Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (23 page)

The next day, around suppertime, Julio makes a one-minute call to Tymnet, then a fifteen-minute call to another Tymnet dialup. Then he calls Mark.

On July 1, in the early afternoon, Julio calls Mark twice. Two minutes later Julio calls Tymnet for nineteen minutes. Then he calls Mark.

On July 4, at four in the afternoon, John makes nine calls in a row to Tymnet. Then he calls Mark.

Over and over again, the pattern repeats, just like it did when the earlier DNRs were up in 1989. Calls to Tymnet, calls to Mark. Calls to Tymnet, calls to Mark.

You'd think Mark would know better than to engage in illegal hacking by now. After he was charged with a misdemeanor in State Court in Queens, he pleaded guilty to call-forwarding phones to a 900 number. Mark's plea did not specify the nature of the 900 number, but police told reporters that he was calling sex lines. Mark hotly denied it what would he be doing calling sex lines?

but there was nothing he could do to quell the rumors. Mark's sentence was thirty-five hours of community service at a hospital in Queens.

The outcome of that case reinforced Mark's perception that hacking was not an offense the government took seriously.

Despite being convicted, nothing really bad had happened to him. Somewhere between early 1990 and now the case had fizzled. Not only had the U. S. Attorney's Eastern District office wrangled out of prosecuting the kids but the Electronic Frontier Foundation had never followed up on its initial interest in the case, a sign the hackers interpreted as meaning they weren't in real danger from the government. The MOD boys didn't know that Kapor and Barlow backed off because Kapor's lawyer had told them he didn't see a real civil liberties case to pursue. The boys' 1989 and 1990 transgressions appeared to them to be petty trespasses.

So it was no wonder that Mark rationalized his decision to continue hacking. That was his identity. Phiber Optik. No where else could he get this kind of intellectual stimulation.

Why don't you just go to school, Mark? Why don't you just complete your high school degree and talk your way into a nice computer science department somewhere?

School is not for Mark, he says. They don't teach the kinds of things he wants to know. Mark only cares about specific, arcane computer networks, the crazy puzzling over how they're put together and why they work a certain way. Phone company networks. Tymnet's system. He can lecture for hours about those systems. Mark's a specialist who isn't interested in the more general knowledge that computer science departments offer about how to program a VAX or a Unix computer. No, Mark is as niche-oriented as a medieval scholar.

So why doesn't he get a job with a phone company? Well, there's this misdemeanor conviction, for one thing. But for Mark, another bigger reason is that he believes that if he went to work for a phone company, his understanding would be limited to the architecture of a single, local system. That's not for Mark. He wants to know how everything works.

And he's willing to teach anybody else.

Which is why he is leading Julio and John through the intricacies of navigating Tymnet to get to Southwestern Bell. They are eager students.

Why are John and Julio so interested in this endeavor? Southwestern Bell's C-SCANS controls every switch in Texas.

Southwestern Bell controls the phone service of Chris Goggans, of Scott Chasin, and now, of the brand-new Comsec offices.

Kenyon's mom hired some people to fix it up, so the new office was really cool. Very professional.

Comsec opened its doors in May of 1991, and the business partners quickly made themselves at home in the airy headquarters. Comsec has a huge vaulted ceiling with skylights and faux gaslights in the two corridors. Some days Comsec's founders skateboard down the long empty halls of the vast space or roll around in chairs. Chris was living in the back of the building, in an apartment with a big white-bellied alley cat named Spud.

But there was a problem.

Comsec had zero clients.

The officers of Comsec hold weekly staff meetings, which they all attend. They decide to distribute press releases advertising the availability of their security services. But to whom? As ex-hackers, they compile a list of likely clients. They scan the philes on underground bulletin boards to find the names of businesses whose computers have been infiltrated, then call the companies to offer their services.

The press releases must have done the job, because in June, less than a month after Comsec officially opened its doors, both Time and Newsweek ran stories about the hackers-turned-anti-hackers.

The very next day the office phone started to ring. And ring. You couldn't buy advertising better than Time and Newsweek. Comsec has clients! One client, a consultant representing the telecommunications industry, ordered up some research on recent regional Bell company crashes. The client paid five thousand dollars up front.

Of course, the publicity in Time and Newsweek had another effect.

Up north, the MOD boys are reading the stories.

The pay phones are jammed.

So many hackers mill around the kiosk in the Citicorp atrium on this afternoon that you can't even see the phones.

It's the first Friday of the month, and most of the MOD boys are at the 2600 meeting. Even Paul's here, home from college and hanging out. Somebody has arrived at the 2600 meeting carrying the issue of Newsweek with the article on Comsec, and the magazine gets passed around until it's downright grubby. The articles foment this sort of bad feeling, an unsettled not-quite-rage, not-quite-amusement, that they feel in their guts. Then some hacker says, "Who do those guys think they are?"

Spoofing hackers is one thing. While it may hurt some feelings, no one gets really jammed up by it. But what kind of a hacker turns on other hackers? It's a question that no one can answer.

Suddenly, the hackers rush the pay phones in Citicorp, and in each little carrel, they launch a mass attack. Everyone dials the same Texas phone number: Comsec's 800 line.

As a result, down in Houston, the phone bank lights up. Every line rings at once, and the Comsec crew doesn't know which phone to answer first. Of course, it doesn't really matter which one they answer, because all the taunting callers say the exact same thing, in the exact same maddening sing-song tone: "Hello? Is this Comsec? I have a victim here who wants to hire you.... "

All afternoon, the lines stay busy at Comsec, so no legitimate client could possibly hope to get through. As soon as the Comsec crew hangs up on one caller, the phone lights up again. The kids at Citicorp have found an effective way to communicate their displeasure.

The electronic heckling doesn't abate until the Manhattan "meeting" breaks up at about 8: 30 P. M. Eastern Standard Time. The kids wander off in little clumps, headed downtown to grab a cheap supper and to browse around in record stores. They have their monthly routine.

First, they go to Around the Clock, a moody, dark East Village restaurant where rap music plays on the juke, a big color TV blares on the wall, and athletic waiters wear knit, olive-drab rave caps. The food is just this side of hippie: wholewheat pita concoctions, three kinds of organic pancakes, "healthy" chicken soup. Mark usually orders two bowls. It settles his stomach.

After eating, the boys wander across Third Avenue to Tower Books, where they flip through the endless shelves of hardcovers. A hacker sees a phone receiver hanging on the wall and starts fiddling. It's the store's internal intercom system, and it can't make calls outside the building. But with a device he happens to carry, the hacker coaxes a dial tone out of the receiver and immediately places a call to a friend in Pennsylvania. The device he uses is a tone dialer, which emits a noise that simulates the sound a pay phone would recognize as coins dropping into a slot. It works like a bird call for computers. It was a pretty good hack, you'd have to admit, until all of a sudden a security guard comes over. He starts hassling them, wondering why some scruffy kid is fooling around with the store's phone. At that point, things take on the flavor of a segment from the Keystone Kops. Hackers scramble for the store's exit, more security guards appear from nowhere. Then another hacker gets this bright idea to spray a Mace-like substance into the air as if it's air freshener. The hackers are pumped now, and they rush out into the New York City night. Nobody gets caught. They have a good laugh about it.

. annoy

That's how you type it: period-no space-lowercase annoy.

Dot-annoy.

That's how all the MOD boys say it. Dot-annoy. And they should know, since they created the simple string of Unix commands that comprise ". annoy. "

In the MOD vernacular, dot-annoy is both a noun and a verb. Here's an example of how you dot-annoy someone else.

First, log on to Allen's Unix computer. Then leapfrog over to the Apple computer that's hooked up to it.

Next, pick a lamer who deserves a taste of dot-annoy.

Find his name in the database.

Find his name in the database.

Call up the lamer's entry and execute the dot-annoy program. It's easy. This will instruct the Apple computer to follow the simple software program that Allen wrote. Let's say the lamer's phone number is (212) 555-1234. You simply type in the phone number, and the program does the rest:

while: do

cu 12125551234

done

Looks pretty innocuous. But the purpose is anything but. This little string of commands instructs Allen's computer to use its modem to call the lamer's phone.

Now, you can expect the lamer to answer the phone, then hang it up because no one is on the other end.

This is where dot-annoy gets ingenious.

The MOD users add a simple command to the dot-annoy program to make it repeat, endlessly. Over and over the computer will redial. All you have to type, at the top of the dot-annoy commands, is this: nohup. annoy&

That command tells the computer the program does not end at a hang-up. Accept no hang-up. Keep dialing until another modem answers. So, as soon as the lamer's receiver returns to the cradle, the Apple will call him again, looking for a modem. It has to.

The lamer will answer again, then hang up.

The Apple will call again.

Hang up again.

Call.

Hang up.

Call.

Hang up.

Call.

Call.

Call.

Call.

Execute this plan at the beginning of a long holiday weekend, say Fourth of July, because then the lamer can't seek assistance from the business office until Monday. You won't have to do another thing, not after that initial instant when you call up the lamer's file to execute the dot-annoy command. (That ampersand at the end of the "nohup" command is Unixspeak for allowing the program to run in background

in other words, the MOD computer can be used for other

things while the dot-annoy program runs. ) You've automated the job of harassing your quarry.

It's going to be a long weekend for the lamer. He will go crazy. The lamer will want to cry. The lamer will have a lot of explaining to do to his parents. Even if he's smart enough to answer the phone with a modem, the torture continues.

Because as soon as the modem-to-modem connection is broken, that is, as soon as the lamer hangs up, the hell starts again.

And best of all, the lamer will not be able to resist the trap. Time and again, he will pick up that ringing phone, because he will just want to stop the noise.

Too bad he can't.

The MOD boys could get really cute and add refinements to the torture. One twist is called "Mr. Ed. " Invoke Mr. Ed, and Allen's computer would call the target and speak directly to him. Allen's computer, which has audio capability, would blare out, "Hel-1-l-l-o, Wil-1-l-l-l-bur!" over and over.

The MOD boys rely on the dot-annoy repertoire when dealing with the Texans, of course. But they also attack bystanders.

Any hacker who has crossed them, any hacker who has the misfortune to be labeled lame, is prey. The first victim was an old Boy Scout acquaintance of Allen's, back from the days when Allen was striving for Eagle Scout. Now the database has dozens of names.

The database is the key to dot-annoy.

You can't dot-annoy someone unless you know a few salient facts: hacker handle, which leads to real name, which leads to real phone number, which leads to local phone switch. Hence, the database. The list gets a little out of control, though.

The MOD boys are a little obsessive about it, investigating the people on the list and then adding to lamers' records information about street addresses, previous addresses, cable-and-pair number, known relatives, best friends, even anecdotal material about lamers' personal habits. It pays to know.

A lot of people say the MOD boys have become bullies. The boys aren't listening to that kind of sour-grapes talk, though.

The MOD database resides on Allen's Apple, accessible through Allen's Unix, which has become the MOD boys'

electronic clubhouse.

Allen has renamed his bulletin board MODNET. While every hacker in America knows about the existence of MODNET, very few have access to it. All the MOD boys have accounts, and they keep their most top-secret privileged information stored on MODNET. Everybody knows about the database. Rumors get around.

The existence of the dot-annoy database is what really freaks people out, though. What if Allen got arrested and that information fell into Secret Service hands? That file contained explicit biographical information on dozens and dozens of hackers around the country! Around the world! It was a blueprint of the whole underground. The mere possession of such damning information seemed like blackmail. It made other hackers frantic.

Any hacker would kill to get into MODNET. Good luck.

Besides the database, what was actually archived on MODNET was a rather eclectic compilation of data. There were loads of philes about technical aspects of hacking phone computers. There was "The History of MOD, " in its entirety.

There was also a "History of the Knights of Shadow, " a Rosetta stone of sorts about an early band of hackers that spawned Lex Luthor and his LOD. There's a wire-service story about the disposition of the legal case against one Peter Salzman, a. k. a. Pumpkin Pete.