Twistor (34 page)

The night was as cold and damp and miserable as David had expected, and the fish smell from his partially washed hands permeated everything.

By midnight Sunday, Flash was back in the hacker business. He rubbed his neck as he set the ancient Mac to dial a southern California area code at 4800 baud. His back was getting tired. Vickie had said it was OK to run up her long-distance bill, so he didn't even have to 'phreak' it, as he'd done in the old days, for free long distance with bogus access codes on MCI and Sprint. That saved some lime, at least.

The Mac screen registered a
CONNECT,
followed by:

< Welcome to the gangplank >

< of the Starship Orion. >

This is a public bulletin board intended primarily for the use of the fans of that
fabulous TV series, 'Hunt of Orion.'
Admiral Robert J. Hunt at the helm.

Please sign in:

'
Ugh! The lowest of life forms, sci-fi video freakers,' said Flash aloud. He responded with the borrowed 'nym he had been given: The Deviant.' The system responded with the prompt
Password:
and Flash responded with
BLOWJOB.
The system then proceeded through its normal spiel:

< Welcome aboard the Starship Orion >

< Admiral Robert J. Hunt commanding >

This is a public bulletin board
intended primarily for the use of the
fans of that fabulous TV series, 'Hunt
of Orion.'

DISCLAIMER:

Any posting of telephone numbers, access codes, or credit card numbers intended to facilitate unauthorized access to computer or telecommunication systems is strictly forbidden. The SysOp disclaims any responsibility for such activities and will delete the posts and cancel the access of any user engaging in such activities.

The Deviant has no mail waiting.

Command (Menu=?):

This was the point that Flash had been waiting for. According to his informant, the system so far had been just window dressing, a carefully crafted disguise intended to conceal the true nature of the board. He typed ROCHESTER.

The system made a beep and responded with
Invalid response! Hit RETURN to continue:

'
Sure, sure,' Flash muttered. This was part of the cover. He typed
BUFFALO.

And was in:

< CONGRATULATIONS! You have gained >

< access to the Hacker's Haven BBS >

< operated by The Investigator. >

<
**
*EQUAL ACCESS FOR ALL!*** >

< **POWER THROUGH INFORMATION!** >

NOTICE: If you are an employee of a
law enforcement agency or a tele
communications company or are related to
such a person, you are not authorized to
use this system. Please hang up
immediately or you will be in violation
of state and federal law.

Command [T(itles), R(ead), Q(uit)]:

The standard el bullshit-o, Flash thought. He turned on the Mac's elderly Image Writer II printer to get a hard copy of what followed, then scanned the message base for likely-looking entries. As usual, the messages were a random mix of telephone numbers, access codes and a few credit card numbers, mostly of no interest. He had almost decided to give up on the message base and post some E-mail to likely hackers when he came to message number thirty-seven:

Message #37: New TeleNet Codes

(Spacebar quits message)

Posted by: The Electron Terrorist

Date:
October 17 @ 02.24 EDT

Good News! I just cracked the

TeleNet user file. Here are a few

Addresses and Passwords for their big $$$ customers:

There followed what looked like a list of the Fortune 500 companies, with a network address and password for each. Flash whistled. Scanning down the list, he came to the entry:

Megalith Corp. MEG3592 AMBIANCE

Flash turned to Victoria, seated on the bed across the room, a multicolored circuit diagram spread out before her, an integrated circuit catalog in her lap. 'Hey, Sis!' he yelled, a note of triumph in his voice. 'We now have a way to crack Megalith!'

Flash, seated at the Macintosh in Vickie's bedroom, had just entered his fourth Megalith super-mainframe. Things were going better now. After school he had tried his first assault on Megalith, and it had been a near disaster. He'd used the University of Washington HEPNet link, and a system manager on the first Megalith system he'd entered had spotted his activity and demanded to know who he was and how he'd gotten onto the system. He'd disconnected instantly. Then he had to crack the UW system's logging files to erase his tracks before Megalith security could backtrack.

Over dinner he'd thought about the fiasco and decided that this was no time for sloppy work. He was dealing with the big time, and he was going to have to be much more careful to bring this one off. He'd developed an indirect and untraceable routing through a Canadian university computer. Then, using the access codes posted by the Electron Terrorist, he had networked into another
Megalith
system. This system was a very large IBM mainframe.

He had found a user with a high activity level but, on the basis of the files in his directory, no evidence of computer sophistication. The owner was clearly a plodder. Flash had boldly assumed the identity of this user. Pretending to have program problems, he'd asked the system manager to help him and was able to pull off the old Trojan horse scam, which he knew from experience was still workable on IBM operating systems. The system manager had run the innocent-appearing program in question in the system manager's own account and under the blanket of the system manager's own privilege levels. It had been a deceptively simple little program that, among other things, had awarded Flash's account SysOp privileges. He'd then been able to determine that this system was part of a local area network that linked it into other IBMs and a Cray, all located in the San Jose area and used by Megalith engineering groups.

Soon Flash was the master of all these systems. On the second IBM he'd found a lightly protected file belonging to a word-processing group. The file contained the current network addresses, access codes, and telephone dial-ups for all of Megalith's major computer sites. In this list Flash found a promising DEC HyperVAX located in the corporate headquarters in San Francisco. He dialed in to the VAX, quickly determined the name of the system operator, and logged off. Then, establishing an account in the same name on one of his captive systems, he came back in through DEC Net and found that, as expected, he had captured all the privileges of the VAX SysOp. Essentially, he was wearing the SysOp's skin.