Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/0022-3.564/dmg-3557/news.txt/hackers3.asc

Text File | 1997-06-21 | 16KB | 308 lines

                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                     ~  AMERICAN HACKER RAIDS Pt3  ~
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


     The following extracts are from Chapter 8 of "Approaching Zero:  Data
Crime  and  the  Computer  Underworld" by Bryan  Clough  and  Paul  Mungo,
published by Faber in hardback,  1992,  £14.99,  ISBN 0-571-16850-7.  STEN
acknowledges   all   copyrights,   and  is  using   these   extracts   for
informational purposes only.

     See the end of this article for a full list of sources for the  three
'Hacker Raids' pieces, plus a list of recently published books on past and
current phreaking and hacking.



                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        ~  CHAPTER 8: CRACKDOWN  ~
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     "The  Soviet hacker gang <the  West German 'Illuminatus  Conspiracy'>
wasn't  the only reason for the subsequent US government crackdown on  the
computer  underworld.   But  the  notion  of a  communist  plot  to  trawl
American computers for military secrets was enough to focus the  attention
of the previously lethargic investigators.

     The federal authority's lack of urgency in dealing with what appeared
to be a threat to national security was documented by Clifford Stoll in an
academic paper in May 1988 and a year later,  more publicly,  in his book,
"The  Cuckoo's Egg".   The diffidence displayed by the FBI and the  Secret
Service   was   lovingly  detailed  in  the  book  -  to   the   agencies'
embarrassment.    After   Stoll's  disclosures,   the  authorities   began
monitoring hacker bulletin boards a great deal more closely.

     One of the boards staked out by the Secret Service was Black ICE, the
Legion of Doom's favoured BBS,  located somewhere in  Richmond,  Virginia.
On  4  March 1989,  two days after the arrest of the Soviet  hacker  gang,
intrigued Secret Service agents recorded the following exchanges:


  'I  saw something in today's paper that really burns  me",  growled  a
  Legionnaire  known as Skinny Puppy {see footnote  1},  initiating  the
  series of electronic messages.  He continued:

  'Some West German hackers were breaking into systems and selling  info
  to the Russians.   It's one thing being a hacker.   It's another being
  a  traitor.   If I find that anyone on this board had anything  to  do
  with it,  I will personally hunt them down and and make them wish they
  had  been  busted  by  the FBI.   I am  considering  starting  my  own
  investigation  into this incident and destroying a few people the  BKA
  [West German federal police] didn't get.   Does anyone care to join me
  on  this crusade?   Or at least give support?   Can I claim an act  on
  these creeps as LoD vengeance for defiling the hackers'  image?   What
  say, all?'

  An hour and a half later, The Prophet uploaded his response:

  'Don't  froth at the mouth,  Puppy;  you'll probably just attract  the
  attention  of  the authorities,  who seem to have  handled  this  well
  enough  on  their  own.   Too bad the idiots at NASA  and  Los  Alamos
  couldn't have done the same.   How many times are they going to  allow
  their security to be penetrated?   My guess is, the Feds are going  to
  bear down on us harder....'

  The Highwayman,  one of the BBS's system operators,  suggested: 'Let's
  break into the Soviet computers and give the info to the CIA.   I know
  you  can  get on a Soviet PSN [Public  Switched  Network,  the  public
  telephone system] from an East German gateway from West Germany....'

  Other  Legionnaires were less patriotic.   Eric Bloodaxe  said:  'Make
  money any way you can!!   Fuck it, Information is a valuable commodity
  and should be sold.   Fuck American secrets.   It doesn't matter.   If
  Russia  really wanted fucking something they would get it.   Good  for
  whoever sold it to them!!'

  The  last message was posted late that same night.   'This  government
  deserves  to be fucked,' said The Urvile.   'I'm all for a  government
  that can help me (hey, kamerad, got some secrets for you cheap).  Fuck
  America.  Democracy is for loozers.  Dictatorship, rah! rah!'


     At  this early date there were rumours that the Chaos  Computer  Club
had  been  involved with the Soviet hacker gang,  even that  some  of  its
members  had  been arrested.   One of the Legionnaires  tried  calling  up
Altos - the board in Munich that had become an international hacker  hang-
out - to find out what was going on.   The board was down he reported, but
it was only some sort of technical fault.

     To the watching Secret Service agents,  at least some of the messages
suggested that American hackers might well follow in the footsteps of  the
Soviet  hacker  gang.   It was disquieting - even  if  the  characteristic
hacker bravado was taken into account.   It was,  after all, just possible
that  American  hackers  would  go  into  business  selling  military   or
industrial secrets to..... well, to anybody.  Foreign powers.

     In reality,  the Soviet hacker gang was only a momentary  distraction
for the Legion of Doom.   By the next day, the flurry of interest had died
out;  the  bulletin board messages resumed the usual pattern  -  technical
queries,  reports  on hacking sites,  postings about police  surveillance,
about Secret Service monitoring, about the FBI and the CIA....

     Black Ice was the LoD's principal board and was restricted to  twenty
users  (mostly LoD members).   It was accessed by remote call  forwarding,
which  kept  it - or so it was believed - one step ahead of the  law  {see
footnote 2}.   The name Black ICE came from a novel by the science  fiction
writer William Gibson.  ICE, for Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, was
a  programme  that  kept  watch for hackers;  when  it  detected  them  it
literally 'fried their brains' - the deadly 'black' countermeasure."


°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙

     "The Legion of Doom's origins go back to the summer of 1984,  when  a
hacker  called  Lex  Luthor  set up one of  the  first  specialist  hacker
bulletin  boards,  based in Florida.   It was  an  élite,  invitation-only
board,  with  detailed  files on hacking and related  crafts  like  social
engineering {see footnote 3} and dumpster driving.

     The  first Legion of Doom had nine members,  with handles  like  Karl
Marx,  Agrajag the Prolonged and King Blotto.   The gang has been reformed
three times since.  It went into decline when five of the original members
were  busted,  but  bounced back in 1986 and again in  1988.   The  latest
reformation  took place in late 1990.   It was never a  large  group,  and
although  the original LoD board had more than 150 members,  admission  to
the BBS was not the same as gang membership {see footnote 4}.  The LoD was
the élite of the élite,  a sort of inner circle.   The real LoD  generally
hovered between nine and eleven members; it has never had more than twelve
at  any  one time.   Between 1984 and January 1992 there were  only  forty
confirmed LoD members in total.

     The LoD was eulogised by the hacker bulletin,  PHRACK,  after one  of
its periodic demises: 'LoD members may have entered into systems numbering
in the tens of thousands, they may have peeped into credit histories, they
may have snooped into files and buffered [stolen] interesting  text,  they
may  still have control over entire networks,  but what damage  have  they
done?'   The  answer was 'none' - well,  almost.   There  were  still  the
inevitable exceptions:  'unpaid use of CPU [Central Processing Unit]  time
and network access charges'.

     'What  personal gains have any members gained?'   Again,  the  answer
'none'   -  apart  from  'three  instances  of  credit  fraud  that   were
instigated by three separate greedy individuals without group  knowledge.'
The bulletin continued:  'The Legion of Doom will long be remembered as an
innovative and pioneering force....'

     The  LoD  was  not the only gang on the  electronic  block:   it  had
rivals, other high-tech street gangs that contested LoD's claims to be the
meanest  and toughest hackers in Cyberspace.   One of these  other  groups
was the MoD,  which,  depending on who you ask and what time of day it is,
stands  for  either Masters of Destruction or Masters of  Deception  -  or
sometimes  Mom's on Drugs.   The MoD membership was centred in  New  York;
the gang included hackers like Corrupt,  Julio,  Renegade Hacker and, from
Philadelphia, The Wing.

     But  LoD's most serious rival was DPAC,  a gang with members in  both
Maryland  and New Jersey.   The group had taken its name from  a  Canadian
data communications system and was lead,  off and on,  by a hacker  called
Sharp.   Membership in DPAC varied,  but included Remob (after the  device
that allows phones to be tapped remotely),  Meat Puppet,  The Executioner,
Supernigger and GZ.  Despite the handle, Supernigger wasn't black; and GZ,
very unusually, was female.

     The LoD disparaged the abilities of DPAC members.   One of the  Black
ICE  sysops,  The Mentor,  sneered;  'Supernigger and DZ are both  blatant
idiots  who like to shoot their mouths off.   GZ does stuff like hack  MCI
[a long-distance telephone company] for days from her house.'

     The Urvile, though, was less sanguine.  In a message to Black ICE, he
reported  having received a phone call:  'This is Mike Dawson,  a  special
agent  with  the Secret Service.   We'll be visiting you  tomorrow.'   The
Urvile thought Mike sounded a tad young to be a Secret Service  agent;  he
was also bothered that Mike didn't know his address or last name.

     'Are your parents going to be home tomorrow between two and  three?',
Mike persisted.

     'Gee, I guess so.'

     His parents probably would be home,  he thought - but at their  home,
not his.   The Urvile,  at the time, was a university student and lived in
his own apartment.   When he asked if the agent knew how old he was,  Mike
answered enigmatically: 'All will be made apparent tomorrow.'

     The  next day,  The Urvile removed all his notes and files,  just  in
case.   But the Secret Service agent never appeared.  'I'm betting five to
one odds that it's DPAC and I don't like it one bit.' he messaged to Black
ICE.

     Ordinarily,  The Urvile's concerns could be dismissed as just another
bout  of  hacker  paranoia.   But by 1989 the LoD had got  itself  into  a
'hacker  war' with DPAC and MoD - a fight for the control  of  Cyberspace.
The  war  was  fought  over  phone  lines  and  computer  networks,   with
threatening  messages left on bulletin boards or answering  machines.   In
one  case,  an  LoD  who worked (somewhat incongruously)  for  a  telephone
company's  security  department found taunting messages  on  his  computer
terminal  at  work.   On a more serious level,  there  were  attempts  tto
reprogramme  switches  to land opponents with  astronomical  phone  bills;
there was one instance of breaking into a credit bureau to destroy a  gang
member's credit rating.

     Mostly it was phone calls - kids' stuff.   But while the LoD and DPAC
and MoD were squabbling among themselves, the biggest crackdown on hacking
in the US was being mobilised."


STEN:   What do you mean,  "And what happened then?"   You'll either  have
to  read  the rest of our HACKER files,  or check out some  of  the  books
listed  below.   Suffice  to  say  that  all  the  events  described  were
happening  simultaneously.  The  Amerikan Secret Service  over-reacted  to
what  it saw as a possible threat to national security  and,  despite  the
fact  that it couldn't tell a hacker from a salami sandwich  (with  mayo),
raided anyone who looked likely.

     It  was a complete cock-up:  computers and equipment were  seized  on
slight pretexts,  guns were held to heads in the early hours,  an RPG firm
was almost bankrupted,  and nothing,  but nothing was found to support the
claim that national security was at risk.


Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.



°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙

                             ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
                             §  Footnotes  §
                             ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

1:  The message transcripts have been altered for clarity although not for
    grammar.

2:  Typically,  users  of  Black ICE would call a number in the  607  area
    code,  which had been rerouted to the bulletin board.   The  rerouting
    was accomplished by the time-honoured method of hacking into a  switch
    and reprogramming it.

3:  'Social Engineering' is  hacker jargon for the skill involved in,  for
    example, phoning an office and gaining an ID and password for a system
    by  pretending  to  be  a superior  of the  person  talked  to,  or  a
    powerful, if forgetful user.  It works, and not just for hacking...

4:  The  original  LoD  board was shut down when Lex Luthor  retired  from
    hacking  to  return to  university.   LoD  members  then  began  using
    unreserved areas on a number of other pirate boards,  including  Black
    ICE.


°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙

                            ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
                            §  BIBLIOGRAPHY  §
                            ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

"Approaching  Zero:  Data  Crime  and the Computer  Underworld"  by  Bryan
Clough  and  Paul Mungo.  Published  by  Faber,  London,  hardback,  1992,
£14.99,  ISBN  0-571-16850-7.    A competent history of  Phone  Phreaking,
virii,  worms,  trojans,  logic  bombs,  and  hacking.   Covers  the  West
German/Soviet  'Illuminatus Conspiracy',  and gives a good account of  the
recent Amerikan hacker busts.  Recommended.

"Cyberpunk:  Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier" by Katie Hafner
and John Markoff.   Published by Fourth Estate, London, in hardback, 1991,
£14.99,  ISBN 1-872180-94-9.   Covers three recent instances of hacking in
depth:  Amerikan phone phreaking, the West German/Soviet hacks, and Robert
Moris'  Internet  virus  disaster.   Mostly compiled  from  newspaper  and
magazine reports, with interviews of the people involved.  Recommended.

"Hacker  fÜr  Moskau" by Matthias Lehnhardt,  Gerd  Meissner  and  Stephan
Stahl.  Published by Wunderlich, Germany, 1989.

"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy.  Published by
Anchor  Press/Doubleday,  1984.    Covers  the heroic  early  years,  when
'hacker'  meant  enthusiast/demon  programmer,  rather  than  the  current
(de)meaning.  Recommended.

"The  International  Handbook  on  Computer  Crime"  by  Ulrich   Steiber.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, London, 1986.

"Beating  the System" by Owen Bowcott and Sally  Hamilton.   Published  by
Bloomsbury, London, 1990.  Covers a few European hacks in depth.  So so.

"Computer  Viruses - a High-Tech Disease" by Ralf  Burger.   Published  by
Abacus, 1988.

"Computers  Under  Attack" by Peter  J.  Denning.   Published  by  Addison
Wesley, USA, 1990.

"Profits of Deceit" by Patricia Franklin.  Published by Heinemann, London,
1990.

"Out  of the Inner Circle" by Bill Landreth.   Published by Tempus  Books,
USA, 1985.  Rather dated account, by a hacker, of his activities before he
'reformed'.

"The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll.   Published by Bodley Head,  London,
in hardback,  1989,  ISBN 0-370-31625-8.   A very good, day-by-day account
of  how  the West German hackers were detected by Stoll,  how  he  tracked
them down, and what happened then.  A very good read indeed.



                              ~~~~~eof~~~~~