Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (2 page)

Within a few hours, I have run the list of hashes through “rainbow tables”—a huge database of precomputed password hashes—recovering the passwords of most of the company’s employees. I eventually find one of the back-end computer servers that process customer transactions but discover the credit card numbers are encrypted. Not a problem: I find
the key used to encrypt the card numbers is conveniently hidden in a stored procedure within the database on a computer known as the “SQL server,” accessible to any database administrator.

Millions and millions of credit card numbers. I can make purchases all day long using a different credit card each time, and never run out of numbers.

But I made no purchases. This true story is not a new replay of the hacking that landed me in a lot of hot water. Instead it was something I was
hired
to do.

It’s what we call a “pen test,” short for “penetration test,” and it’s a large part of what my life consists of these days. I have hacked into some of the largest companies on the planet and penetrated the most resilient computer systems ever developed—hired by the companies themselves, to help them close the gaps and improve their security so they don’t become the next hacking victim. I’m largely self-taught and have spent years studying methods, tactics, and strategies used to circumvent computer security, and to learn more about how computer systems and telecommunication systems work.

My passion for technology and fascination with it have taken me down a bumpy road. My hacking escapades ended up costing me over five years of my life in prison and causing my loved ones tremendous heartache.

Here is my story, every detail as accurate as I can make it from memory, personal notes, public court records, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, FBI wiretap and body-wire recordings, many hours of interviews, and discussions with two government informants.

This is the story of how I became the world’s most wanted computer hacker.

M
y instinct for finding a way around barriers and safeguards began very early. At about age one and a half, I found a way to climb out of my crib, crawl to the child gate at the door, and figure out how to open it. For my mom, it was the first wake-up call for all that was to follow.

I grew up as an only child. After my dad left when I was three, my mother, Shelly, and I lived in nice, medium-priced apartments in safe areas of the San Fernando Valley, just over the hill from the city of Los Angeles. My mom supported us with waitressing jobs in one or another of the many delis strung out along Ventura Boulevard, which runs east–west for the length of the valley. My father lived out of state and, though he cared about me, was for the most part only occasionally involved in my life growing up until he moved to Los Angeles when I was thirteen years old.

Mom and I moved so often I didn’t have the same chance to make friends as other kids did. I spent my childhood largely involved in solitary, mostly sedentary pursuits. When I was at school, the teachers told my mom that I was in the top 1 percentile in mathematics and spelling, years ahead of my grade. But because I was hyperactive as a child, it was hard for me to sit still.

Mom had three husbands and several boyfriends when I was growing up. One abused me, another—who worked in law enforcement—molested me. Unlike some other moms I’ve read about, she never turned
a blind eye. From the moment she found out I was being mistreated—or even spoken to in a rough way—the guy was out the door for good. Not that I’m looking for excuses, but I wonder if those abusive men had anything to do with my growing up to a life of defying authority figures.

Summers were the best, especially if my mom was working a split shift and had time off in the middle of the day. I loved it when she’d take me swimming at the amazing Santa Monica Beach. She’d lie on the sand, sunning and relaxing, watching me splashing in the waves, getting knocked down and coming up laughing, practicing the swimming I had learned at a YMCA camp that I went to for several summers (and always hated except when they took us all to the beach).

I was good at sports as a kid, happy playing Little League, serious enough to enjoy spending spare time at the batting cage. But the passion that set me on a life course began when I was ten. A neighbor who lived in the apartment across from us had a daughter about my age whom I guess I developed a crush on, which she reciprocated by actually dancing naked in front of me. At that age, I was more interested in what her father brought into my life: magic.

He was an accomplished magician whose card tricks, coin tricks, and larger effects fascinated me. But there was something else, something more important: I saw how his audiences of one, three, or a roomful found delight in being deceived. Though this was never a conscious thought, the notion that people enjoyed being taken in was a stunning revelation that influenced the course of my life.

A magic store just a short bike ride away became my spare-time hangout. Magic was my original doorway into the art of deceiving people.

Sometimes instead of riding my bike I’d hop on the bus. One day a couple of years later a bus driver named Bob Arkow noticed I was wearing a T-shirt that said, “CBers Do It on the Air.” He told me he’d just found a Motorola handheld that was a police radio. I thought maybe he could listen in on the police frequencies, which would be very cool. It turned out he was pulling my leg about that, but Bob was an avid ham radio operator, and his enthusiasm for the hobby sparked my interest. He showed me a way to make free telephone calls over the radio, through a service called an “auto patch” provided by some of the hams. Free phone calls! That impressed me no end. I was hooked.

After several weeks of sitting in a nighttime classroom, I had learned
enough about radio circuits and ham radio regulations to pass the written exam, and mastered enough Morse code to meet that qualification as well. Soon the mailman brought an envelope from the Federal Communications Commission with my ham radio license, something not many kids in their early teens have ever had. I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.

Fooling people with magic was cool. But learning how the phone system worked was fascinating. I wanted to learn everything about how the phone company worked. I wanted to master its inner workings. I had been getting very good grades all the way through elementary school and in junior high, but around eighth or ninth grade I started cutting classes to hang out at Henry Radio, a ham radio store in West Los Angeles, reading books for hours on radio theory. To me, it was as good as a visit to Disneyland. Ham radio also offered some opportunities for helping out in the community. For a time I worked as a volunteer on occasional weekends to provide communications support for the local Red Cross chapter. One summer I spent a week doing the same for the Special Olympics.

Riding the buses was for me a bit like being on holiday—taking in the sights of the city, even when they were familiar ones. This was Southern California, so the weather was almost always near perfect, except when the smog settled in—much worse in those times than today. The bus cost twenty-five cents, plus ten cents for a transfer. On summer vacation when my mom was at work, I’d sometimes ride the bus all day. By the time I was twelve, my mind was already running in devious channels. One day it occurred to me,
If I could punch my own transfers, the bus rides wouldn’t cost anything
.

My father and my uncles were all salesmen with the gift of gab. I guess I share the gene that gave me my ability from very early on to talk people into doing things for me. I walked to the front of the bus and sat down in the closest seat to the driver. When he stopped at a light, I said, “I’m working on a school project and I need to punch interesting shapes on pieces of cardboard. The punch you use on the transfers would be great for me. Is there someplace I can buy one?”

I didn’t think he’d believe it because it sounded so stupid. I guess the idea never crossed his mind that a kid my age might be manipulating him. He told me the name of the store, and I called and found out they sold the punches for $15. When you were twelve, could you come up
with a reasonable excuse you might have given your mother about why you needed $15? I had no trouble. The very next day I was in the store buying a punch. But that was only Step One. How was I going to get books of blank transfers?

Well, where did the buses get washed? I walked over to the nearby bus depot, spotted a big Dumpster in the area where the buses were cleaned, pulled myself up, and looked in.

Jackpot!

I stuffed my pockets with partially used books of transfers—my first of what would be many, many acts of what came to be called “Dumpster-diving.”

My memory has always been way better than average and I managed to memorize the bus schedules for most of the San Fernando Valley. I started to roam by bus everywhere the bus system covered—Los Angeles County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County. I enjoyed seeing all those different places, taking in the world around me.

In my travels, I made friends with a kid named Richard Williams, who was doing the same thing, but with two pretty major differences. For one thing, his free-roaming travels were legal because, as the son of a bus driver, Richard rode for free. The second aspect that separated us (initially, anyway) was our difference in weight: Richard was obese and wanted to stop at Jack in the Box for a Super Taco five or six times a day. Almost at once I adopted his eating habits and began growing around the middle.

It wasn’t long before a pigtailed blond girl on the school bus told me, “You’re kinda cute, but you’re fat. You oughta lose some weight.”

Did I take her sharp but unquestionably constructive advice to heart? Nope.

Did I get into trouble for Dumpster-diving for those bus transfers and riding for free? Again, no. My mom thought it was clever, my dad thought it showed initiative, and bus drivers who knew I was punching my own transfers thought it was a big laugh. It was as though everyone who knew what I was up to was giving me attaboys.

In fact, I didn’t need other people’s praise for my misdeeds to lead me into more trouble. Who would have thought that a little shopping trip could provide a lesson that would set my life on a new course… in an unfortunate direction?

E
ven many Jewish families that aren’t very religious want their sons to have a bar mitzvah, and I fell into that category. This includes standing up in front of the congregation and reading a passage from the Torah scroll—in Hebrew. Of course, Hebrew uses a completely different alphabet, with
,
,
, and the like, so mastering the Torah portion can take months of study.