The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998

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==Phrack Magazine== Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Eight, File 5 of 18 -:[ Phrack Prophile ]:- This issue, we have a "very special episode" of the Phrack Prophile. As everyone knows, Phrack is once again in flux, and an entirely new editorial staff is coming on board. In an effort to introduce everyone to these three hackers, we've had them do profiles. Ladies and Gentlemen (yeah, like any ladies OR gentlemen read Phrack), meet your new editors: Daemon9, ReDragon and Voyager. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prophile on Daemon9 Personal ~~~~~~~~ Nomenclature: daemon9/route/infinity In real life: Mike D. (as in David, not Diamond) S. DOB: 10.05.73 Likes: Women who aren't afraid to cry. Dislikes: Hippies. GOD, I hate hippies... Ink: Large back piece, and growing... (It's the outline of a die. (No, not as in a pair of dice, but as in a computer chip...) Other: Glock 19 with trigger-guard mounted laser-site. Passions: Computers. Computer Security (or lack there of). Health. Mental and Physical aptitude. Main URLs: http://www.infonexus.com/~daemon9 ftp://ftp.infonexus.com/pub mailto://route@infonexus.com mailto://daemon9@netcom.com Hardware ~~~~~~~~ Years with Computers: 14ish Computers Owned: Towers: P90/32MB/3GIG (Windows NT/Solaris/DOS-WFW) Mids: P120/32/2GIG (Linux), 486-66/16/700MB (FreeBSD), 486-50/16/540 (Linux) Laptops: P133/16/800, (Windows NT/Linux) 486-75/16/500 (DOS/WFW) Networks Owned: The Information Nexus (infonexus.com) Media ~~~~~ Music: Front242, FLA, The Goats, NIN, Diatribe, 16Volt, Morphine, etc... Movies: Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing, Sneakers, Fletch Army of Darkness, True Romance, NBK, etc... Books: TCP/IP Illustrated vols. I-III, UNP, Applied Cryptogrpahy 2nd edition, Computers and Intractablity: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness, and so on... A Bit of History ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ah, the days of my youth... Carefree, happy-go-lucky, life was a big open door to me. One spring a very good friend of mine told me I should get an ``Internet'' account to write him mail while he was away at school. "Huh...?" ...Was my concise reply. I was deep into the computer thing at that time, but I had not gotten into the Internet yet. Well, we went out and bought a (at the time) $200 2400 BPS modem and got me hooked up with this brand new service provider, NetCom Online... At first I merely used the thing for email, but soon after I taught myself all about Unix, I discovered all the wonders of Usenet and IRC (AKA the Big Waste). Most people know me from my frequent alt.2600 presense. That's where I met Voyager. We quickly found that we had the same interests as far as computers and hacking went. The rest is history... Sorta. The Theory Behind It All ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I look back and try to figure out how the hell I got here, I have one person to thank. My father. He bought me my first Commodore 64. I can remember hooking that archaic thing up to my TV, writing my own adventure games in basic, and saving them to a tape drive. My computer time line goes something like this: c64 Apple IIc IBM XT IBM 286 486/33 486/66 P90 486/66 486/50 P120 P133... 1982 1984 1986 1987 1991 1992 1994 1995 1996 1996 1996 I am not happy unless I am bathed in a contstant stream of extraneous RF radiation. My room is alive with a myriad of blinking and flashing lights, several humming fans, and hundreds of feet of fire-hazard-inducing cables. I have to put tin-foil on all of my windows just to keep the sun out and the temperature down. You'd be amazed how well that works. The pursuit of knowledge is what led me down the path I am following. I am simply not satisfied with knowing that something works. I need to know why and how, and how to break it and then how fix it... I do not solve a problem by merely finding a work-around. I slam head on into the fucking thing and work with it until a solution presents itself. Intelligence, to me, is not what you know, or how much you know. It is the ability to reason logically and rationally when the need arises and, if pragmaticism is not the best approach, let intuition and chaos guide you. Intelligence is adaptive and ever-changing... Memory capacity is too often mistaken for smarts... People I Know ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Linenoiz: The reason I fell into the whole Internet scene to begin with. Best friends for 12 years, I would not be where I am now without him. He is one of the most intelligent people I know. Nihil: The reason I fell into the whole hacking scene to begin with. We have had our differences over the years, but our computing interests are too similar to let petty squabbles come in the way of our friendship. The other one of the most intelligent people I know. Mythrandir: I met Myth about 2 years on alt.2600. Sharp kid. Very sharp. We think so alike on some things it's freaky. We'll get going on that Tiger Team soon enuff, Jeff...! Alhambra: Strong coder. We did the DemonKit for Linux (and are still working on it..;)). Jeremy and I also have very similar interests as far as hacking goes. I am glad he is here with me in the Guild. I need more people like him. Not a risky gambler, but hey, I took care of that for both of us... Halflife: Coder supreme. Shouts Out To ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brent, Carrie, ColdFire, Crow, Halflife, Heather, Jason, Jen, Kev, Ka_mee, MikeP, Mudge, Shawn, SirSyko, Tim, Tom, Topher, Xanax, Vision What I Have Done ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ alt.2600 -------- It used to be that you could find me in that group like clockwork. I was always there. Reading, posting, flaming, lurking. That was me. For years. This is where most people probably first remember me from. I took it upon myself to self-moderate and answer all the questions I could possibly handle... I usually posted several times daily. At last count, I posted over 2100 times (according to ~/.tin/posted). I was prolific. I have fond memories of back then... But, times have changed. That group has gone almost completely to hell (AKA the way of #hack). Thesedays, it's a fucking miracle if I find a worthwhile thread to follow-up to... These days, look for me on comp.security.*, comp.protocols.tcpip, sci.crypt, alt.security.pgp and so on... zines... -------- Oh yeah, I wrote some code and a few rag-tag articles for some Zines out there. Can't remember the names... the Guild --------- The Guild is my group of roudy Internauts. I started the group about 20 months ago for several reasons, some of which are just *now* becoming clear to me. For a while there, we were putting out a zine, The Infinity Concept, but that is on hiatus while I do Phrack. Various members have done coding and exploits. Look for more to come from the Guild... ftp.netcom.com/pub/da/daemon9 ----------------------------- Somewhere along the line about 2 years ago, I started to take advantage of netcom's free 5 megs of ftp space. I put together a modest collection of tools and whatnot (under 6 megs of stuff). For some yet undiscovered reason, people flocked to the site. I have no clue why. It wasn't *that* great. What I find even more fascinating is the fact that to this day people *still* go looking there for hacking paraphenelia. The site has been vacated for almost a year now. If you are reading this and still have a link to my O-L-D netcom ftp site, UPDATE it to point to ftp.infonexus.com. I am *much* more proud of this site... Hundreds of megs of top-notch stuff here. Anyway, the netcom site went down because Brian Smith (at the time the only member of the netcom security staff) told me I couldn't have certian tools there for distro. When I ignored him, he froze my account. This was the final catalyst in me deciding to start the Information Nexus... the Information Nexus --------------------- Ah yes... The InfoNexus... My frustration with Netcom led me to do what I had been wanting to do for some time, start my own site. This site would be a Haven for hackers, a place where they could come and be sure to find only the finest in technologies and tools. A place of much learning and information trade. A knowledge dumping ground. Thus was born the Information Nexus. With anywhere from 6-10 machines the Nexus is a heterogenous environment: the OS's range from several Unix flavors, several versions of Windows NT, and, of course, the mundane stuff (like DOS/WFW). The main box, Onyx, is a heavily tweaked Linux machine. It is a P120 with 32MB RAM and 2 GIGs of HD space. As it stands now, accounts are given on restricted basis, only to friends and people I know (or people whose reputation precedes them). As soon as I upgrade the link from a 28.8 modem I will start offering accounts to the masses, at a nomial fee. I will also open up ftp access, allowing a greater number of users at all hours. The Infinity Concept -------------------- TIC is the zine the Guild put out. Some of the noteworthy subjects written on: Cryptography, Windows NT security, Unix security,the security of PGP, and several coding projects... We have done 3 issues to date, but I have stopped further production of the zine to devote my full attention to Phrack magazine. Phrack Magazine --------------- Several months back, I hopped on IRC with some of my Guild-mates and was having a wonderous discussion on, oh, nothing. Well, Voyager was on, and he dragged me into a private chat. He told me about ErikB stepping down, and told me he and ReDragon were to take over as the new editors... I was very happy for him, and told him I would have jumped at the chance to do it. That was his next question... Since then, ReDragon, Voyager and I have been salivating like dogs waiting to get our hands on the legend that is Phrack Magazine. My pledge is twofold: Timely distribution and nothing but the highest quality articles. We will be distributing Phrack on a regular seasonal rotation and will weed out all but the top-notch articles. I plan to write at least one article per issue. I promise this much: You will not be disappointed... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prophile on ReDragon Personal ~~~~~~~~ Handle: ReDragon Call Him: Dave Past Handles: Dr. Disk (circa '84), The Destroyer (circa '88) Handle Origin: Thomas Harris Book, Saab insignia, D&Dish sort of name, then I decided it would be cooler (and original) if it was all one word and one D. Date of Birth: 12/30/75 Age of current date: do the math yourself Height: 5' 11" Weight: 175 Eye Color: Green Hair Color: Brown Computers: Apple ][e, Atari 800, 8088, 386sx/16, 386dx/40, and right now a 486/33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I got my Hayes Micromodem //e in the summer of '84. I was eight years old and with the help of my babysitter begged my way onto an H/P board. I used to read Phrack and write BASIC code, I was quite the clueless newbie for a while. People say age doesn't matter, but it does when you are that young. My lameness continued, I learned Pascal, the years passed, and I started to figure out how things worked. I discovered Unix, it was cool. I learned what Crack was, I used it. Years passed I started to figure out how things worked. I would go into more detail but I don't really care to tell the world about my life, ask me privately if you care. ReD's Favorite Things ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Women: yes Cars: Saab Foods: Taco Bell (doesn't everyone?), Young animals killed cruely Music: Pink Floyd, Beatles, anything not techno Leisure: IRC is bad for you, just say no. Alcoholic Fun: Bottled beer, Jaegermeister, Long Island Iced Teas Most Memorable Experiences ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Saab car trouble in Queens on the way to HOPE. Saab car trouble on PA Turnpike on way back from Pumpcon. Saab stranded on George Washington Bridge on way to SummerCon '95. Saab finally breaks down on NY Turnpike on way home. SummerCon '95 (memorable that I don't remember any of it) SummerCon '96 (the worst organized con I have ever been to) Some People To Mention ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Green Machine (for altering my life more than I can imagine) Acker (even though you gave up on it all, wish I knew what you were doing now) Bluesman (why didn't you tell me about C earlier?) Zorgo (for ruining my life showing me IRC) Wozz (I still don't believe you grew up there) r00t (you're all a bunch of idiots, but i love you) Asriel (we are pretty similar people, except I'm not a narq) Max-Q (screaming at me "Nice Fuckin' Con!" after Summercon '96, I was touched) Taran King (you were cool to me when I was nobody, I was impressed) Sirsyko (only hacker I know that I actually trust) ErikB (annoying him enough made for an interesting summercon and a new phrack) l0pht (for bringing back what hacking is really about) b (stuff?) Why Phrack? ~~~~~~~~~~~ I have been in one way or another involved in the "hack scene" for more than half my life. I spent a large part of that on the lower end of the knowledge ladder, and throughout it all few people helped me along directly. What I recognize though is that there have been scores of people that have spent their time, at no personal gain to themselves, to help educate others about something that they know a bit more about than the rest of us. I read a lot of books to learn about hacking; I paid for them and the authors have gotten the money they deserve. I learned quite a bit from college; I paid quite a lot for college. But I have learned about hacking most of all from hackers. How can I repay those that have given me so much? We are rather fortunate to be in a position where we actually can give something back to them. We can give them a new generation of hackers that have the same opportunities to learn and to share their knowledge that we had. We can show them that we haven't forgotten about where we started; we haven't forgotten about why we are hackers; and we haven't forgotten that to be a hacker is a passion, and it is something we are proud of. To my peers, consider giving something back to the community. To the next generation, learn from what we give and explore from what you learn; it will soon be your turn to take our place. And to those that made this all possible, to those that gave their own knowledge in the name of the community, the hundreds of authors, the ten editors, and most of all the readers: Thank You. -ReDragon ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prophile on Voyager Personal ~~~~~~~~ Handle: Voyager Call him: Will Date of Birth: 06/23/69 Age: 27 Height: 6' Weight: 200lb Computers owned: 486DX4-100(FreeBSD), 486SX25(OS/2) and P-75 laptop(PC-DOS) How did this handle originate? I jumped on IRC one day and didn't want to use my real handle, so I made this one up on the spur of the moment. How I Got Started ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I didn't start hacking computers until I went to college. I taught myself to use PRIMOS and I started hacking because the 150k disk quota I was given wasn't large enough for me to compile decent sized programs. I started hacking in '87 and didn't run into another hacker until '91. I got Internet access and I found Phrack on ftp.eff.org. Wow! I thought, these people are serious. Shortly thereafter, I compiled the VMS client for IRC and I was talking to other hacker types on a regular basis. About that time, I put up a BBS. The system is now known as "Hacker's Haven." The system has become fairly popular, with over 1,400 users surviving the last 90 day purge. In '92, I wrote a "bot" in the IRC scripting language and called it "HackSrv." HackSrv distributed H/P files on demand and also opped all of us regular #hack cronies. Late in '92 I moved to Atlanta and started organizing 2600 Meetings. We had a blast. We held them at my apartment. I can't imagine what my neighbors thought. I still remember 40 people in my tiny living room huddled around the TV watching sneakers. One week, we were hacking on one terminal, IRC'ing on another, watching a lockpicking demo on the front door, sorting trash on the balcony, having firearms instruction in the bedroom, and setting off bottle rockets from the kitchen to the living room. The last is not a good idea, by the way. Over the course of the next few years, #hack went completely to hell. The place became littered with clueless newbies asking clueless newbie questions. Other people, usually even less clueful newbies, would kick and ban people for asking questions. This effectively stopped all useful conversation on #hack, as anyone who brought up a technical topic was likely to be kicked immediately. This led to a group of #hack ChanOp's who had absolutely no technical knowledge and instead wasted away the hours stroking their egos. I was annoyed by the incredible cluelessness that had taken over the once fine channel and decided to do something about it. Towards that end, I wrote the #hack FAQ. The #hack FAQ was to be given to new people to bring them up to speed in a short amount of time. This, I reasoned, would raise the intellectual level on conversation on #hack. It would also set the tone for conversation on #hack back to the technical atmosphere I had known just a few years earlier. Later, the #hack FAQ became the alt.2600/#hack FAQ and it's purpose was expanded to cover the newsgroup alt.2600. In the Summer of '94 I moved to Denver and joined up with TNO. TNO is a group of friends who share an avid interest in computer and telephone security. Today, TNO consists of Cavalier, DisordeR, Major, Edison and myself. Over the last few years, I've written for Phrack, 2600, CoTNo and FUCK. I've wanted to be Phrack editor since Taran King retired. When ErikB told me he was looking to retire from the job, and that I was being considered as the next Phrack editor, it hit me just how big of a responsibility this was. I spoke with ReDragon (Editor of FEH) and daemon9 (Editor of The Infinity Concept). Together, we agreed to set aside our current e-zine's (I was the current Editor of CoTNo) and focus all of our attention on Phrack. We have received offers of support from many old and new people in the hacking community. I am looking forward to a bright future for Phrack. Interests ~~~~~~~~~ Women: Sharp and quick Cars: Big and fast Food: Spicy to the point of pain Music: Rock and Roll Favorite performers: Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles Favorite author: Joel Rosenberg Favorite Book: Unix Power Tools Most Memorable Experiences ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ KL kicking me off #hack for saying that hacking was wrong. Captain Hemp hiding my address and phone number in a bag of trash. Reading my first sniffer log. Getting arrested with Captain Hemp outside of a Southern Bell facility. Finding the switch with the unpassworded root account. Being pulled over on the way to HoHoCon while we were moshing in the van. DeadKat and Cavalier doing the root dance. Being followed by the security guard with the baby seat. Major and I *not* getting mugged and beaten by the gang of thieves, even though he could barely stand up and neither of us were carrying at the time. Some People To Mention ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Major : You are, at the same time, one of the best people I have ever known and one of the worst people I have ever known. I am just glad I am on your side, and you mine. I trust you with my life, and with a few of the situations we've been through, that's not just talking. Cavalier : You taught us all what was important in a group. Your steadiness and common sense has helped carry TNO through the dark times. As always, I'm glad to have you here. You can always be counted on, and that means a great deal to me. The Presence : It is always a pleasure to talk to you. You have taught me more than anyone else in the scene. You will always be one of the best. The strength of your ethics will guide you through where lesser men would fail. Captain Hemp : There's no one I'd rather be arrested with. NoCar / K : Congratulations on your new system! The Final Question ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have met quite a few hackers. Very few have been "geeks" in the traditional sense of the term. I have met hacker business people, hacker jocks, hacker criminals, hacker stoners, hacker programmers, and hacker skater punks. It's a sport for just about anyone with intelligence, dedication, and absolutely no respect for authority. _______________________________________________________________________________