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                  Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company
                               The New York Times

                  July 25, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1080 words

HEADLINE: Computer Underground Comes Out of the Cold

BYLINE:  By JOHN MARKOFF,  Special to The New York Times

DATELINE: LAS VEGAS, Nev., July 23

BODY:
   On stage in the Grand Ballroom here at the Sahara Hotel, an intense young man
who calls himself the Dark Tangent is holding up a T-shirt that declares, "I am
a Fed."

   Before an audience composed largely of college-age men, he jumps to the floor
and strides down the aisle until he finds his victim, an older man trying his
best to remain inconspicuous.

    "We've found one," he shouts.

   Cornering his quarry, he proclaims that another Federal agent, sent to spy on
this gathering of the computer underground, has been unmasked. As punishment,
the "unmasked agent," who later acknowledges actually being a computer security
worker for a corporation, is forced to accept the damning T-shirt.

   Like a paranoid version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, the favorite sport at
this gathering of computer hackers and "phone phreaks" seems to be hunting down
real and imagined telephone security and Federal and local law-enforcement
authorities who the attendees are certain are tracking their every move.

The Computer Underground

    Of course, they may be right. The convention, dubbed Def Con II after a
Pentagon phrase referring to stages of readiness, is the largest of a series of
eclectic and anarchistic gatherings held by the loosely knit computer
underground.
   Those in attendance insist that their fondness for using modems and
computer networks to break into corporate and Government computers and telephone
switches is not a criminal activity.

   Instead, the more than 370 people who paid a $30 registration fee to gather
here this weekend to hear speeches and exchange tips profess that they are
motivated by a higher calling. They call it the "hacker ethic" -- a passion for
gathering information about and understanding the most minute details of the
computer systems that run everything from the nation's telephone networks to its
banks and other businesses.

   They say they have no desire to profit from the information they steal. They
say they want only to inject a sense of romance and adventure into a modern life
characterized by suburban tracts and fast-food chains.

   Indeed, despite the best efforts of Government and corporate security
experts, the computer underground has continued to make the nation's computer
networks a playground.

Intruders in the Military

    Recently, for example, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that they are no
longer able to keep technologically well-armed intruders out of at least part of
the nation's unclassified military networks.

   And the F.B.I. seems bewildered by the exploits of Kevin Mitnick, a
29-year-old programmer who has eluded a 20-month manhunt while, agents say,
occasionally stealing software from the nation's cellular telephone companies.

   This weekend, however, the scope of the nation's computer-security problems
is not on the mind of Jeff Moss, a 24-year-old second-year law student at Dayton
University in Ohio who styles himself the Dark Tangent and organizes the Def
Con conventions.

   Mr. Moss, whose clean-cut appearance provided a contrast to the nose rings
and dyed hair of some of the other participants, instead seems preoccupied by
the complaints of hotel security officials who have threatened to shut the
convention if any more minors are caught drinking.

   He created the Def Con convention last year because he wanted to find a place
to have a party for his friends from the pirate bulletin board world, a shadowy
community of computer users who trade illicit commercial software programs via
telephone lines and modems.

No Real Names
    "I don't think that many of the people who are here actually commit crimes,"
Mr. Moss said in an interview. Yet he acknowledged that he is not taking any
chances: "I tell everyone I don't want to know your real name. I don't want to
have to testify against my friends."

   The fear of exposure at this year's gathering leads to a degree of anonymity.
The attendees' name badges include colorful noms de guerre like the Jackal, Dr.
Freeze, Erik Blood axe, and Theora.

   Indeed, this year's convention has attracted at least a smattering of
above-ground law-enforcement officials and Federal employees.

'There's the Fed!'

    One person who seemed to be comfortable wearing his "I am a Fed" T-shirt was
Ken Olhtoff, who identified himself as an employee of the National Security
Agency.

   "I had just got in the door when they started to scream, 'There's the Fed!' "
he recalled.

   Mr. Olhtoff would not say why he was here. He said he tinkered with
computers at the agency.

   Gail Thackeray, a Phoenix prosecutor who is attending her second Def Con, was
a speaker today.

   Ms. Thackeray took the event in good sport. "I was going to bring my laptop
computer," she said, "but at the last moment I left it home for obvious
reasons."

   Ms. Thackeray said she came to the convention to confront the young
participants with the dangers their activities presented. She told them that the
real problem was not any Government Big Brother, but individuals and
corporations who did not respect privacy.

   "I'm not breaking into people's electronic mail -- life is too short," she
told a skeptical but polite audience. "But a lot of you are."

Security Officials on Hand

    Also attending the convention are some corporate security officials who say
they have come to learn more about the enemy.

   "The hackers are interested in gaining the same information we are," said Ed
Simonson, a 52-year-old vice president at Teledesign Management, a telephone
system security company in Burlingame, Calif. "We just approach things in
different ways."

   The featured speaker at this year's convention was Philip R. Zimmermann, an
independent programmer who has written a free software program called Pretty
Good Privacy, which codes data to make it possible to send secret messages.

   Mr. Zimmermann, who is now the subject of a criminal investigation because
his software has appeared overseas, apparently violating American export-control
laws, was obviously a folk hero to the attendees, who raptly listened to his
speech about Government surveillance of electronic mail.
   "It's possible for Government computers to automatically scan for keywords in
our electronic mail," he told them today. "This has a bad effect on democracy;
it's like '1984.' "

   After one day of Def Con, Mr. Moss concluded that the convention, scheduled
to end on Sunday, was going to be a success.

   "The hotel walls are still standing and we've only wrecked one soda machine,"
he said.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jeff Moss, left, at the hackers' gathering with a colleague who
gave his name only as Terrence. (John Gurzinski for The New York Times)

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE-MDC: July 25, 1994