The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Carrier Wave (ISSN 1086-0118) Volume I, Number I, October 1995 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ info ------------------------ Publisher: Tobin Fricke Email: fricke@roboben.engr.ucdavis.edu Subscriptions: $16 annually Cover Price: $4.00 (us) ISSN: 1086-0118 Issue: Volume I, Number I Date: October 1995 Address: PO Box 835, Lake Forest, CA 92630 Copyright: 1995 by Tobin Fricke, rights to individual articles remain with their respective authors ------------------------ preface to ascii version ------------------------ Welcome to The Carrier Wave <TCW>. Attached is Issue One in ASCII format. TCW is primarily distributed in a printed hard-copy format. This is a mere beautified-ASCII rendition of it, so all frames, formats, effects, tables, illustrations etc have been eliminated. The Carrier Wave is published approximately quarterly. Subscriptions are on a per-issue basis at $4.00 per issue. TCW is $4.00 per issue through subscription, newstand, or if you get it directly from me. For a subscription, mail $16.00 for four issues to our address. For every printed issue that you are sent, you will receive the electronic version <this> emailed to you if you wish. See the end of this document for further subscription information. Keep in mind that the printed version looks much much much nicer than this ASCII version. It is printed on 11"x17" paper folded in half like a book, so it's 8.5"x11" -- standard letter paper size. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | The Carrier Wave | | | | Volume I, Issue I October 1995 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Copyright (c) 1995 by Tobin Fricke, All Rights Reserved Individual authors maintain copyright and responsibility for their submissions. Unauthorized duplication or use prohibited. May not be sold. +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | INSIDE! | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | From The Editor: Light Ray Speaks | | | Read This! | 1 | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | San Remo TV Hack | | | Members of STUPH hacked the cable television | | | system at the Hotel San Remo while at DefCon. | 2 | | Here's how they did it! | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Variation On A DefCon | 3 | | Bucket Man's Def Con Experience | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Haqs | | | Electronic Shoplifting Countermeasures and | 5 | | more! The Hacks of the Month! | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | The Red Box | | | Free phone calls from payphones. Here's how. | 8 | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | EMail: The Real Killer App - Future and Impact | | | Electronic Mail is the real killer app. Here | | | is why. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | X-Files Fans Congregate in Pasadena | 9 | | Spooky reports on the X-Files convention. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | An Introduction To Number Bases | | | This is essential knowledge for any programmer | 11 | | or hacker. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Linux! | 12 | | Light Ray explores Linux, a 32-bit free UNIX | | | for 80x86 and other platforms. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | The UNIX Column | 14 | | This month is an introduction to UNIX use. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Comdex: A Cultural Experience | | | Comdex is the world's largest computer trade | 15 | | show. Light Ray takes you there. | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Spinning A Web Page | 16 | | Have your own page on the World Wide Web! | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | A Beginner's Guide to the Computer Underground | 18 | | by Pazuzu | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Net.News | 20 | +---------------------------------------------------+---------| | The Story Of DnA Systems DnA Systems II, Inc. | 21 | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ | Net.Humor | 23 | | | | +---------------------------------------------------+---------+ +--------------------------------------------+ +------------------------+ | Send Us Mail! | |US$4.00 per issue, may | | Carrier Wave Magazine | |currently only be mailed| | P.O. Box 835 | |to destinations within | | Lake Forest, California 92630-0835 | |the United States. Make | | | |checks out to Tobin | | Or send email to | |Fricke and include the | | | |number of the last issue| | dr261@cleveland.freenet.edu | |that you have and your | | | |email address. | +--------------------------------------------+ +------------------------+ +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Amendment I. | | | | "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of | | religion, or prohibiting the free excersize thereof; or abridging | | the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people | | peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress | | of grievances." | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | From the Editor | | (Light Ray Speaks) Greetings everyone, and welcome to our zine. This magazine has existed for a long, long time, in the back of my brain where I keep track of things I'd like to do someday. Bucket Man and I both wanted a zine. Not a zine but a Magazine. Well, Bucket Man disappeared from the online world and now I have finally gotten around to getting something started. The ball actually started rolling at Boy Scout Camp as I sat on a cot in a canvas tent and told stories of the exotic world of artificial life and clipper chips, tales from the Digital Frontier. The audience was captivated! Well, at least interested enough to stay and listen. Ages ranged from 12 years old to 17, but they were interested, and that's what counts. They wanted to know more. So I revived the magazine idea. I wanted to create a "Beginner's Guide to Everything." Now, I'm not sure what I have created. I have here collected a mix of material of interest to the newbie, to the hacker, to the general computer user, and to the non-computer person. I hope you enjoy what you see here. In any case, send your complements, flames, and whatnot to me at dr261@cleveland.freenet.edu. (Note: Freenet does mean that it's free, but please note that I'm not in Cleveland.) I'm really not sure what The Carrier Wave is or what it will become, for that largely depends on the feedback that I receive. It has been my experience that diversity often means being mediocre in all areas while specialization is to excel in one area. However, for now, our credo remains the same: "Anything that's neat." Light Ray's Opinions on the State Of The Underground The "underground" is in a sort of identity crisis it seems. There is a flood of new, self-proclaimed "hackers" created when the generic Jr. High kid gets a modem, an America Online subscription, and a sees The Net or Hackers or a similar movie. These new "hackers" clash with the old breed of true hackers, they pollute the digital atmosphere and give Hackers a bad name. Hopefully this is a fad that will pass, although for now it is a reality and is rather annoying. The day after Hackers came out, someone called me asking for "Passwords." Hmph. Perhaps "God" and "Secret" didn't work for him. Several days ago, an acquaintance (not to be confused with friend) of mine stopped me as I crusaded through the campus wielding a video camera for Television & Video Productions. Secretively, he drew a small Radio Shack minicassette recorder from his pocket, presenting it as if I should be struck with awe and wonder. Slyly, he pressed play, and five pulses of 1100hz+1700hz enshrouded in static burst from the puny speaker, and I was supposed to be impressed. Hmph. Just about everyone has a red box these days, and 90% of them do not know how it works nor built it themselves. Ever wonder why America Online is doing so well? Don't be a Lamer If you don't know what a newbie is, then you are one. A newbie is someone who is new to something, specifically, in this case, computers, digital networks, hacking, etc. For you, read onward. Read Pazuzu's beginner's introduction to the computer underground, the Def Con stories, the STUPH Hotel San Remo hack story, the Red Box story, and everything else. Although it's slightly dry and boring, you MUST read my introduction to number bases if you don't know what 0x01AB34F means. Start out on the right foot. If you have any questions, do some research on the topic. If you still don't have the answer, ask! The address for TCW is on the cover! Just remember, hacking is not destructive or malicious. Hacking is exploration and pursuit of knowledge, going where no one has gone before. Hacking is "pushing the edge of the envelope." +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Call Digital Decay +1 (714) 871-2057 | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ D E F C O N I I I Las Vegas, NV - August 4 to 6, 1995 - Tropicana Hilton We partied, we hacked, we talked, we listened. We explored the hidden reaches of the hotel, displayed a "Hackers Rule" banner on 1000 TV's, operated a pirate radio station (KDNA 104.7), had a scavenger hunt, made wacky slime, played Hacker Jeopardy; we were at Def Con III, a hacker's conference put on by The Dark Tangent. The 1995 DefCon 3 Hotel San Remo Entertainment system Hack Presented by StUpH! "First, they cracked into the hotel television system, reprogramming it to scroll message reading 'Hacker's Rule' across screens in 1,000 rooms." -- The Associated Press I (Serum), Nocturne, and Heckler of STUPH (Small Town Underground Phreakers and Hackers) had been wardialing all of the 739 #'s while staying at the Tropicana. We had found numerous UNIX systems, but had been unable to penetrate any of them. Then, one of the dial-ins gave this prompt: Lodgenet!login: Of course, I tried 'lodgenet' as the login, and lo and behold it worked... Great security, huh? :) We found out that we were in the Hotel San Remo, which is a couple hotels down from the Tropicana, really close by. We were then confronted with a main menu of sorts, there were four different places one could go: Front-Office Menu Administration Menu Systems Maintenance Installation Menu Unfortunately, each one of these menus were also password protected... but at the bottom of the screen a 1-800 number was left for tech support I proceeded to call the number and was greeted by a friendly female operator... "Lodgenet Support, this is Nancy. (I don't remember the name, but Nancy sounds good)" "Hello Nancy, this is Bruce Jenkins of the Hotel San Remo, and I'm having trouble with the lodgenet system here. For some reason the password isn't working, I got by the lodgenet part of course, but for some reason it isn't letting me into the Front Office Menu, is there something I'm doing wrong?" "Hmmm... did you try FOF? Or are you using BOF instead?" <Not only does she give me the front office password, but the one to the other sections as well... :) > "I thought I typed in FOF, I dunno..." "Well, let me give it a shot..." "It looks like it's working to me..." "I musta just made a typo, sorry to bother you..." "No problem, if you need any more assistance, just give us a call..." BINGO We proceeded to call it back up and got into the front office menu and the administration menu, the other two were of no real interest to us, especially after we started playing with the movies... :) All you had to do was know a room number. I think we used 150, and found out that some guy had censored his TV so that it only showed G rated things, we just couldn't pass that up so we ordered a nice movie to his room and took away all of his restrictions... 'BreastMan 5' suddenly appeared on his screen for the easily payable price of $7.95... :) We then found an option to edit the scroll message, and we put up an advertisement for our hacking group... We wanted badly to see what had popped up on their screens so we went over to the Hotel San Remo and checked it out for ourselves... Walking through the casinos at night and being the only three minors in that area we felt kinda sheepish... :) But, we found a TV screen by the Sports area (I'm not sure how to describe this area) and we waited for the scrolly to appear, but to our dismay it never did. So, we went back to the Tropicana disappointed, but not disheartened... We then found an option to 'Edit Information Channel', and that sounded good to us... But, it was also password protected... So, Nocturne called the 1-800 service this time and just asked for the password to the Information Channel cuz we didn't want to waste time trying to brute force it when the helpful people at lodgenet just give away their passwords... Simply enough, the password was: 'edit' :) So, we got into the information channel and found we had complete control over what was aired on that channel... So we made a big advertisement for StUpH and for DefCon 3 at the Tropicana... Satisfied, Heckler and I went back to the Hotel San Remo one last time, and I looked like a fool changing the TV to the info channel, especially when a security guard walked right in front of us... We waited and, BINGO! up popped a glorious message: Meet Uber haqerz! See Serum, Heckler and Nocturne of STUPH! DefCon 3 at Tropicana! Ph3aR StUpH! Heckler snapped two photos, waited some, then when it popped up again we got two more... There you have it... the 1995 DefCon 3 Hotel San Remo Entertainment system hack presented by StUpH! Heckler (heckler@iastate.edu) is 18 and is a Freshman in college this year. He is currently unemployed in hopes of keep his grades up. He specializes in coding small programs for the PC and coming up with lame ideas that always get shot down by Serum. (Thanks grease!) He has been hacking since the age of 11 when his parents bought him his neat-o C64 with a 300 baud modem. He is known for being very facetious and having no morals. He also likes to listen to heavy metal music and other funky stuff like KMFDM, Hole, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and White Zombie. Right now he is working with Serum and Nocturne on a program called MARCUS for IBM Compatibles. This program uses a special scripting language to simulate any text-based remote dialup and is capable of intercepting the logins and passwords of the people who use that dialup. Serum (bmeader@nyx10.cs.du.edu) is an 18 year old stud/Freshman in college this year. Currently, Serum is in transition from his job at a local theatre to perhaps a job at a local Software Etc. depending on the flexibility of the schedule. He specializes in the so called 'Field Activities' of hacking and phreaking and has an uncanny knack of guessing passwords. The motivator of StUpH, he is always pushing Heckler and Nocturne to get them to do very crazy and suicidal jobs. His specialties include: Social Engineering, organizing ideas for things for the group to do, beige'topping', and helping develop MARCUS by creating 'BoxTrakker' a phone box tracking program. He began to look for people to hack and phreak with about three years ago, and was fortunate enough to come across Heckler, who had already been on the warez scene for a while, and Nocturne, an impressionable classmate who learned quickly about the ways of Serum and Heckler and has been an important member ever since. He has been hacking for about 3 years, but has been using computers since the 2nd grade when he received his first Vic-20! His musical interests range from R.E.M to Nirvana, while his other true love is the sport of basketball, where he will be competing this year at the position of point guard. Nocturne, aka Cal Ripkin, (nocturne@iastate.edu) is an 18 year old freshman in college. He began his road to complete corruption when he met Serum in high school and was introduced to the world of warez BBS's. His interest in hacking bloomed almost immediately, quickly consuming any thread of any social life he may have once had. Soon, he abandoned his human life for a life on the Internet. Now in college, he is trying to come out of the black hole and become a respectable human being, but the outlook is bleak. Variation on a DefCon By Bucket Man My own personal DefCon story began two years ago. I had been invited to DefCon I by a girl I met at the Continuation High School I had ended up at through circumstances we won't go into. A few days after the convention, she mentioned that we wouldn't be going after all. When DefCon II came around I made reservations at the Sahara and introduced some friends of mine to hack/phreak in a big hurry so that I would have someone to share the bill with. On our way out the door, our designated driver's mother decided to commandeer the car, and as none of us were 25, we were unable to rent one. Fortunately we only had to pay for one of the two nights reserved. Then, along comes DefCon III. I never thought I would get there, but owing many thanks to my fellow party members, Light Ray and Squibb, as well as a wack on the side of the head to the low life who canceled on us the day before... I not only made it to Vegas, I even lived through the experience. Day One was mostly spent exploring the hotel and sharing drive-up horror stories. We did manage to attach "Fred," our laptop, to an outside line in the convention room. (An amusing fact, since apparently Dark Tangent had requested that the hotel disconnect the phones for that very reason.) We tore off a wall plate and explored through the roofing above the hallway leading to the convention room. Jarik talked the hotel staff into bringing us water. It was shortly after this that we swore that we would go the whole weekend without once paying for food, alcohol, or women. We were partially successful: We paid for food twice, I supplied free drinks, and didn't get any women. After the first meal, however, I did discover the fastest way to clear a path through a crowd. Wear a black trenchcoat in 100+ degree weather, and have someone behind you yell, "Look out! He's got a gun!" The midnight speech fell short of my expectations. Speaker: The author of the Little Black Book of Computer Viruses. Topic: Publishing. Summary: "Uh...hi. Write books. Yes. You must write books. No, really! Write books! It is morally imperative that you all write books. I wrote one and no one would publish it, and, not considering the possibility that it might have been because it wasn't any good assumed it was a vast anti-hacker conspiracy and published it on my own and sold nearly 300 copies. So, you must write books. Write books and I will publish them for you. I'll give you 1/10th of once percent of the profit, so write books..." Sorry, but I had a hard time believing that this guy's real motivation was to preserve our moral integrity and establish cultural connections to the past for future generations. Light Ray walked out in the middle, came back an hour later and the guy was still droning on. Oh well, I suppose I'll recover from the emotional scarring, but after that didn't bother with any of the other speeches, and probably missed some good things. Rumor has it that my raffle number was the first number called for the 4x CD drive, on Sunday. Around two AM, I figured that the best way to get free drinks would be to walk behind the bar and grab bottles. It worked. An hour later I talked an extremely attractive girl into letting myself and two of my companions into joining her (and her boyfriend) back in her hotel room. Now...according to Jarik I massaged her feet for three hours, but I don't believe him. All I know is that it was dark when I started, and it wasn't when I stopped. Then I passed out under a table and the three of them played strip poker. (Damn you, Jarik! You could have kicked me harder!) It was Saturday night that I was awakened from a daze by a call from Arclight asking if it would be ok to use our room as broadcast station for a pirate radio station. "Sure," I said, I mean, it wasn't like I had anything better to do. So, shortly thereafter, the KDNA crew shows up and starts setting up equipment. Meanwhile, I put on an old Halloween costume of Ali Abbabwa from Disney's Aladdin and started wandering around the hotel. I wanted to go to the Aladdin hotel and pretend to be staff, but couldn't find anyone with a camera. Hey, it worked at Disneyland. Light Ray and I ended up running around the hotel with, "Crazy GTE man," a guy who had stolen a GTE flag and was using it as a cape telling everybody to tune in to Pirate Radio 104.7 KDNA. Light Ray changed into a ninja uniform and I donned my infamous Chun Li outfit. (Yes...Chun Li from Street Fighter II) I was surprised by how little I got harassed about it. Most people just chuckled and waited to see what else we would do. Security freaked out about the ninja uniform though, none of the elevators would work for us and we had to use the stairs for a good portion of the night. (Evidently a good thing, because security was looking for the broadcast point and figured we were a good place to start looking. If nothing else, I figure not many people can claim they've wandered through a Vegas casino dressed up as a fictional oriental girl. Hehehe...wonder what I'll do next year... Def Con Information The Dark Tangent dtangent@defcon.org Def Con Mailing List majordomo@fc.net Jackal jackal@kaiwan.com Def Con Homepage http://www.defcon.org/ http://www.fc.net/defcon The Dark Tangent organizes Def Con. Instead of sending mail to DT, you might want to subscribe to dc-announce. Jackal organizes the Southern California caravan. If you're in Souther California and are interested in going, send Jackal mail. Tell him if you need a ride or can provide rides. To subscribe to a mailing list, send mail to majordomo@fc.net with the text "subscribe " followed by the name of the mailing list you wish to subscribe to. Mailing lists include: dc-announce official announcments dc-stuff general chat dc-speak Def Con IV Speakers dc-plan Def Con IV Planning HAQS Hacking Postal Barcodes - Ever wondered what information was hidden away in the mysterious bar-codes you find on the bottom of envelopes? The bar-code is your full eleven-digit ZIP-code (Did you know you even had an eleven digit ZIP code?). It is composed of vertical bars which are either full-height (about 0.5 cm tall) or half-height. The system is somewhat of a binary derivative, as each bar has two possible states, tall or short, or one and zero. The first bar is always tall (1) and is known as the "frame bar" because it lets the scanner determine the beginning of the bar code. After that, each five bars corresponds to one digit of your ZIP code. To decode it, start at zero. If the first bar is tall, then add seven. If the second is tall, add 4. The third, 2, the fourth add 1, and the fifth bar is zero. (I'm not sure exactly why the fifth bar is necessary.) Basically, it's binary, but the place values are 7, 4, 2, 1, 0 instead of 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Thank you to Rat from DnA (ratphun@aol.com) for the information. Electronic Shoplifting Counter- measures - You probably encounter these devices daily. They are the panels you walk between when exiting a retail store or library, etc. If you walk through carrying an item not paid for, an alarm goes off. Apparently, in the stickers placed on the items is a tiny r-c circuit (resister/capacitor) tuned to resonate at a specific frequency. The "panels" emit radio signals at that frequency. When the r-c circuit is exposed to signals of the specified frequency, it reradiates a signal at the same frequency that is not in phase with the signal emitted by the panels. If an out-of-phase signal is detected, an alarm goes off. How do they desensitize the system once you pay for an item? When placed in a somewhat strong magnetic field, a small current is induced into the r-c circuit. Since the circuit is so small, it is burnt by that current, rendering it unable to reradiate signals at the same frequency. Wacky Weird Slime Stuph- We made this at DefCon 1995.. I think it was Q-Master's idea. It's very difficult to describe, you'll just have to make it yourself. Rumor has it that it is officially called "Ooblix" or something like that. Anyways, get a large vat and dump equal amounts (by volume) of lukewarm water and powdered cornstarch into it. Stir. It should turn into a soupy gray glop. Okay, put your hands in and pull them out slowly. See, it's just a liquid. Okay, put your hands in and pull them out quickly. The liquid glob will coagulate into a solid and you will lift the container up. Then, it will return to its original state of liquidness. It's wierd. MUDs As a Possible Security Risk Part I By Pazuzu August, 1995 (C) Copyright 1995 Sixth Column with explicit reservation of all rights (UCC 1-207). Written by Pazuzu for The Carrier Wave, used with permission. Preface This article will not directly tell you step-by-step how to hack an Internet machine through the MUD server. It will, however, give you a good base of knowledge on how MUDs work and what security holes have been discovered and exploited in the past. You are then left to your own skill and devices to do what you will. Newer versions of the mudlibs will probably patch up some or all of these security holes, but I'm sure new ones will be created and/or discovered. Hacking should always be a learning, exploring, and discovering experience... If you find anything, email me. Part I: The Basics One of the most popular things to do on the Internet these days is to play MUDs. For those of you unfamiliar with them, MUDs are "Multi-User Dungeons". Most of them are, of course, role-playing games. A bunch of people (sometimes up to 50 or more) can be on at once interacting with each other, the virtual environment, and non-player characters or monsters created by the MUD's creators. You connect to a MUD either with the standard telnet utility or via a special program called a "MUD Client". MUD clients will usually give you cool features like split screens and colors, whereas telnet is very crude and simple. Some players on every MUD (and in a lot of cases, most of the players) will have access to code objects, which can be rooms, areas, monsters, weapons, armor, anything in the game. This type of access is referred to as "creator" access. Objects, on most MUDs, are coded in a programming language called LPC, which is very much like C, but with extensions designed to make it easy to code MUD objects. Now all these things sound well and good and fun, but under the hood, MUDs can be a security risk waiting to be exploited. Despite having great fun and wreaking havoc with the MUD itself, a clever hacker could fairly easily gain access to an operating system prompt running with the UID of the MUD daemon which, in a lot of cases, would be ROOT! You see, MUDs are run by a "driver" program which is simply a program written in C (usually) that runs as a daemon task on a UNIX machine. The driver then interprets the LPC code written by the MUDs creators. This daemon is usually started with a UID of ROOT (since they're usually run from /etc/rc.d/rc.local). On most MUDs, there is also another layer between the driver and the creator-written LPC code. This layer is the "mudlib". Mudlibs (there are many of them) are simply libraries of LPC code, usually written by a large team of LPC programmers, which define the basic functionality of the MUD, such as user logins, how to display information, how the player's and monster's bodies work, etc. The creators then write code which calls the mudlib and inherits (LPC is a totally object-oriented language, with full inheritance, etc.) certain properties, and defines objects such as rooms, monsters, etc. Now, before we move on, let's make sure you've got the basic terminology down. There are many things involved with a MUD (who knew games could be such a pain in the ass?) and in order to seize control of one, you must understand everything. So, here's a quick MUD dictionary. creator: anyone on a MUD who has access to code objects driver: the executable file, run as a system daemon, that reads and interprets the game definition (LPC code) LPC stands for Lars Pensj C ... The programming language you write in to create MUD objects mudlib the library of LPC code whichs defines the basic MUD functionality object anything in the game -- players, monsters, rooms, the weather daemon, weapons, etc If you get creator access on a MUD (usually this can be done by gaining a certain level of experience, or completing some quest in the game), there is a lot you can do to fuck with the MUD itself. While this isn't real useful from a hacking standpoint (you won't get into the O/S this way...), it *can* be a lot of fun, and can serve as a way to learn LPC coding as well as the internals of whatever mudlib the MUD is using. The mudlib I'm familiar with is the TMI-2 mudlib, one of the most popular ones around. So the stuff I'm going to mention may not apply to the mud you're on, since they might not by using TMI-2. The mudlib is usually mentioned somewhere in the login text. Everything in the MUD is an object that's defined in LPC code in a file somewhere in the MUD's filesystem. MUDs have a filesystem all their own, and it's made to look exactly like a normal UNIX tree structure. It all starts from a root directory, which is referred to as '/', just like in UNIX. This *is not* the host system's real root directory, it's merely the *MUD's* root directory. On most UNIXes, the actual physical directory will be /usr/local/mud/lib/TMI2-1.2/ or something similar. Underneath this root are all the MUD's directories which store various configuration files and LPC code files, some of which are part of the mudlib, and others which are creator-defined. Some important directories are: /adm - admin-only stuff like code for system daemons, etc... /adm/daemon - system daemons /std - standard definitions (mostly these will get inherited somewhere else) /cmd - LPC code for all the user commands (some are in sub-dirs under this) /obj - where most MUDs keep their LPC code for monsters, weapons, armor, magic items, etc. /u/<1st-letter>/<name> - creator-access user's home directories... home directory for Pazuzu would be /u/p/pazuzu, vandal would be /u/v/vandal In the MUD itself, you can use standard UNIX directory management commands to manage files and directories (again, if you have creator access). Here's a quick review: cd change directory, just like in DOS or UNIX mkdir make directory rmdir remove directory pwd show what directory you are in rm remove file Interestingly, they mimicked UNiX's filesystem so completely, you can refer to user's home directories on the MUD exactly how you would under UNIX: ~<name>/ (pazuzu's home dir would be ~pazuzu/). MUDs have mail and finger just like UNIX also. The finger support is so complete, it allows for the standard .plan and/or .projects files in your MUD home dir, just like under UNIX. A lot of MUDs also have newsgroup support also. The reason I mention all this is that they have tried to put the full functionality of having a UNIX shell account under the MUD. However, since you're really *NOT* using UNIX, just a UNIX program (which is running as a daemon with UID = ROOT!), security is dubious at best. For example, if they don't do path checking (and sometimes they don't...), you could request (if you were in the MUD's root dir) to edit, let's say, ../../../../../etc/passwd, and assuming the physical directory /usr/local/mud/lib/TMI2-1.2/, get the system's password file. Now keep in mind that this is all experimental... I'm just going into what I have done in the past and letting you go from there with (hopefully) a good base knowledge on how these buggers work. One thing that can be a lot of fun is making sure that when you kill someone, they stay dead for a while. Normally, on a MUD, when you get "killed", what happens internally is that your "player" body gets switched to a "ghost" body and gets moved into the cemetery. There, you can usually type a "pray" or similar command and get brought back from the dead. However, if you kill someone and then IMMEDIATELY type trace -dv /std/ghost, the ghost object will get destroyed, and the player's connection will get dropped. "trace" is a standard creator access command that lets you trace instances of objects, -dv means (d)estroy and (v)iew, and /std/ghost is name name of the LPC file which defines the standard ghost object. It would be an LPC file called ghost.c in the /std directory. You can destroy any object(s) with the trace -dv command. For example, to get rid of everyone in the game's sword, type trace -dv /obj/sword. More malicious things to do include killing the MUD's login daemon (if you have the access: trace -dv /adm/daemon/login-- won't work in most cases, unless you have high access or the MUD's admin is a moron), killing the MUD's FTP server, if it has one (trace -dv /adm/daemon/ftpd), or killing various other system daemons. These include /adm/daemon/httpd, /adm/daemon/weatherd, etc. If you don't have the access you need, there are ways to get it -- sometimes. In order to understand how this next trick works, you need to understand how LPC MUD drivers look at objects. Everything in the game is an object: weapons, armor, players, ghosts, rooms, EVERYTHING. There is no difference between objects -- only their properties vary. In order to carry a weapon, the weapon object's location property is set to the object ID of the player. The weapon is now "in" the player. It's the same with rooms: the player object's location property is set to the room's object ID. The player is now "in" the room. A special case of this is when one body object is moved into another body object. When this happens, the "moved" body "becomes" the "moved to" body. The object that was moved takes on all the properties (access level is a property, hint hint) of the object it moved into. Now, keep in mind that most MUD admins' characters are left in the game at all times, sitting idle. What would happen if a player moved into one of the admins' bodies? Hmmm... That player would now BE the admin, effectively. He could then do practically anything he wanted to, including destroy the entire MUD. How is this done? Well, try typing (on a TMI-2 MUD) call me;move;/d/TMI/cemetery. You're now in the cemetery. Keeping in mind that objects are objects, try call me;move;/std/player#nnnn, where nnnn depends on the output of a trace /std/player... Next to everyone's player object, there'll be an instance number. So if one of the admins was instance #1493, call me;move;/std/player#1493 would *probably* move you into his body, allowing you free reign of destruction over the MUD. Keep in mind that all this stuff will work or not work based on how tight the MUD's security is. It will work in a lot of cases, though. Another way to wreak absolute havoc on some MUDs is to destroy the VOID object. Objects in LPC *must* have a location, so when something is really nowhere, it's in the VOID object. The best way to see what will happen is to find a room that a whole bunch of players are in. Then go to a different room and run a trace /std/player to see what the filename of that room is. Then run a trace -dv <file>, replacing <file> with the path/file name of the room. All those players will now be in the VOID. So, immediately type tracedv /std/void (or /d/TMI/void - run a trace /std/player real quick to see which one your MUD is using), and all the players will no longed be ANYWHERE, which will likely cause the MUD to panic and possibly lock up. Note that this is really a bug in the TMI-2 (and most other) mudlib, and it may get fixed someday. As a side note, there are some commands you should immediately run once you get on a MUD. The first is call me;set;immortal;1 - this will make you immortal (no one can kill you through normal means). You should also run a call me;set;max_hp;666 (or some other high number), since even though you're immortal, you can still have your HP go to 0, which *does* fuck up the combat routines, so you should make your HP very high. Now all of this may seem very lame and silly, but it's all a preliminary to the real fun... In order to do what you need or want to do, you must understand how LPC and MUDs in general work. I am including a copy of George Reese's (Borg's) basic & intermediate LPC tutorials so that you may learn a little more about LPC. Please read those before continuing this article, else you'll get lost. On some of the more advanced MUDs (and this is becoming the norm), there are FTP and HTTP servers running "in the mud". What that means is that they're being run by the MUD, but of course, they're listening on a different TCP/IP port. When you telnet to a MUD, you specify the address (like rodent.mud.com), and also the PORT that the MUD is running on... For example: telnet rodent.mud.com 1000 ... Usually, if there's an FTP or HTTP server running on the MUD, it'll be one port away from the MUD's telnet port. So, if the MUD's telnet port is 1000, the FTP server could be on 999 or 1001, or something totally different. Same for the HTTP server. There will usually be a message about the FTP/HTTP servers somewhere on the MUD itself, since they want you to think they're really |<-|<(/)(/)1!@ These servers are actually written in LPC! Mind you, the advanced LPC techniques used to create them are way beyond the scope of this article (or any other that I've seen). I've read through the source for both servers (at least under the TMI-2 mudlib anyhow), and believe me, the code is rather convoluted and full of possible security holes. In my next article, we'll discuss the TMI-2 FTP & HTTP servers. THE RED BOX The Red Box is a tool used by phreaks (Phone Hackers) to make fraudulent free phone calls from payphones. It looks like the days of the Red Box are limited, and soon it may take it's place with the Blue Box. Using a red box is not true phreaking at all, however, it's a good place to start. Theory When you put a quarter (or any other accepted coin) into a payphone (see sidebar), it drops into a holding area (the "hopper") in the center of the phone and the phone tells the phone company that money was inserted and how much. It does this by sending a series of tones, one pulse of 1100+1700 Hertz for every five cents. If you make a call successfully, your money drops down to the change holding box. If you don't, it drops down to the coin return. This is why payphones cannot give change. The red box generates the 1100+1700 Hertz signal, which is played into the mouthpiece of the phone. The phone company thinks that you put money in the phone, so you can make calls. Note the t you cannot get any money out of the phone using a red box for two reasons. The first is that the payphone doesn't listen for the red box tones, the phone company does. The second is that payphones can only return the exact change that you put in. (i.e., the same quarter) The phone company can tell the payphone to release the coins in the holding chamber to either the coin box or the coin return using green box tones. However, the green box tones must be sent from the phone company to the phone, so it is fairly useless to the phreaker. Construction There are two dominant methods of constructing a red box. The first is to build something that will generate the tones, and the second is to record the tones onto a recording device. Software is readily available for DOS and other platforms to create the necessary tones through your sound card. These include BlueBeep and BOX.EXE which was distributed with Phrack. You may record these tones on a quality tape recorder, but that is fairly clunky. A better method is to get an $8.00 Hallmark recordable greeting card at a Hallmark card. Take the card apart (be very careful, the tiny wires break easily) and repackage the electronics. Be creative! Red boxes have been created in dolls, pager cases, gum packages, etc. Replace the cheesy plastic button with a normally open push-button switch (from Radio Shack or wherever) and record the tones on the card. You may get better results if you directly couple your sound source to the microphone wires (after removing the microphone.) It may also be necessary to install a small resister in series with the speaker to achieve proper volume. Another way to create a red box is by modifying a Radio Shack memory tone dialer. This method usually works the best, but it is probably the most expensive. Take a Radio Shack Memory Tone Dialer and open it up. Find the crystal and replace it with a 6.5536 megahertz crystal. The existing crystal is the biggest thing you'll see, and it should look similar to the 6.5536 replacement crystal, which you can mail order from any electronics component vendor. Program one of the memory keys to be five asterisks (*'s). That memory key will then be one quarter. You may want to install a switch so that you can still use the tone dialer as a tone dialer in addition to a red box. Mercury switches are neat: right side up it's a tone dialer, upside down, it's a red box. Use Since this article is for educational purposes only, don't actually make or use a red box. However, here's how phreakers use the red box. Basically, just play the tones instead of inserting money. It's good practice (to avoid being caught) to insert some real money before (i.e., a nickel, payphones don't accept pennies) playing any tones. Put a random delay between virtual coins. Remember, one pulse if five cents. Note that you cannot make local calls directly using a red box. To make a local call, dial the operator and ask him/her to dial a number for you. Give them the number, tell them you want to pay by coin, play the tones when it asks for money. That's just about all there is to red boxing. I hope this article has been interesting and educational. If you're interested in more fun things you can do with payphones, download ABCPP.ZIP from the Digital Forest. It's quite interesting. Remember, making, using, and owning telephone fraud devices and such equipment is very illegal, so don't do anything described in this article. We're not responsible if you do. | Electronic Mail: | The Real Killer App, | Its Future And Impact | By Light Ray While Netscape Communications proclaims that Netscape/Mozilla is the "Killer App" and others cite other www browsers as being the "Killer App," many of them are losing touch with what is actually useful. Sure, the world wide web is fun, but it's fairly useless right now. More people use E-Mail than use any other Internet function. Today, our AFS exchange student used E-Mail to send mail to his family back in the Slovak Republic, instead of making an expensive $1.50 a minute telephone call. On the radio, the DJ solicited Internet email for a contest to win something. With the world wide web, about all one can do at this point is obtain information on a particular topic. With electronic mail, one can interactively converse with someone. It's as fast as a phone call and much cheaper, and it doesn't matter if the intended recipient is at home. Unfortunately, there isn't really a 411 for electronic mail, so it's difficult to find someone's address. The easiest way to get someone's e-mail address is to call them on the telephone and ask. An emerging technology is voice technology over the Internet. This allows you to talk to someone over the Internet, no matter where they are physically located. (No long distance phone bills!) Unfortunately, this technology is still being developed. It's available now, but there are few standards. Unlike electronic mail, you must be using the same software as the person that you are talking to, on the same type of computer, and often the conversation must be prearranged. However, as standards emerge, voice over the Internet may become as standard as electronic mail. The next logical step in the evolution of digital communication is video conferencing. Again, this is here today to some extent. You can purchase a real video-phone that works over normal phone lines at your local AT&T store. However, almost no one has these phones for three reasons: (1) they see no reason to get one (2) they are very expensive and (3) no one else has one. A telephone's usefulness is dependent on how many people have telephones. If only one person has a telephone, it's completely useless. Video over the Internet requires several things that aren't yet common. While most computers now include sound recording and playback hardware, few personal computers include video recording and playback equipment. In addition, a video camera is much more expensive than a microphone. Even if you have all of the necessary hardware, you still need a high speed Internet connection, which are fairly expensive right now. With ISDN becoming more popular, this may change. An ISDN is basically a digital phone line, which is very well suited to high speed digital communications. ISDN is available now in many areas; you can get an ISDN line for $30 a month from Pacific Bell. Also needed to make video-over-the-net work are software, standards, and data compression technology. With companies such as US Robotics manufacturing ISDN equipment for low prices, ISDN is bound to become much more popular in the near future, bringing an era of mail, speech, and video over the Internet. What implications does this have? Many, believe it or not. First, Internet email is cheap (usually free or as much as $10 per month). This should scare the phone company and the United States Postal Service. Email is the telegraph and the USPS is the pony express. Of course, you can't send an object through email (yet), but the majority of correspondence is information readily sent electronically. An organization must diversify and evolve or perish. Unlike most government X-Files Fans Turn Out For The Convention in Pasadena By Spooky On a terribly hot Saturday afternoon, many thousands of people gathered, crammed in what no longer seems the suitable space of the Pasadena Convention Center, in Southern California. But throughout the day, not a word of complaint is heard. The majority of the fans who gathered here traveled some distance to bare witness to the "Second Official X-Files Convention", playfully nicknamed "The Big-One" by Creation. Whom organize all The X-Files Conventions. And whom organized the first event in San Diego, which i attended about a month and a half before. I walk in and scan the large crowds of people, spending hundreds of dollars buying all of the merchandise they can get their hands on. By the end of the day all of it is all sold out. Everything from X-Files T-shirts, to TV guides, costing anywhere from $60-$5. And some other areas, where you can check out The-Files home page on the world wide web, to one where you can walk through a small museum of show props, from clothes worn by David Duchovney (Agent Mulder) (who had roles in Twin Peaks, as a Transvestite Government Agent, Beethoven, as a greedy businessmen, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead, as an asshole boyfriend, played a leading role in Kalifornia, and has a head role in Showtimes Red Shoe Diaries and has been in a few commercials for AT&T) or Gillian Anderson (Agent Scully), to the sign used in one of the first seasons episodes with the words "Welcome Space Brothers" written on them in a psyhicadellic 60's fashion. I walked through isles of seats trying to find a suitable place to watch the guests on stage, presenting slides of X-Files episodes, Looking at the people anxiously awaiting the monterage of highly adored actors, (Mitch Pileggi -Assistant Director Skinner, Steven Williams -Mr. X, Dough Hutchinson -Tooms, Erica & Sabrina Kreivens -Eve 9 & Eve 10) whom, mostly were unknowns before being casted into the growing fledgling, science fiction, "cult", drama cozily placed in a wonderful 9:00Pm, Friday slot on the Fox television network. Providing an adequate, environment, and structure to allow you to really get into the show. Going into its third season, The X-Files has passed the test, which most TV series never make it through. The creator of the X-Files, Chris Carter, former surfer magazine journalist, who spoke at the convention, has planned its three-part season premiere, which will continue on September 22, -its usual time, and day. A little later, i noticed the now straggly, long haired, unshaven, Doug Hutchinson (Tooms) wandering through the crowds, wearing the black leather jacket, he wore at the X-Files convention in San Diego. He jokingly calls this his "rocker" phase. I approached him, and smiling, ask for his autograph. I immediately knew that it was really him, as soon as he, in his friendly manner, said, "Sure...how did you recognize me?" with a grin. I stood with him shortly as politely took his time and had a small conversation as doodled "LIVERS!" and "Tooms" on my program. I thanked him, saying "Bring Back Tooms!" -a phrase that was adopted by some X-Files fans at the first convention. I listened to some of the actors, speak, and answer questions from the audience, about the show, and their characters. Mitch Pileggi- who plays Skinner, was asked by some women in the audience, if they could kiss his forehead, he respectfully agreed, and walked down off stage. He remarkably, unlike his character Walter Skinner -a very angry, unlikable, asshole of a man, is polite, and easy to like. Soon the time arrives, after the charity auction, which things such as Signed scripts were sold for as much as $760. Chris Carter comes out wearing casual dress, flashes from cameras and the talk of reporters start to thrive in the auditorium. Everyone rushes up to the podium to ask him questions. By the time he's finished with them all, the lines have already started to form at the table where he's scheduled to sign autographs. Near the end of the close, he begins, to re-describe the season finale, in which the lead actor, Mulder, is caught in a situation where he's trapped in a train car, sunk 20 feet in the ground filled with strange bodies stacked to the roof at one corner. An explosive goes off inside the car, the credits begin to go across the screen. Carter laughing, speaks into the microphone, "I have no idea how the bring Mulder back". The audience laughs as he walks off stage. An Introduction To NUMBER BASES By Light Ray [This artical makes use of formulas, diagrams, superscrips, and subscripts that may or may not be present in the ASCII version.] Notes This is taken from the "lab notes" from Explorer Post 340, the oldest Boy Scout Explorer Post in the world, as far as I know. Explorer Post 340 is wonderful. We meet at the Western Digital Building in the El Toro "Y", between the I-5 and 405 ("San Diego") freeways every Wednesday night from about 7:15pm to around 9:30pm. This is the first file in a series of articles/files. I know that most people know this already, but for those that don't, here it is. Introduction When we write a number, we have ten symbols to work with. They are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Since we have ten symbols, we say that this is Base 10. However, there are times when it is awkward or impossible to use base ten. For these situations, we use alternate number bases. For instance, binary has two symbols, 0 and 1. A knowledge of alternate number bases (namely binary, hexadecimal, and sometimes octal) is necessary for advanced programming, digital logic design, impressing your friends, winning the lottery, and having a successful and fulfilling life.. Well, almost all of those. In base X, there are X symbols. People currently use base ten just about everywhere, allegedly, this is because people have ten fingers. That is, most people, except for those of us who take interest in machining or pyrotechnics... Bases other than the ever-present base-10 have more or fewer symbols making them more applicable for non-human applications, those that do not have ten fingers. A Summary Of Base Ten Base 10 (decimal) uses 10 symbols. These are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. This is why it is called base 10. When writing a number in a specific base, the base is written in subscript after the number. For instance, 1310 represents 13 in Base 10. To count in base 10, we start at 0 and add one until we get to 9. At this point, it is necessary to create an additional column to the left, containing a one. Every time the first column reaches 9, it is set to zero and the column to the left is incremented. When 99 is reached a third column containing a one is created and the two nines are set to zero, etc. In base 10, every column is 10 times greater than the column to the right: Thousands Hundreds Tens Ones 103 102 101 100 1,000 100 10 1 The value of the number 1234 in base 10 is computed by multiplying each digit by the value of its place and taking the sum of the individual products. 123410=(1*103)+(2*102)+(3*101)+(4* 100) 123410=(1*1000)+(2*100)+(3*10)+(4*1) 123410=1000 + 200 + 30 + 4 123410=123410 The range of positive values that can be represented by n digits in base x is 0 to (xn - 1). For example, the range of positive values that may be expressed by a ten digit number in base four is 0 to 9999. x = 10 n = 4 range = 0 to (xn - 1) range = 0 to (10^4 - 1) range = 0 to (10000 - 1) range = 0 to 9999 A Summary Of Base Two Base Two, otherwise known as Binary, uses TWO symbols. These two symbols are ZERO (0) and ONE (1). In binary, the symbols 2,3,4 etc. simply do not exist. Binary is often used in digital electronics and logic because a digital signal has two states, on (1) and off (0). On is usually five volts and off is usually ground or zero volts. To count in base two, use the same system as base ten. However, you only have two symbols. Start at Zero. To find the next number, increment the first (right-most) digit. If this digit is already a ONE, then change it to a ZERO and increment the value to the left. Binary (Base 2) Decimal (Base 10) 0000 0 0001 1 0010 2 0011 3 0100 4 0101 5 0110 6 0111 7 1000 8 1001 9 1010 10 1011 11 1100 12 1101 13 1110 14 1111 15 In base two, every column has two times greater value than the column immediately to the right. Eights Fours Twos Ones 23 22 21 20 The value of the number 1101 in base 2 is computed by multiplying each digit by the value of its column and summing the individual products, just as in decimal. 11012 = 1310 The range of positive values that can be expressed by n digits in base two is zero through (2^n - 1). For example, the numbers 0 through (2^4 - 1) or 15 may be expressed in four digits of binary. A BIT is a single Binary digIT. A bit is either zero or one. A NIBBLE is four bits. A BYTE is two nibbles or eight bits. A byte has a value of zero to (28 - 1) or 255. A WORD is normally two bytes. A word can express 0 to 65535. A LONG WORD is normally two words. An 80386 processor transfers digital data a word at a time. A 486 processor transfers data a long word at a time. A Summary Of Base 16 Base 16 is known as hexadecimal. Hexadecimal uses sixteen symbols, which are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Keep in mind that: A16 = 1010 B16 = 1110 etc. The place values in hexadecimal are: 4096's 256's 16's Ones 163 162 161 160 Sample Conversion: 1A3F16 = (1 * 163) + (A * 162) + (3 * 161) + (F * 160) 1A3F16 = (1 * 4906) + (10 * 256) + (3 * 16) + (15 * 1) 1A3F16 = 4906 + 2560 + 48 + 15 1A3F16 = 671910 Converting from Decimal to Binary The best way to illustrate how to convert a decimal number to binary (or any other base for that matter) is to show an example. Say that we want to convert 19710 to binary. First, write out the place values for the target base. Start with a place value that is greater than the number you wish to convert. 256 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 The object is to come up with 197 by taking the sum of selected place values. Those place values that are selected will be "1" and those that aren't will be set to "0". For example, 197 is the sum of 128, 64, 4, and 1. We write 1's under the 128, 64, 4, and 1 columns, and 0's under the other columns: 256 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 The answer is 110001012. There is an easier way, but I don't remember it right now. (= You could, of course, use your scientific calculator. Converting from Hexadecimal to Binary and back We could, of course, convert the Hexadecimal number to Decimal, and then convert it to Binary. However, there is an amazing short cut! (This is actually why we use hexadecimal) The range that may be expressed by one binary nibble is 0 to 15. Incidentally, one Hexadecimal digit has the same range, 0 to 15. Thus, each four digits in binary is equivalent to one digit in hexadecimal, and vice-versa. Binary Decimal Hexidecimal 0000 0 0 0001 1 1 0010 2 2 0011 3 3 0101 5 5 0110 6 6 0111 7 7 1000 8 8 1001 9 9 1010 10 A 1011 11 B 1100 12 C 1101 13 D 1110 14 E 1111 15 F To convert 01001001011101102 to hexadecimal, first split it up into nibbles: 0100 1001 0111 0110 Then, convert each nibble to hex. Use the chart if necessary. Binary 0100 1001 0111 0110 Hex 4 9 7 6 Thus, 01001001011101102 = 497616 Since the base 16 version is so much shorter, we work with hex very often when programming and using digital logic. Note that in programming, hexadecimal numbers are often prefixed with "0x0" to denote hex. This is the C language method of doing it. Other times, you'll see hex numbers prefixed with a dollar sign or appended with a lower case "h." 12AB16 = 0x012AB = $012AB = 12ABh Now, lacking a better ending for this lesson, I will leave it at that. LINUX Imagine: Your puny '386 turned into a powerful UNIX workstation, for free. It can be done with Linux... What Is Linux? Linux is a freely-distributable implementation of UNIX for machines with 80386 or higher processors. Features include X-Windows, TCP/IP, and everything else you would expect to find in a 32-bit multi-user, multi-tasking, multi-threaded operating system. Best of all, Linux is FREE. You can get Linux through a variety of methods. The easiest way is to buy a CD with Linux on it. You can also download Linux from many BBS's or FTP it over the Internet. You may FTP Linux from 11.mit.edu or sunsite.unc.edu. My First Attempt One night, while browsing files on a local BBS, I discovered that "SoftLanding Systems" distribution of Linux was available for download. Thus, I began a 16mb batch download and went to bed. I woke up the next day to play with my new acquisition. Instructions? Hm. The installation instructions were sketchy at best. I figured out how to create a bootdisk and a root disk, then I needed to repartition my hard disk and create a Minix filesystem on it. This took several hours and I never did get Linux installed correctly. I gave up, my hard disk in shambles, and I had better things to do at the time. A New Look Last week, at the computer swap meet, something caught my eye. "4-CD Set LINUX Developers Resource," it proclaimed, "QuickStart Guide Inside" noted underneath. I decided to give Linux another shot, so I painfully parted with a hard earned twenty dollar bill and it was mine. When I got home, I put in Disc One and began reading the cute little "QUICKSTART version 2.0" booklet. The first step in the Linux installation is to create a Boot Floppy and a Root Floppy. To do this, you select a disk image and write it to a 1.2mb or 1.44mb floppy disk. There are a variety to chose from, depending on your setup. A handy file helps you chose. Since I was installing from an Enhanced IDE CD-ROM drive, I needed to use "idecd" for my boot image. Since my boot drive is a 3.5", 1.44mb drive, I used the "idecd" file in the "boot144" directory as my boot image. I chose the "umsdos" file as my root image since I was installing to a FAT partition. Creation of the root and boot disks was easy and went smoothly, using a neat little utility called "rawrite" which was provided. There is also a point-and-click windows-based boot/root disk creator for those that (for some reason) wish to have a more painless experience. Incidentally, I was pleased to learn that Linux no longer needs it's own partition. It works best with it's own ext2fs format partition, but it will coexist on a FAT partition without damaging anything. This means that I didn't have to repartition my hard disk, which I was quite thankful for. Ok, step two. I put the Boot Disk in drive A: and rebooted. Up popped a "Welcome to the Slackware Linux 2.2.0 bootkernel disk!" message and I was asked if I had any special parameters. I hit enter and booting continued. It loaded the boot disk onto a RAM Disk and then I inserted the Root Disk. The Boot Disk contains the Linux operating system and the Root Disk holds the filesystem. It's too big to fit on a single floppy. Finally booted up, I log in as "root," the master superuser account of UNIX. Then I get to a Linux prompt, where I type "SETUP." From then on, installation is a flawless breeze, courtesy the user-friendly colorful menued setup program. Linux installation requires from 10mb to 150mb, depending on what you install. Success! Linux was installed. It was incredible. I began to browse my newfound directory structure. I played Doom for Linux, Asteroids, and read info files. It was Neat. X It was great. But I wanted more. The next step was to setup X/Windows. X/Windows is the Graphical User Interface for UNIX. It's available for just about any flavor of UNIX and there are many varieties available from different vendors, ranging from free (Xfree or X11) to very expensive. X-Windows for Linux is notoriously difficult to coax into working. However, it was pretty straight forward in my case. The main stumbling block is getting it to like your monitor and video card, but I was fortunate in that my Genoa WindowsVGA card was supported. Most cards are, in fact, supported, with Diamond cards being the major exception. The newer distributions of Linux come with a neat configuration program for X11 which made installation quite painless. Having configured it, I typed "xinit" and up came X-Windows. It was pretty cool, my PC transformed into a sleek X-terminal... Look for an article on more neat things you can do with Linux in the next issue. Also, read the UNIX column. Notes Another free UNIX operating system exists for the 80x86 platform, FreeBSD. Look for a review in a future issue. Linux and FreeBSD distributions are available from Chestnut, InfoMagic, Walnut Creek CD-ROM, and other companies. Linux CD-ROM Sources InfoMagic P.O. Box 30370 Flagstaff, AZ 86003-0370 Phone: (520) 526-9565 Fax: (520) 526-9573 E-Mail: info@@infomagic.com Web: http://www.InfoMagic.com/ Walnut Creek CD-ROM 1547 Palos Verdes Mall, Suite 260 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Phone: (800) 786-9907 Phone: (510) 674-0783 Fax: (510) 674-0821 E-Mail: info@@cdrom.com Web: http://www.cdrom.com/ FTP: ftp.cdrom.com (If you know of others, please send us information) ~ UNIX Welcome to the UNIX column of our Zine. In this column I will conduct an ongoing UNIX tutorial over the next few issues of this magazine. Knowledge of UNIX is very usefull for many reasons. UNIX is the dominent operating system for powerful computers and computers on the internet. If you ever plan on installing Linux, being a successful Hacker, or getting a job in the hi-tech computer industry, you will need to be familier with UNIX. UNIX is an incredibly powerful operating system however, with it's mightly power, UNIX is a very complex and unfriendly operating system. This brief article is to bestow upon the average DOS-ite the basic navigation skills necessary to use UNIX. Future articles will delve into more advanced UNIX topics. Like ice cream, UNIX comes in "flavors." A UNIX flavor refers to a brand of UNIX. UNIX Flavors include Linux, BSD, Ultrix, Irix, etc. UNIX is, in many ways, similar to DOS. It also has its differences. Like DOS, UNIX is text mode command-line based, although it you may install a graphical user interface (GUI) such as X-Windows. Unlike DOS, UNIX was designed from ground zero to be a multi-user, multi-tasking, multi-threading networking and development platform. Let's examine each of these. The multi-user capabilities allow one computer to be used by multiple people. The most obvious signature of the multi-user system is that the first one must do when using a computer runnning UNIX is to log in with a name and password. Files and directories may be owned by one person or a group of people. Since UNIX is multi-tasking and multi-threading, multiple people may be using the computer simultaneously and each person is able to run more than one application simultaneously. Multi-threading refers to the ability for a program to have multiple parts which execute simultaneously. UNIX is a development platform. It is designed so that software written for UNIX (including UNIX itself) is highly portable between platforms (different computer types) and operating systems. It is also a networking operating system, that is, UNIX is designed to help connect computers to other computers and communicate between them. Virtually the entire Internet is run by computers using UNIX, although that is beginning to change. The UNIX File System The UNIX directory structure is similar to DOS. That is, a directory may have subdirectories, which may in turn have subdirectories, etc. There are several anomalies, however, which you must take into account. First of all, UNIX uses the forward slant bar ("/") where DOS uses the back slant bar ("\"). This is a general headache for those that use DOS and UNIX. For example, cd /usr/X386 is correct. cd\usr\X386 will not work. In UNIX, the back slant bar is used to denote case in situations where only upper-case characters are available. This is not as common as it once was, but you will still run into times when you may only use upper case characters. Simply precede any character you wish to remain in upper case with a back slant bar. The remaining characters will be converted to lower case. This brings us to an important point. UNIX is case sensitive. Filenames may have upper case and lower case letters in them, and you must use the propper case when referencing them. One feature of UNIX not found in DOS is the concept of a "symbolic link." (The new MacOS has something similar known as "aliases.") A Symbolic Link looks like an item in the directory (a subdirectory, a file, etc) however, it points to an item in another directory. This is usefull because you may want to have one file in two different places; a symbolic link would let you have one file appear in two different places, but physically reside in only one directory, saving space. In UNIX, many non-file items are mapped to the file system. These include devices, found in the /dev directory, as well as running tasks, found in the /proc direcory, to name a few. This may be confusing, but it's actually quite handy. For example, on my Linux system, /dev/modem is a symbolic link to /dev/ttyS01, the second serial port. The Shell The Shell is the command interpreter for UNIX, the interface between the operating system and the user. The shell is the program that accepts your input and executes commands, etc. There are several common shells, including the Bourne shell (sh), the C shell (csh), the Korn shell (ksh), the restricted Bourne shell (rsh), and the Bourne again shell (bash), as well as ash. (command.com, 4dos.com, and ndos.com are shells for DOS. The finder is the shell in MacOS). You should now have a basic understanding of UNIX. The best thing to do now is to gain access to a UNIX system and play with it. The best way to do this is to either install Linux (an excellent way to learn UNIX) or get a "shell account" somewhere. You can usually get a shell account if you attend college, or sometimes high school. Alternatively, you can get a shell account for about $15 per month from an internet service provider. Shell accounts are available for the cost of a phone call from free.org, which has an ad later in this magazine. Ports (versions) of various UNIX shells are available for DOS, OS/2, and Windows. [Note: The Korn shell ported to OS/2 is available as ksh.zip on The Digital Forest - Light Ray] Below is a UNIX Command Reference to get you started. (It continues on the next page.) Enjoy! ~ UNIX Command Reference Command Function ls List files - similar to DIR in DOS. Use the -a option to list all files, including hidden files, -o option toggles color, -l option toggles long (detailed) display. cd <directory> Change Directory - the same as in DOS except forward slashes are used and their must be a space after cd. Example: cd /blort pwd Path Name - displays the name of the directory that you are in cat <filename> Catalog - displays contents of <filename> rm <filename> Remove - same as DOS delete/del/erase command. Erases <filename> from disk. cp <src> <dst> Copy - copies <src> to <dst>, just like the DOS copy command. whoami Shows what account you are logged in as, in case you forgot. who Shows what uses are logged in, with login date and time ps List System Processes - includes the Process ID (PID), Terminal (TTY), time started, and the name of the command (CMD). ps -u<user> will display only the processes owned by <user>. kill Kill Process - Use ps to get the process ID. Use either the format kill -<strength> <pid> or kill <pid>. The process with Process ID <pid> will be terminated. A Strength of 9 will kill almost anything. You must be "superuser" to kill other users's processes. write <user> Send a message to a user who is currently logged in. After typing the command, type your message, line by line. Each line will be sent as you hit return. Hit Control-D when you are done. mkdir <dir> Create subdirectory called <dir> rmdir <dir> Remove subdirectory <dir> mv <old> <new> Moves or Renames <old> to <new> echo text Displays text uname -m uname -n uname -r uname -s uname -u uname -a uname _help Display Machine Type (ie "i486") Display Machine Name (ie "Bob") Display OS Release (ie "1.2.1") Display OS Name (ie "Linux") Display OS Version, For Example: #3 Sun Mar 19 06:43:08 CST 1995 Display all of the above Display help for uname more <filename> Displays the contents of <filename> with a pause at each screenfull. less <filename> Displays <filename> and allows scrolling up and down. COMDEX: A Cultural Experience "This is comdex!" Yelled the Microsoft person, "We don't want anything unless it's free!" he continued, then proceeding to throw pins, pens and other paraphernalia into the mass throng of important business people. This couldn't be anything but Comdex, the largest annual information technology trade show and convention in the world, where industry leaders bring the newest technology to show it to the world, and get people to buy it. Comdex is truly amazing, and is certainly a cultural experience of another kind. At about 11:30 PM on Wednesday, November 16, we arrived at our hotel, on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Room rates jump up to 20 times the normal rates during the week of Comdex, that is if you can even find a room. This is due to the hundreds of thousands of comdex goers that flock in their annual mass migrations to this gambling city. In the morning of Thursday, we woke up and made the short trip over to the Sands to eat breakfast. A strange thing about Las Vegas is that people actually obey the speed limit. We were driving through a 15 mph zone, and everyone was actually going at exactly 15 mph. How strange, law abiding citizens? After wading through vast traffic, both human and automobile, we arrived at the Sands. Upon entering the Sands and passing an uncountable array of places to lose our money, we located a place to eat. After our breakfast, we proceeded to Registration. It was a large white tent, primarily deserted, but kept alive by the trickle of people coming to "The Show" on the second to last day. A trickle, that is, being a mere few hundred people per hour. After waiting in the line, I came to one of about twenty badge typists designated to that line. The badge typists looked thoroughly fatigued and ready to go home, for what a monotonous task they had. I handed my registration forms to the badge typist that I had come to, which he entered into his terminal. According to the forms, I was Tobin Fricke, CEO of TobinTech Engineering. After he was done typing up the information, I acquired my Comdex directory. The Comdex directory is a mere index to the various booths at Comdex, yet it is 628 pages. Naturally, it was alternatively available on CD-ROM. We walked to the large Badge Printer, which was busy embossing the comdex badges. We waited for our badges to be printed and borrowed several unembossed cards from the machine in the process. When mine finally came out of the machine, it read, "Tobin Frike, Big Boss, TobinTech Engineering." Well, the badge typist thought it was funny... At last, we were able to enter Comdex. We stood before the convention hall, feeling a sort of awe. The building looked as if it could be three stories tall. There was a large banner across the entrance that said, "WELCOME TO COMDEX!" The rest of the building was plastered with ads, predominantly Intel's, saying, "Come visit us at booth LN109!" We entered Comdex, and left reality, through the line of glass doors. We were greeted with a "No persons under 16 years of age permitted on the trade show floor" sign and several security people. We just walked on past, and then went up the escalators, pretending that we were a few years older. The inside of the convention hall was very much like an aircraft hanger. It was huge. Vibrantly colorful signs and bold logos, both those familiar and those alien, dangled from and filled the skies of the comdexian universe. It was overwhelming. After the initial euphoric shock was received, one notices the audio. From one booth, you hear, "Come see our show and get a free tee-shirt!!!" and from another you hear, "...has been the leader in the industry for..." Voices from the hundreds of thousands of people, voices from the exhibitors, all culminating in a background comdexian roar that fills your ears. You are in the Comdex. Comdex is like most of the computer world, an equalizing experience. In the real world, you are judged by what you look like, how you talk, what you think. In contrast, cyberculture is quite different. Everyone is judged by what they know and want to know. For the most part, and innocent pion with sufficient knowledge, such as myself, can strike up an interesting conversation on an equal basis with the designers of the newest technology in the computer world. You listen to them. They listen to you. You understand. They understand. The day passed quickly, and soon we were back at our car, with several new tee-shirts, a couple CD's each, hundreds of hand-outs, disks, pins, buttons, stickers, keychains, et hoc genus omne. From this point, we explored the hotels and casinos, ate a $4.95 Prime Rib dinner, and retired to our hotel. Comdex is a unique experience. Comdex is a gathering of 195,000 people who share the same interests, a gathering of the newest technology. The people that go to Comdex are not ordinary people, for they have developed a culture of their own. ~Comdex occurs twice yearly, once in the Fall in Las Vegas, Nevada, and once in Atlanta, Georgia. The Fall 1995 Comdex will take place in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Hilton, and Sands Expo and Convention Center, during the week of November 13 to 17, 1995. You may register online at http://www.comdex.com:8000. An exposition pass may be obtained for free. Spinning A Web Page All of us have by now surfed the World Wide Web, or at least we know someone who has or we have heard or read about it. After about fifteen minutes of happy clicking, we dream of creating our own cool spot on the web. We think about all the nifty things we'd add to our homepage and how fellow surfers would flock to it in awe. Creating one's own homepage on the World Wide Web is not too difficult, depending upon the aproach that you take. Two things are needed to create a homepage. You need the page itself and a place to put the page. Constructing the Page The first step is to design your page. Get out a few sheets of paper and draw out what you want it to look like, or, for those with photographic memories, do this in your head. Remember that a homepage may consist of more than one pages. For example, you can have something to click on that says "My Summer Vacation," which could go to another page about your summer vacation. Once you figure out what your page is going to look like, you can begin writing it. A page consists of a file or a series of files in a format known as "HTML," in addittion to files for all the graphical images and sounds that you have on your page. HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language." You can create an HTML format document in any word processor that can output to straight text or ASCII. The MicroSoft Windows Notepad, DOS Edit, and the OS/2 System Editor will all work. Also, most commercial word processors can output ASCII files, such as Ami Pro. In addittion, there are several specialized HTML editors which you may use. In HTML documents, markup "tags" define the start and end of headings and titles, paragraphs, lists, character attributes (such as bold, italic, etc) and links to other pages. Most markups are identified in a document with a start tag, which gives the element name and attributes, followed by text or other information, then ended by the end tag. Start tags are delimited by < and >, and end tags are delimited by </ and >. For example "This is bold!" would appear as "This is bold!" The first step in writing the HTML portion of your page is to write the actual literal text in a text editor. Then, go back and add HTML markup tags. It is completely possible to write it all at once with HTML tags in the first place, but this is rather confusing. Once you have the text written, it is time to insert the HTML markup tags. All HTML documents have the following basic structure: <HTML> <HEAD> header elements <BODY> body text </HTML> Since you have already written your body text, add "<HTML><HEAD> <BODY>" to the top of your document and add "</HTML>" to the end. Note that it does not matter what if there are line breaks in HTML. The above is exactly the same as: <HTML><HEAD>header elements<BODY>body text</HTML> Now, go through the body text and add to the beginning of every paragraph and to the end of every paragraph. Since line breaks are ignored, this is necessay to have your document formatted correctly. If you don't do this, your page will be really messed up. You can assign a name to a paragraph by using instead of , where "blort" is the title of the paragraph. This name is invisible to anyone looking at your page, and it's use will be explained later. The next step is to add a header to your document. The header consists of global information concerning the entire page, such as the title. To title your document, add the following between the <HEAD> and <BODY> tags: <TITLE>Insert the title of your page here</TITLE> Links A link is something that, when clicked on, takes you to another page or another location in the current document. A link is inserted in the following manner: <A HREF="location">text</A> "Location" is replaced with either a URL, a filename, or a pound sign followed by the name of a named paragraph. "text" is the text that will be displayed. When you click on that text, you will be taken to the location specified by "location." If you have a named paragraph defined with then you can insert a link to it in the same document with <A HREF="#blort">Go to Blort</A>. If you have another page that is part of your homepage called splorg.html, then you can add a link to it with "location" being "splorg.html". If you want to add a link to IBM's homepage, then the following would work: <A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/">Go to IBM's home page</A>. Text Formatting HTML allows for many types of text formatting, such as bold and italic. They all follow a basic format of start tags and stop tags. To turn bold on, use . To turn it off, use . You can use any other tags in between. test test test test test test test test Have fun with your HTML! In the next issue, we will explore Images, Backgrounds, Color, and other ways to spice up your home page! ~ WANTED: YOU The Carrier Wave is currently a volunteer operation. Most of the articles in this issue were written by one person (me!). WE WANT YOU TO WRITE FOR US! We can't pay you right now, but we may be able to in the future. However, we will give you a pile of copies of the issue that your work appears in to give to your friends or sell for a profit. You know what kind of artiles we want! If it is related to anything neat, then we want it! A list of topics to give you an idea of what we like includes: Computers, networks, conspiracies, aliens, radio, cryptography, neural networks, mathematics, fractals, TCP/IP, Perl, X.25, serial communications, algorithms, graphics, book/movie/software/hardware reviews, reviews of cons, pictures from inside a cable vault, etc. Contact Light Ray at dr261@cleveland.freenet.edu or at the post office box mentioned on the cover for more information!!!! Upcoming Events PumpCon Comdex Fall 95 November 13 to 17, 1995. Register Online via the Internet at http://www.comdex.com:8000. For a description read the article in this issue. HoHoCon Hacker Conference in New Orleans, December 30, 1995 to January 1, 1996. DefCon IV Hacker Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, expected in August. Exact date and location as yet undetermined, for contact information, see article in this issue. A Beginner's Guide To The Computer Underground - Part I Written By Pazuzu 24-Mar-1993 at 13:30 in Long Beach, CA PREFACE Pazuzu wrote this infamous BEGELITE.TXT file on the 24th of March, 1993, when he lived in Long Beach, California. Since then, much has changed, however, this still remains the definitive beginner's reference. Comments enclosed inside [square brackets] are my own (Light Ray.) FOREWORD I, nor any SysOp or User of ANY BBS on which this file appears are in any way liable for any damages caused by use of information or ideas contained in this file. This file serves only to describe and introduce the Computer Underground as I myself view it, not to encourage illegal activity of any kind. INTRODUCTION The intended audience of this file is someone who has been modeming for a while, and who has through some means discovered that there exists a Computer Underground, and who wishes to learn more about said Underground, and perhaps become a member of same. If this does not fit you, please destroy all on-disk (or tape) and hardcopies of this file and go about your happy life as if you never heard of it. But, if this does fit you, read on! UNDERGROUND DIVISIONS The Computer Underground is basically (although quite loosely) divided into five main branches and one minor branch. I say loosely because there is much crossover between the branches. The branches are (in no particular order): Phreaks - May also be referred to as "phreakers", etc. These people deal with the telephone grid. They want to learn all they can about how it works, and how they can control it, which often leads to making telephone calls for free (which is of course illegal). Often groups of Phreakers will band together and form an organized group, and publish articles on the subject. Hackers - These are the people who love computer systems (and networks) and who love to find out how they work, how to get into them, etc. A TRUE Hacker is not the malicious scum that the Media and Hollywood would have you believe, he is just someone who loves computers and computer networks. There's nothing wrong with logging into someone's computer, so long as you don't go deleting files or stealing trade secrets. NOTE: Hackers and Phreakers are very often combined into one group, referred to as h/p or p/h (for "phreak/hack"). Carders - These people are admittedly criminals. They use credit card numbers, checks, checking account numbers, whatever, fraudulently to obtain whatever they want for free. However, this isn't as bad as the media wants you to think: You are NOT LIABLE for charges made on your CC [credit card] account that you didn't authorize, so the bank has to eat it, and that's why they have insurance... Anarchists - In the sense it's used in the Computer Underground, an Anarchist is someone who loves to play with fire, explosives, etc. This is not all bad either... Who cares if someone makes an explosion out in the desert just to see what will happen? [There are two forms of anarchists. There are those that really are anarchists - that is, they beleive that there should be no government - and there are those that call themselves anarchists and like to blow things up.] Warez - Although I have never been a real supporter of warez people (in fact, I have fought bitter wars over BBSs with them for years) they DO serve a needed function in the underground: They distribute software. They are pirates. Most warez are distributed by warez groups which exist for the sole purpose of getting the software out to BBSs before the other group gets that same program out. Virus/Trojan Dudes (for lack of a better term): These people are usually programmers (although not always) who are interested in how viruses and trojan horses work and how to make them more efficient. For those who don't know, a virus replicates itself and waits around before doing anything harmful. The program which simply formats your hard drive upon execution IS NOT A VIRUS, it is a trojan horse. This is the "minor" branch I spoke of earlier. With that out of the way, I must restate that these divisions may not always be very clear or noticeable. It is very common to see a BBS with stuff from all of them on it (mine is one such system). I just wanted to detail all the various activities which comprise the Underground. I mentioned in several of the above descriptions that groups of like minded modemers often get together and form an organized Group and publish Magazines (electronically, as files on BBSs), or distribute warez. Some of the most famous Groups (some are LOOOONNNGGG gone) are: LOD (Legion of Doom), CHiNA (Communist Hackers in North America), CuD (Computer Underground Digest), Phrack, P/HUN (Phreakers/Hackers Underground Network) - p/h groups; THG (The Humble Guys), INC (International Network of Crackers), the FiRM (First in Releasing Most) - warez groups. Of course, there are/were MANY more, these are just the most common ones you'll see being referred to. TERMINOLOGY Many new Undergrounders have trouble figuring out all the terminology used and are of course afraid to make a post asking for help for fear of looking lame, so I'll help with a simple list... [Of course, the opposite is also true. You don't want to use terminology excessively when you don't know what it means.] [A] General Underground Terminology Data: This is the handle of someone who used to be a modemer. He is now a worm feast (corpse). He basically pissed off too many people by being a lame [beep] [beep], and got KILLED. His real name was Stuart Tay, I'm sure you've heard of him. This term is really great, and has SO, SO many uses... "He's a Data" ... "He pulled a Data" ... etc etc etc [However, this is fairly escoteric and very infrequently used. It's important to also note that "Data" is a term refering to any collection of information.] Lamer: This is someone who claims to be knowledgeable/active in some area of the underground, but in fact knows/does nothing. An example would be a 2400bps user claiming to be a great warez courier. Leech: This is someone who calls BBSs and just downloads everything in sight without contributing anything (or uploads garbage just to get credits). [B] Phreaking/Hacking Terminology Extender: This is an important phreaking term. It refers to the number you call when accessing a Long Distance Carrier's service. An example is 950-1493, which is ThriftyTel's Extender. ANI: Stands for Automatic Number Identification. If you call a telephone number that has ANI, your number (and sometimes address) shows up on a console at their location (or is logged to a printer, disk file, etc). This is bad, since most private long distance carriers use it to see who is calling their extenders. [This is usually known as Caller Identification, CallerID, or CID. More often ANI refers to a system where you dial a number and the phone number that you are dialing from is read off using a synthesized voice. This is usefull in troubleshooting and beige boxing. Try calling 1-800-MY-ANI-IS for an example. Also, almost all 1-800, 1-900, and x11 (411,611,911,etc) numbers have CallerID. CallerID will theoretically be available nationwide for residence by 1996.] ESS: Stands for Electronic Switching System. It is the system most Bell Organizations use to switch calls. It is what makes horrors like ANI possible. [Also, such wonders as the Blue Box and Black Box don't work on ESS] Gestapo: This is used to refer to any security/law enforcement agency. Its meaning should be obvious... SS: Stands for Secret Service. Any similarities between "SS" being used to refer to the Secret Service and the "SS" of Nazi Germany during World War II is by no means coincidental, believe me. [The Secret Service protects the president and other important people and busts hackers. Wierd combination.] CNA: This acronym stands for Customer Name/Address (also could be CNL - Customer Name/Location). Basically, if you have the CNA dialup for an area code, and someone's fone number in that area code, you can call the CNA dialup and give their fone number, and get their name and address. This is not as easy as it sounds since some CNA dialups require talking to an operator, which may be suspicious of you, plus you need the code. Some CNAs are automated where you call and enter the number on a fone keypad, then the code. Some you call with your modem. [Rumor has it that CNA has been abolished and replaced with something new. Not sure about this] COSMOS: The fone company's operating system. NPA: Stands for Numeral Prefix Allocation. An area code in layman's terms. Code Hacker: A program which repeatedly dials an extender, trying different codes, and logging which ones are valid. This is the main method which most phreaks use to get their fone calls. Telenet: This is a large network of computers. You call a Telenet dialup, then if you know a machine's NUA (its address), you type it in, and connect. This is good because there are Telenet dialups local to everywhere, and then you can connect to computers on the network no matter where they are. Other networks like Telenet include Tymnet and the Internet (the largest network on earth, a network of networks, really). [Telenet and Tymnet operate on the X.25 protocol while the Internet operates primarily using TCP/IP. This is not to say that they are not interconnected, however.] [C] Carding/Scamming/Etc Terminology CBI: This is a multi-use acronym which stands for Credit Bureau Information. It is used to refer to: [1] the information given by a credit reporting agency [2] the concept itself [3] a code used to access such a service [4] it is also used by one such reporting agency (namely Equifax) to refer to itself. Basically, if you have a CBI access code (normally just called "a CBI"), you can call a CBI dialup, enter the code, someone's name and address (or their Social Security Number), and you will get all credit info on them, including account numbers. This is quite useful as I'm sure you can see. Drop Site: This is where the carder would have the carded merchandise sent to, since only a Data would send the shit to his own house. [D] Warez Terminology Cracker: This is the person who actually breaks the copy protection on a piece of software. This often involves using hex editors, etc., and is usually quite difficult. Courier: This is a person whose sole job is to upload the cracked warez to as many BBSs as possible so as to distribute the software as widely as possible. [Warez: Pirated Software. Formerly pronounced "wares" but I've heard a lot of people pronouncing it "wear-ez."] This is most of the terminology you will see popping up in message bases and text files. I haven't (by any means) covered all of the terms out there, but these are some of the most common, and should help. [In part II, we will cover techniques!] Australian Military Bans Windows 95 The Australian Navy has banned the use of MicroSoft Windows 95 on its computers based on reports that Windows 95 sends information from a user's computer back to MicroSoft. The "Registration Wizard" software which is integrated into Windows 95 has been previously described as a "viral routine" by MicroSoft. Now MicroSoft is saying that it examines "the first six applications found" and reports the findings back to MicroSoft. (It's probably for market research, but it's scary giving ol' Bill a window into your computer and private data.) Russian Hackers Hack Citibank, Move Money, Get Caught. Russian hackers transfered a total of over ten million dollars through the Citibank electronic funds transfer system from June to October 1994. The group of hackers was led by Vladimir Levin, a 24 year old Russian employed by AOSaturn, a software company, who had broken the Citibank security system. He and six other people are now under arrest in London. Catholic Net! The Catholic Church has become one of the first major world religions to have an official web presence. See for yourself at http://www.catholic.net. Yes, soon you will be able to confess your sins via email! Double Big Mac for $60 Connectix recently released their new Speed Doubler for PowerMacs. This software, available for a street price of $60-$70 replaces the inefficient 68000 emulator from Apple. Since most Macintosh software consists mainly of 68000 code instead of native PowerPC code, this software effectively doubles, triples, or quadruples the speed of a PowerMac. Hackers Hack Hackers Hackers from the Internet Liberation Front (ILF) hacked the computer at DigiPlanet which held the home page for the movie, Hackers. They edited the text and graphics to tell the world what they thought of the movie. Strangely, instead of just putting the old page back, DigiPlanet put the old page back and added a link to the hacked page. There's more than a little speculation that DigiPlanet intentionaly ran an insecure system to facilitate a hack for media attention to the movie, Hackers, which at the time, was not yet released. The bug exploited in the hack was a world exported network file system (NFS) mount. The hacked page is at http://www.digiplanet.com/hackers/hacked/index.html. Burning Apples The Apple Macintosh PowerBook 5300 series has been recalled due to several cases of them "bursting into flames" while in use. Apple will continue manufacturing these computers with an older type of battery that does not self ignite. London Underground Hacked A newly-recruited employee of the London Underground (that is, the subway company) managed to hack into the system controlling the dot matrix displays throughout the "tubes" on August 16th, displaying joking messages such as "All signalmen are weeners." Needless to say, he's no longer an employee. Euro-Clipper! The European Council approved a measure on September 8 to take steps to make strong encryption illegal unless the key(s) are supplied to the government(s). Fake Check Successfully Deposited Patrick Combs successfully deposited a fake check that he received in the mail for $95,093.35, although the check had the words "not negotiable for cash" on it. For the details of this interesting story, see http://www.dnai.com/g-think/$$tablecontents.html. AOL Bust A two year FBI investigation of AOL (America Online) and its members has culminated in the search of 125 homes and 12 arrests for illegal pornography distribution. The Story Of DnA Systems DnA Systems, Inc. II is a computer bulletin board system operated by the husband and wife team of Pazuzu & Zevaluz located in Klinton Township, Michigan. It is a BBS like no other, for it houses the most diverse collection of message bases and files assembled anywhere. And all of this information is accessible by anyone, free of charges other than normal phone rates. The system began its long and illustrious life back in the Fall of 1989 as a closed access phreak/hack system in Anaheim, California called Motel 666. The system was first put up running WWIV 4.11, but soon after switched to Revolution when Pazuzu joined the Revolution programming team. By the time Summer 1990 rolled around, Motel 666 was the second biggest p/h system in Southern California, and the number of illegal calls logged to 714-229-8513 was, to quote U.S. Sprint, "obscene". Sometime around December 1990 January 1991, financial troubles forced the sale of the computer which ran the system and Motel 666 went down. In late 1991, Pazuzu again put the system back up, again as a closed access underground system under various names (couldn't decide on the perfect name). Now located in Costa Mesa, California at 714-646-9180, the system was ran under various BBS packages, finally ending up with LSD. But soon after, more financial problems arose and again the sale of the computer which ran the board was forced. In the Spring of 1993, the system was again put on-line at the same phone number, this time running Renegade 04-16 and named Minas Morgul. Soon after, Pazuzu co-founded the electronic magazine known as DnA, and the system's name was changed to DnA Systems, Inc. Around August, a user named Zevaluz first logged onto DnA. By the time November rolled around, Pazuzu and Zevaluz were very much in love, and Zevaluz proposed (!!!!!) to Pazuzu, and not being a fool, he accepted. Soon afterwards, the question of who moves where was posed. You see, Pazuzu still lived in California, while Zevaluz lived (lives) in Michigan. Given the high crime rate and obscenely high cost of living if California, the choice was easy and Pazuzu made plans to move to Michigan. Now, moving out of state is far from cheap, and the board would have to go down anyway, so Pazuzu sold the computer which ran DnA. DnA went down around January 5, 1994. It's now late August 1995, and we're happily married (as of September 30, 1994). We've been through a lot in the 18 months we've been together, including having a totally unexpected baby (born March 2, 1995). We've finally, as of May 1995, got our BBS back up under the name DnA Systems, Inc. II to denote the second incarnation of DnA Systems, Inc. There are several things which make this incarnation of my system different than all the rest. The first and foremost is that I am much older and wiser now than I was in 1989. I was 18 then, I'm 24 now. I'm in a much different life situation now -- I'm married, happily, and have a very secure and wonderful job as a programmer for a software company. The second is that the computer which runs DnA doesn't even belong to me -- it's a fringe benefit on loan from my company -- this means I can't sell it. The system is finally "here to stay". On the technical side, the system is composed of a carefully selected, high performance mix of hardware and software. On the hardware side, the system is composed of: an SiS chipset Pentium motherboard using the PCI bus standard with a built-in high performance NCR 53c810 SCSI controller, an Intel 90 MHZ Pentium CPU, 16MB of 72-pin memory, an ATI mach32 accelerated graphics card, a Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE/32, a Micropolis 2110 (1GB) SCSI hard disk, a Micropolis 2217 (1.7GB) SCSI hard disk, an NEC 4Xi Quad Speed SCSI CD-ROM drive, a WangTek 1300 SCSI DAT drive, a USRobotics Sportster v.34 modem, a Teac 1.44MB 3.5" disk drive and a Samtron 15" monitor. All of this (except the monitor & modem, of course) is housed in a black mid-tower case. On the software side, the system runs on the best products available. Our operating system of choice is IBM's OS/2 Version 3 ("Warp"). This is set up following the hints given in Tobin Fricke's OS/2 Sysop's FAQ -- those hints give a 4-5X speed increase over stock OS/2. We are using Ray Gwinn's SIO version 1.45A to handle our serial ports -- the only way to do things under OS/2. To handle our FTN network traffic, we use Chris Irwin's D'Bridge, version 1.58. This also packs & unpacks our echomail. For file echo (TIC) processing, we use Allfix, version 4.31E, the standard TIC processor for 1995. Our BBS software is Windowed Modem Environment (WME), version 1.10-A7, written by Jason Fesler, and now being developed by Tom Ordelman. This software is extremely configurable, very unique, and has a very wide variety of message base standards supported (JAM, Squish, Husdon, *.MSG). We offer our users the most diverse collection of message bases and files ever assembled. We are, to quote Reverend Ivan Stang, "plenty blasphemous enough to qualify for temple [of the Church of the SubGenius] status". We are a member of no less than 10 FTN's (Fido Technology Networks). They are (in no particular order): DnANet (we're the Eastern u.S. HQ - 66:810/0): This is a net I started back in 1993 when DnA Magazine became popular. It's still going today. Topics discussed include phreaking, hacking, viruses, bombs, taxation, personal Sovereignty, and Law. CyberCrime International (66:2810/110): This network started quite a while ago (1992 I think), and I was one of the first nodes, back when I was still in California. It's the best underground network ever. Topics include: wares (pirated software), ANSi & ASCII art, phreaking, hacking, explosives, data encryption, and the Internet. GODNet (143:1810/2000 - 810 hub): This network exists mostly as a file network, but has several message areas as well. Topics include music, the occult, and sex. PatriotNet (976:1776/1493): This is a network catering to true Patriots (which both operators are). Topics include militias, government massacres, Sovereignty, and firearms. MasqueNet (235:2109/103): This network is headquartered in Australia and is geared towards those interested in the Gothic culture. Topics include: body modification such as tattooing and piercing, murder, vampires, and Gothic music. NuitNet (666:666/1493): This network is geared towards the serious occultist (again, which we both are). Topics include: tarot, rituals, voodoo, tantra, Thelemic orders, and thee Temple ov Set. 50h-Net (101:220/200 - Eastern Michigan Hub): This is a programmer's network (I program professionally). There are areas for C, Pascal, BASIC, assembly, communications programming, etc. NuKENet (111:810/0 - Michigan Hub): This is the network run by the infamous virus research and authoring group NuKE. Topics are all virus-related. FidoNet (1:120/472): The largest FTN (obviously) in the world. While we don't actually receive any echomail from Fido, we maintain an address so we can receive and send mail to any Fido node in the world. We also have a huge collection of files available for download. We are actually one of the few systems in the world that constantly generates new Occult and Political text files. While our file collection is much to voluminous to list out here, our files include: music lyrics; BBS software; network utilities; Chaos magick; voodoo; astrology; Temple ov Set files; hacking utilities; phreaking utilities; viruses; virus creation kits; DnA Magazine; Phrack; P/HUN; Cult ov thee Dead Cow; ATI; UxU; carding text files; info on: waco, weaver, taxation, sovereignty, Law; complete text of the entire United States code; Satanism; Linux; Holy Temple of Mass Consumption; The Stark Fist of Removal Online; Church of Euthanasia; info on: Marijuana, MDMA, LSD, Crack, Heroin, 'Shrooms... and the list goes on. And all of this Data is accessible by anyone with a modem capable of speeds at or above 300 bits per second. There are no post-to-call ratios, upload-to-download ratios, fees, tests, or anything to stop you from downloading every file on the system if you so choose. Posting is not required. We would rather have no messages than a bunch of bullshit "jack up the ratio" messages. However, we've found that this arrangement actually encourages posting. The first time you call, you'll go through a standard new user logon procedure. Feel free to lie about your address, real name, phone number, gender, age, or whatever. You will then be logged off. However, within 8 hours, you WILL be granted access by the operators and may call back and do whatever you wish. We realize that no everyone will agree with everything on our system and 90% of people will likely find something on the system which offends them. If you find that something on the system offends you, please behave as an adult and simply remove the offending file area or message base from your newscan and forget it exists. Well, the only remaining piece of information about the system you need is the phone number. It's (810)792-0032. Hope to see you online soon! -- This joke looks to be pretty public domain. I also like it. So this is my selection for joke of the month. - Carolyn, net.humor supplier for The Carrier Wave. New York, __ -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Software (PETS) announced today that seven more software companies have been added to the group's "watch list" of companies that regularly practice software testing. "There is no need for software to be mistreated in this way so that companies like these can market new products," said Ken Granola, spokesperson for PETS. "Alternative methods of testing these products are available." According to PETS, these companies force software to undergo lengthy and arduous tests, often without rest, for hours or days at a time. Employees are assigned to "break" the software by any means necessary, and inside sources report that they often joke about "torturing' the software. "It's no joke," said Granola. "Innocent programs, from the day they are compiled, are cooped up in tiny rooms and 'crashed' for hours on end. They spend their whole lives on dirty, ill-maintained computers, and are unceremoniously deleted when they're not needed anymore." Granola said the software is kept in unsanitary conditions and is infested with bugs. We know alternatives to this horror exist," He said, citing industry giant Microsoft Corporation as a company that has become extremely successful without resorting to software testing. -From Somewhere on the Internet The following is an actual alert to IBM Field Engineers that went out to all IBM Branch Offices. The person who wrote it was serious. Abstract: Mouse Balls Available as FRU (Field Replacement Unit) Mouse balls are now available as FRU. Therefore, if a mouse fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by properly trained personnel. Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method. Domestic balls are replaced using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately. It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction, and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary items. To re-order, specify one of the following: P/N 33F8462 - Domestic Mouse Balls P/N 33F8461 - Foreign Mouse Balls VIRUSES - OCTOBER UPDATE BOBBET VIRUS: Removes a vital part of your hard disk then re-attachs it. (But that part will never work again.) OPRAH WINFREY VIRUS: Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB, and then slowly expands back to 200MB. AT&T VIRUS: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting. MCI VIRUS: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus. PAUL REVERE VIRUS: This revolutionary virus does not horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack---once if by LAN, twice if by C:>. POLITICALLY CORRECT VIRUS: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism." Carolyn Meinel (cmeinel@unm.edu) is a technology broker, which is a wool-business-suit way of saying she is a freelance wheeler-dealer in the world of cool inventions. She is embarrassed to admit that her favorite programming language is Fortran 77. She has written 6 really boring and expensive books with titles such as "World Intermodal Systems Markets," PRS International, Newtown, CT, 1995. Those curious to learn about her seriously entertaining stunts are encouraged to run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore and buy "Great Mambo Chicken & the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge," by Ed Regis, Addison Wesly, 1990, paperback. Hint: I start out in the book under my ex-married name, Carolyn Henson. Or, if you can dig up a real collector's item, you can check out what a megababe I was almost 20 years ago in the Genetic Hall of Fame in the book "The Intelligence Agents" by Dr. Timothy Leary, Peace Press, Culver City CA, 1979. The Conscience of a Hacker Written By The Mentor on January 8, 1986 Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering..." Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed up. ...Not because it doesn't like me... ...Or feels threatened by me... ...Or thinks I'm a smart ass... ...Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone lines like heroin through an addict's veins, an electric pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incometencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike. May The Mentor's Words Be Long Remembered [The following are the contents of various floating frames and such that could not be reproduced in the ASCII version of TCW.] -------------------------------------------- Amendment I. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free excersize thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Private Line Private Line is published six times yearly by Tom Farley. It is described as "a journal of inquiry into the telephone system." The last issue had 119 pages, containing detailed information on the "Outside Plant" of the Phone Company, Pay- phones, Debit Cards, Telephone repair and more. Tom takes you up telephone poles and down into cable vaults in part one of his detailed, fully illustrated exploration of the "Outside Plant." For a sample issue, send $4.50 to 5150 Fair Oaks Blvd., #101-348, Carmichael, CA 95608 USA. Text of back issues is available via ftp or gopher from etext.archive.umich.edu in the /pup/Zines/PrivateLine directory. You may email Mr. Farley at privateline@delphi.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------ FREE.ORG is offering free shell accounts, SLIP, PPP, and UUCP. Just dial them up with your modem at (715) 743-1600 ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Carrier Wave PO Box 835 Lake Forest, CA 92630-0835 Send $4.00 for a sample issue. Please include your name, address, electronic mail address, home page URL <if any>, favoriate quote <optional>, and the number of the last issue that you have if you have one already <so we don't send you a duplicate>. ------------------------------------------------------------------ END OF TCW.1.1.TXT --cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut--cut-- ========================================================================== THE CARRIER WAVE SUBSCRIPTION REQUEST FORM ==REQUIRED================================================================ Name (Or Psuedonym): _____________________________________________ Postal Address Line 1: ___________________________________________ Postal Address Line 2: ___________________________________________ Postal Address Line 3: ___________________________________________ Last Issue that you have: Volume I, Issue ________ [ ] None Number of Issues you want: ______________________ Funds enclosed: US$_______ . _________ [ ] Check [ ] Money Order [ ] Cash ==OPTIONAL================================================================ Electronic Mail Address: _________________________________________ Home Page URL: _________________________________________ Favorite Quote: _________________________________________ _________________________________________ ==NEXT....================================================================ Include $4.00 United States currency in Cash, Check, Or Money Order. 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