuable would be ongoing access to the OMC, or better still, the MSC. SkiMo said he would not provide this to any intelligence agency.

While inside DeTeMobil, SKiMo also learned how to interpret some of the mapping and signal-strength data. The result? If one of the company's customers has his mobile turned on, SKiMo says he can pinpoint the customer's geographic location to within one kilometre.

The customer doesn't even have to be talking on the mobile. All he has to do is have the phone turned on, waiting to receive calls.

SKiMo tracked one customer for an afternoon, as the man travelled across Germany, then called the customer up. It turned out they spoke the same European language.

'Why are you driving from Hamburg to Bremen with your phone on stand-by mode?' SKiMo asked.

The customer freaked out. How did this stranger at the end of the phone know where he had been travelling?

SKiMo said he was from Greenpeace. 'Don't drive around so much. It creates pollution,' he told the bewildered mobile customer. Then he told the customer about the importance of conserving energy and how prolonged used of mobile phones affected certain parts of one's brain.

Originally, SKiMo broke into the mobile phone carriers' network because he wanted 'to go completely cellular'--a transition which he hoped would make him both mobile and much harder to trace. Being able to eavesdrop on other people's calls-- including those of the police--was going to be a bonus.

However, as he pursued this project, he discovered that the code from a mobile phone manufacturer which he needed to study was 'a multi-lingual project'. 'I don't know whether you have ever seen a multi-lingual project,' SKiMo says, 'where n.o.body defines a common language that all programmers must use for their comments and function names? They look horrible. They are no fun to read.' Part of this one was in Finnish.

SKiMo says he has hacked a number of major vendors and, in several cases, has had access to their products' source codes.

Has he had the access to install backdoors in primary source code for major vendors? Yes. Has he done it? He says no. On other hand, I asked him who he would tell if he did do it. 'No-one,' he said, 'because there is more risk if two people know than if one does.'

SKiMo is mostly a loner these days. He shares a limited amount of information about hacking exploits with two people, but the conversations are usually carefully worded or vague. He subst.i.tutes a different vendor's names for the real one, or he discusses technical computer security issues in an in-depth but theoretical manner, so he doesn't have to name any particular system.

He doesn't talk about anything to do with hacking on the telephone.

Mostly, when he manages to capture a particularly juicy prize, he keeps news of his latest conquest to himself.

It wasn't always that way. 'When I started hacking and phreaking, I had the need to learn very much and to establish contacts which I could ask for certain things--such as technical advice,' SKiMo said.

'Now I find it much easier to get that info myself than asking anyone for it. I look at the source code, then experiment and discover new bugs myself.'

Asked if the ever-increasing complexity of computer technology hasn't forced hackers to work in groups of specialists instead of going solo, he said in some cases yes, but in most cases, no. 'That is only true for people who don't want to learn everything.'

SKiMo can't see himself giving up hacking any time in the near future.

Who is on the other side these days?

In Australia, it is still the Australian Federal Police, although the agency has come a long way since the early days of the Computer Crimes Unit. When AFP officers burst in on Phoenix, Nom and Electron, they were like the Keystone Cops. The police were no match for the Australian hackers in the subsequent interviews. The hackers were so far out in front in technical knowledge it was laughable.

The AFP has been closing that gap with considerable alacrity. Under the guidance of officers like Ken Day, they now run a more technically skilled group of law enforcement officers. In 1995-96, the AFP had about 2800 employees, although some 800 of these worked in 'community policing'--serving as the local police in places like the ACT and Norfolk Island. The AFP's annual expenditure was about $270 million in that year.

As an inst.i.tution, the AFP has recently gone through a major reorganisation, designed to make it less of a command-and-control military structure and more of an innovative, service oriented organisation.

Some of these changes are cosmetic. AFP officers are now no longer called 'constable' or 'detective sergeant'--they are all just 'federal agents'. The AFP now has a 'vision' which is 'to fight crime and win'.3 Its organisational chart had been transformed from a traditional, hierarchical pyramid of square boxes into a collection of little circles linked to bigger circles--all in a circle shape. No phallo-centric structures here. You can tell the politically correct management consultants have been visiting the AFP.

The AFP has, however, also changed in more substantive ways. There are now 'teams' with different expertise, and AFP investigators can draw on them on an as-needed basis. In terms of increased efficiency, this fluidity is probably a good thing.

There are about five permanent officers in the Melbourne computer crimes area. Although the AFP doesn't release detailed budget breakdowns, my back-of-the-envelope a.n.a.lysis suggested that the AFP spends less than $1 million per year on the Melbourne computer crimes area in total. Sydney also has a Computer Crimes Unit.

Catching hackers and phreakers is only one part of the unit's job.

Another important task is to provide technical computer expertise for other investigations.

Day still runs the show in Melbourne. He doesn't think or act like a street cop. He is a psychological player, and therefore well suited to his opponents. According to a reliable source outside the underground, he is also a clean cop, a competent officer, and 'a nice guy'.

However, being the head of the Computer Crimes Unit for so many years makes Day an easy target in the underground. In particular, hackers often make fun of how seriously he seems to take both himself and his job. When Day appeared on the former ABC show 'Att.i.tude', sternly warning the audience off hacking, he told the viewers, 'It's not a game. It's a criminal act'.

To hackers watching the show, this was a matter of opinion. Not long after the episode went to air, a few members of Neuro-cactus, an Australian group of hackers and phreakers which had its roots in Western Australia, decided to take the mickey out of Day. Two members, Pick and Minnow, clipped Day's now famous soundbite. Before long, Day appeared to be saying, 'It's not a criminal act. It's a game'--to the musical theme of 'The Bill'. The Neuro-cactus crowd quickly spread their lampoon across the underground via an illicit VMB connected to its own toll-free 008 number.

Although Day does perhaps take himself somewhat seriously, it can't be much fun for him to deal with this monkey business week in and week out. More than one hacker has told me with great excitement, 'I know someone who is working on getting Day's home number'. The word is that a few members of the underground already have the information and have used it. Some people think it would be hilarious to call up Day at home and prank him. Frankly, I feel a bit sorry for the guy. You can bet the folks in traffic operations don't have to put up with this stuff.

But that doesn't mean I think these pranksters should be locked up either.

If we, as a society, choose not to lock hackers up, then what should we do with them?

Perhaps a better question is, do we really need to do anything with them?

One answer is to simply ignore look-see hacking. Society could decide that it makes more sense to use valuable police resources to catch dangerous criminals--forgers, embezzlers, white-collar swindlers, corporate spies and malicious hackers--than to chase look-see hackers.

The law must still maintain the capacity to punish hard where someone has strayed into what society deems serious crime. However, almost any serious crime committed by a hacker could be committed by a non-hacker and prosecuted under other legislation. Fraud, wilful damage and dealing in stolen property are crimes regardless of the medium--and should be punished appropriately.

Does it make sense to view most look-see hackers--and by that I mean hackers who do not do malicious damage or commit fraud--as criminals?

Probably not. They are primarily just a nuisance and should be treated as such. This would not be difficult to do. The law-makers could simply declare look-see hacking to be a minor legal infringement. In the worst-case scenario, a repeat offender might have to do a little community service. But such community service needs to be managed properly. In one Australian case, a corrections officer a.s.signed a hacker to dig ditches with a convicted rapist and murderer.

Many hackers have never had a job--in part because of the high youth unemployment in some areas--and so their community service might be their first 'position'. The right community service placement must involve hackers using their computer skills to give something back to society, preferably in some sort of autonomous, creative project. A hacker's enthusiasm, curiosity and willingness to experiment can be directed toward a positive outcome if managed properly.

In cases where hacking or phreaking has been an addiction, the problem should be treated, not criminalised. Most importantly, these hackers should not have convictions recorded against them, particularly if they're young. As Paul Galbally said to the court at Mendax's sentencing, 'All the accused are intelligent--but their intelligence outstretched their maturity'. Chances are, most will be able to overcome or outgrow their addiction.

In practice, most Australia's judges have been reasonably fair in their sentencing, certainly compared to judges overseas. None of the Australian hackers detailed in this work received a prison sentence.

Part of this is due to happenstance, but part is also due to the sound judgments of people like Judge Lewis and Judge Kimm. It must be very tempting, sitting on the bench every day, to shoot from the hip interpreting new laws.

As I sat in court listening to each judge, it quickly became clear that these judges had done their homework. With psychologist Tim Watson-Munro on the stand, Judge Lewis rapidly zeroed in on the subject of 'free will'--as applied to addiction--regarding Prime Suspect. In Trax's case, Judge Kimm asked pointed questions which he could only have formulated after serious study of the extensive legal brief. Their well-informed judgments suggested a deeper understanding both of hacking as a crime, and of the intent of the largely untested computer crime legislation.

However, a great deal of time and money has been wasted in the pursuit of look-see hackers, largely because this sort of hacking is treated as a major crime. Consider the following absurd situation created by Australia's federal computer criminal legislation.