The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/zines/phrack2/p48_17.txt

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                              ==Phrack Magazine==

                 Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Eight, File 17 of 18

****************************************************************************

                             International Scenes

There was once a time when hackers were basically isolated.  It was
almost unheard of to run into hackers from countries other than the
United States.  Then in the mid 1980's thanks largely to the existence
of chat systems accessible through X.25 networks like Altger, tchh and
QSD, hackers world-wide began to run into each other. They began to
talk, trade information, and learn from each other. Separate and diverse
subcultures began to merge into one collective scene and has brought us
the hacking subculture we know today.  A subculture that knows no
borders, one whose denizens share the common goal of liberating
information from its corporate shackles.

With the incredible proliferation of the Internet around the globe, this
group is growing by leaps and bounds.  With this in mind, we want to
help further unite the communities in various countries by shedding
light onto the hacking scenes that exist there.  If you want to
contribute a file about the hacking scene in your country, please send
it to us at [e-mail].

This issue we have files about the scenes in Sweden and Brazil.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Swedish Hacker Scene

It's about time to fill up this hole in the worldwide history of hackers
published in the Phrack series of articles on national scenes. Since no
one else seems to be getting around to do it I'd better do it myself.

Sweden was in fact one of the countries in the front line during the
birth of computers in the 1940's and 50's. By 1953 KTH university in
Stockholm built BESK, at the time being the fastest and most advanced
computer in the world. During the late 1960's Linkoping university
specialized in computer science and in 1973 the computer society Lysator
started out as an offshoot of american hacker culture of the kind you
could find at MIT during the 60's and 70's. They are still active and
often referred to as the first Swedish hacker society ever, which is
indeed true. Now days they still adhere to the international hacker
ethic of university societies and among their lines are as well idiots
as real bright guys (as is the case of most such societies) and their
contributions to the world of e-culture include Project Runeberg; a text
archive of Scandinavian literature, and a voluminous FTP archive.
There's actually a lot of ASCII work being done at Lysator, including
converting Phrack back issues to HTML format.

Despite the early interest in computers in Sweden there was no
equivalent to the American phreakers of the 1970's. This was not caused
by lack of knowledge but rather by dullness. Sweden was during the 70's
and early 80's in a period of both economic wealth and social mentality
commonly known as "The Welfare State". Everybody was facing the same
high economic standards, nobody was really displeased with Swedish
society, and the government granted lots of spare-time activities for
youths. Thus the growing ground for any outlaw societies was withdrawn.
(Eg Hells Angels didn't start out in Sweden until the 80's.) Swedes were
in fact too pleased, too wealthy and too filled up with their vision of
an almost utopian society to even get the faintest glimpse of an idea to
form any underground movements. Even political groupings like
Anarchists, Hippies (in Europe referred to as "Provos") or Fascists were
almost WIPED OUT by the extreme political climate and wealth of the
70's.

Thus, phreaker culture couldn't possibly start out in Sweden at this
time, though some freaked out engineers and radio-amateurs might have
built blue boxes and similar equipment for their household needs. This
state of society caused Sweden to lag behind other European and
Scandinavian countries in the field of outlaw hacking.

The first hacker activity in Sweden was reported by the authorities in
1980. The hacker in question was a student at Chalmers university in
Gothenburg and was sued for manipulating the account system into
granting him free access to the mainframe, for which was sentenced to a
relatively light fine. Apart from some similar incidents carried out by
bright individuals there was no real H/P scene until 1984. Also in 1980
BBS activity started out in Sweden. Most enthusiasts were using a
Swedish micro built by Luxor and DIAB in 1978 called ABC-80 (Obviously
inspired by the American TRS-80). These enthusiast, however, were well
organized engineers running a straight user-group, no anarchists or
radicals of any kind were ever involved.

In 1984 a magazine called "Rolig Teknik" started out as an offshoot of
YIPL/TAP featuring the same kind of material, and by 1987 some
journalist "discovered" this magazine, causing a lot of noise throughout
The Welfare State and bringing people out in a public debate of how to
defeat this magazine. (Though it actually didn't feature any illegal
material; even Sweden has the freedom of speech and press written
explicit in its constitution, as in the American First Amendment.)
"Rolig Teknik" rapidly became a cult media for underground electronic
freaks, outlaw radio amateurs, and other antisocial movements. But let's
not get ahead of events.

By early 1984 two youths aged 17 and 19, clearly inspired by the movie
"War Games", hacked their way into several Swedish computer systems
using a simple Apple II and a 300 baud modem, notably DAFA-Spar - a
register containing public information on every Swedish citizen. Though
there were no secret data in this computer, and though these hackers
never succeed in gaining root access, the incident was annoying to the
authorities. Also this year, some wealthy upper-middle class youths
started using the was-to-become major European home computer: the
Commodore 64. What the Apple II was for America, the C-64 was for
Europe. Enter the software crackers.

C-64 was THE symbol of hackerdom to Swedish youths in the 1980's. As
software cracker Mr.Z pioneered the hacker scene in 1983 with hundreds
and hundreds of cracked games, Swedish hackers somehow got to believe
that cracking games was the Big Thing for any hacker. Besides, not many
of these guys had modems. By 1987 American game producers were alarmed
by the Niagara of cracked C-64 software being downloaded from Europe,
causing them to start copy-protecting games that were to be exported to
Europe. A closer examination showed that a lot of these cracks were made
by Swedish groups, notably Triad and Fairlight. Thus, most Americans to
get in touch with the Swedish hacker scene were what you would refer to
as the "Warez D00ds" or "Pirates" of the time. Since the Swedes were
unable to phreak due to lack of knowledge in the telecom field, American
warez d00ds constantly called up Swedish crackers to obtain the latest
software.

There seems to be some kind of misconception in the American view of the
hacker culture of Europe: Not very many hackers in Sweden and the rest
of Europe got into phreaking nor net hacking in these early years,
perhaps with the exception of the movement in Germany caused by Chaos
Computer Club. By tradition most European hackers in general, and
Swedish hackers in particular, turned to software cracking and demo
programming. (The Demo as an art form was invented in Europe during
1984-86.) None of these activities were actually illegal at the time
being, though indeed underground. This might have helped to create the
general American view of European hackers as "Idiotic Immature Warez
D00ds". In fact, most European hackers look upon software cracking and
demo programming with pride, though spreading (warez trading) wasn't
considered a real hacker activity, and pirating for economic gain was
looked upon with disgust and utter contempt. Software spreading in all
forms was finally outlawed in Sweden January 1st 1993.

1986: Enter the Netrunners.
By the year 1986 the legendary BBS "Tungelstamonitorn" under the
supervision of Jinge Flucht began distributing H/P and Anarchy files.
Jinge himself, being a social inspector and thereby fully aware of the
state of society, was upset with The Welfare State and thought the
Swedes had gone law-abiding in an absurd and unhealthy manner. In his
view people seemed to accept laws without ever questioning them, thereby
making Sweden into a conformistic utopian hell. Later Jinge joined the
Fidonet where he got known for running the most explicit and intense
debates in Swedish BBS-culture ever.

Probably the H/P files stored at Jinges BBS were the spark that lit the
Swedish net hacking scene. Swedish hackers had SEEN "War Games", HEARD
about the CCC in Germany, and now they finally got their hands on
documents that explained the techniques. In 1987 excerpts from Steven
Levy's "Hackers" and Bill Leebs "Out of the Inner Circle" were reprinted
in the Swedish computer- magazine "Datormagazin" by editor Christer
Rindeblad, creating a common group-awareness among Swedish hackers.
("Out of the Inner Circle" had actually been translated to Swedish
already 1985, but was obviously read mostly by security experts and War
Games-obsessed wannabe's.) 1987 also saw the birth of the first
all-Swedish hacker group ever to make themselves a name outside
Scandinavia. This was of course SHA - Swedish Hackers Association.

SHA wanted to be a hacker group of international standards and
qualities. They collected the best people, storing up a knowledge basis
for future use. In the years 1989-92 SHA was at its height, successfully
trashing computer companies and computer scrap dumps and gaining access
to hundreds of computers. Inspired by the German hackers Pengo and
Hagbard in Leitstelle 511 they started having regular meetings on
fridays at their own booked table in a restaurant in Stockholm. Their
perhaps biggest achievement ever was made in 1991 when they wrote a
scanner to exploit the Unix NIS-bug, running it on 30 processes
simultaneously, and ending up with some 150.000 passwords whereof 600
gained root access. Though some would say SHA were a bit too fond of the
media image of hackers and sometimes had a weakness for hacker cliches,
no one can really deny their achievements.

Swedish hackers also got a lot attention for their carding activities in
1989. Both Sneaker of SHA and Erik XIV of Agile wrote modulo
10-calculators to produce endless series of valid Visa-numbers. Erik XIV
was even on national television, demonstrating the weaknesses of the
credit card system. Cynically they were both busted.

At Christmas 1990 the Swedish X.25 network Datapak and Decnet were both
attacked by a group of UK hackers called 8LGM (8 Little Green Men or
8-Legged Groove Machine - I don't know which one is a media nick). Using
a war dialer they scanned about 22.000 entries and successfully accessed
380 of these. This is perhaps the most well-known of all hacks in
Sweden, causing a lot of media noise. (The exact figures are a product
of the Swedish telephone system AXE that I will write more about in a
moment.) As reported in Phrack #43 they were busted and convicted under
the new British anti-hacker law.

Later Swedish achievements include the phonecard emulator, constructed
by Atari ST enthusiast Marvin in 1992, after hearing the Swedish phone
company Telia boast of these prepaid phonecards superior security.
Though these silicon-based chip phonecards (256 bytes serial EPROMs)
couldn't actually be recharged or easily tampered with, he realized
there was no problem in emulating the chip with a Motorola 68c705
one-chip computer. Some fake phonecards were manufactured and sold for
almost nothing among his very best friends more on a "See, it can be
done"-basis than with any intention to defraud Telia or earn heaps of
money. Somehow the blueprints for the emulator found its way into the
Internet.

Swedish hackers in general have a very strong tradition of forming
groups, due to their roots in programming activities rather than
phreaking. Group awareness and culture is very widespread and accepted
within the boundaries of the whole Swedish computer underground. Thus,
LOYALTY is very strong among Swedish hackers. Most hackers who get
busted by authorities or blackmailed by companies would rather DIE than
telling the name of even a single 10-year old warez d00d.

While we're at it - hacker busts, and phreaker busts in particular, are
carried out in quite a disturbing manner in Sweden. To explain this I
must first explain a bit about the Swedish telephone system.

Almost all Swedish networks use a system similar to 4ESS, constructed in
cooperation by the State Telecom "Televerket" and Swedish
telecommunications equipment producers Ericsson Telecom. This system is
called AXE, which is an abbreviation for Automatic Cross-Connection
Equipment. AXE is used in some 100 countries all over the world and
probably one of the most beautiful exchange systems ever developed. AXE
is designed for national, metropolitan and rural networks, and the same
system nucleus is used in all the different systems. It can control both
digital and analog equipment, though it's made with the aim on
transforming all Swedish networks from analog to digital connections. It
also comes with a fully featured bureaucratic organization for
maintenance, administration and economics in general. AXE has the
capability of building virtual groups in switching-stations, thus
putting your PBX into the telco soup as well, making you believe you
have the control over it though it's actually located elsewhere.

In short, this is an centralized, monolithic system of the horribly
efficient type that telcos love. It tells any amateur to keep their
hands off and do something else. Of course it's a system that hackers
and phreakers hate, since it's limited to authorities. The filthy crowd
do not know what is going on inside these exchanges, and the telcos like
to keep it that way.

AXE also works with stored program control that resides inside the
system core of every switching station. Of course this is all software,
and of course State Telecom, upon building AXE, couldn't hold back their
Big Brother tendencies.

The result is that every call made from anywhere to anywhere, is logged
in a central computer. Now that's something! Not only did this equipment
wipe out every possibility to box within Sweden, but it also removed all
kind of phone privacy. In fact not only calls are logged, but ALL
activity performed at your terminal. If you lift the handset, press a
digit and hang up, time, date and the digit you pressed is registered.
All this data is stored on magnetic tapes for 6 months.

Now, luckily Sweden has a strong Computer Privacy Act. You just aren't
allowed to set up and use such facilities as you please, not even if you
are the State Telecom. There is even a specific authority,
"Datainspektionen" (The Computer Inspection Department) with the only
purpose of looking after and preserve citizen privacy by protecting
individuals from corporate and governmental interests. As a result State
Telecom "Televerket" (which later changed name to "Telia" as they were
transformed from an authority into a private corporation as of July 1st
1993) were not allowed to give out any of the information gathered in
these registers to anyone else than either the calling or the receiving
party. Not even the police could have this information in case they
weren't suspecting a indictable crime resulting in at least 2 years of
prison, such as drug trading or terrorism, and you don't get that kind
of penalty for phreaking alone - at least not in Sweden.

But Telia could evade these restrictions. In order to successfully
phreak using PIN-codes, you have to call an operator using a Swedish
version of the 800-number: a 020-number. Telia could then claim the call
was made to the owner of that number: AT&T, MCI & Sprint mostly. (There
are of course Calling Cards in Sweden as well: "Telia Access" - neither
used nor abused by anybody.) As well as these companies have their own
intelligence agencies, so have Telia. Once eg AT&T had someone traced
for phreaking, Telia could easily produce a complete list of calls made
to AT&T operators from a certain number. Telia themselves would even use
information they weren't allowed to: they would pull out a list of ALL
outgoing calls from the phreaker in question including calls to MCI,
girlfriends, mom, dad, grandma... all logged calls.

Telia would then call this poor phreaker to their local Swedish office,
sticking the endless list under his/her nose, commanding: "TALK, or we
will turn you in to the authorities", carefully not to mention that all
information on the printout would be absolutely useless in court. The
only conclusive evidence would in fact be those calls traced back all
the way from America or wherever the phreaker called; in that way
rigorously documented. Naturally, the common phreaker had no legal
experience and wouldn't know about this. Instead he would talk, giving
out detailed information on his/her techniques worthy of a full-time
high-educated security consultant. After this session the phreaker was
given a bill of the calls that could indeed be proven in court. If
he/she didn't pay it - Telia (or any other operator) would end up
turning him/her to the authorities anyway. So much for cooperation.
Telia themselves would, if they felt it was necessary, go even further
than the overseas operators, systematically exposing every weakness in
the phreakers personal life, using the information in the computer log
for psychological terror.

This pattern of treatment of Swedish phreakers seems to be very much the
same among all telecom providers in Sweden. Lately Telia, under command
of security officer Pege Gustavsson made some noteworthy mistakes
though: in their efforts to convict as many phreakers as possible, they
called up companies receiving calls from "suspicious" individuals,
warning them about this or that person calling them over and over again.
This could only mean Telia was also systematically monitoring some
Swedish hackers and had formed some security group to carry out this
probation. Normally this should have been kept quiet, as Telia are
absolutely not allowed to form their own abuse police forces, but at
some instance they happened to call up a security company using
phreakers as informants. Of course this security company didn't like the
idea of having "their" phreakers traced around, and the matter was
brought to public attention. Many independent sources agreed that Telia
had violated the Swedish Computer Act, and hopefully this brought an end
to this wild tracing. You shouldn't be too sure though, since Telia
themselves never confessed of doing anything illegal.

As you might have understood the Computer Act is quite an important
factor in all legal discussions concerning Swedish hacking. This Act
came out as a result of general attention focused upon the computers vs.
privacy matter in 1973. As Sweden was one of the first countries to make
use of computers in governmental administration, and as Swedish
authorities were eager to register every possible piece of information,
some politically influential individuals started a debate resulting in
the founding of the Computer Act and the Computer Inspection Department.
As a result Sweden is light years ahead of most countries when it comes
to privacy matters. For example there is no problem in having the number
identification possibilities on your line deactivated for good, and it
won't cost you anything. You can also easily obtain free printouts from
any computer register containing information on you, including the
register at your local AXE-exchange.

To sum this article up I can draw the conclusion that even Sweden has
had its handful of bright hackers, each category bringing their straw to
the stack. Even though Swedish officials and companies would hardly
admit it, these hackers have obviously been very important for this
country, at least in forcing system managers, security officials,
software producers, policemen, politicians and so on to think things
over. Sweden has also attracted outside attention in some cases, and
will probably keep doing so. If you should pin- point one group that has
meant more to the Swedish scene than any other, it wouldn't be any of
the H/P groups, but rather the cracking pioneers Fairlight - a well
organized and world-famous warez producer.

Linus Walleij aka King Fisher / Triad
[e-mail]

(Some handles have been changed to protect retired Swedish hackers from
luser mail.)

Swedish readers may be interested in the fact that I'm currently writing
a lengthy text in Swedish (a book actually) providing a closer look at
Swedish hacking history, which will be released on hypertext and ASCII
sometime later this year. Over and out from Sweden!

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                           HACKING IN BRAZIL
                           =================

Before talking about hacking here, it's good to describe the conditions
of living. Right now, the country is a mix of Belgium and India. It's
possible to find both standards of living without travelling long
distances. The Southern part of the country concentrate most of the
industry, while in the west one can find Amazonia jungle. There are many
Brazils, one could say.

        Beginning with the hacking and phreaking.

Hackers and computers enthusiasts have several different places for
meeting. When this thing started, by the time of that film "Wargames",
the real place  to meet hackers and  make contacts were the computer
shops, game-arcades and "Video-texto" terminals. The computer shops were
a meeting place because many of those "hackers" had no computers of
their own and the shop-owners  would let them play with them as part of
a advertising tool to  encourage people buying it for their kids.

Today that is no longer needed, since prices dropped down and people
make a team already at schools or sometimes just join a BBS (most people
who buy a modem, end up thinking about setting up a BBS). By the way,
most schools are advertising computer training as part of  their
curricula, to charge more, and like everywhere, I guess, people no
longer learn typewriting, but computer-writing, and many brazilian
newspapers dedicate a section on computer knowledge once a week, with
advertising, hints, general info and even lists of BBS's.

A few years ago, the "Video-texto" terminals were also big meeting
places. That was part of  a effort to make popular the use of a
computer linked by modem to  get services like msx-games, info on
weather, check bank account and so on. Just like the Net,  one could do
e-mail, by some fancy tricks and other  things that could be  called
hacking. The difference was that it was made by the state-owned
telephone company and each time the trick was too well know, it was
changed. The only way to keep in touch was keeping in touch with the
people who used the system like hell. It's no different than what it
happens with the computer gurus. The protocol used for that, X-25 is the
same used for the banking money transfers, but don't think it was
possible to do anything more than checking how much money one had and a
few other classified data. People who used that at home (not too many,
since the company didn't think it would be such a hit, and didn't
provide for it) could spend their fathers money discovering funny things
about the system, like messing with other people's phones and so.  One
could also  use the terminals at the Shopping Centers to make phone
calls to their friends without paying. The guy at the other end would be
heard by the small speaker.

Phreaking here in Brazil is something secret. Apart from the trick
described in the section "Letters to read by" at the summer 1994 of the
2600 Magazine, where one would call through locked rotatory telephone,
little is known about phreaking. One thing is that people who enrolled
in Telecommunications Engineering could call Europe and USA with ease,
but they would not tell you how. It must be said that all public phones
have metal cables  around the cables and that the phone machines are
quite tough to break down. I guess it wasn't for beauty.

The phones use some sort of metal coins called fichas, which must be
bought somewhere. The trick is to use a coin with a string, so it would
not be collected. But if the police caught... The police doesn't follow
rules about that. Either they put a fine on the guy for that, or arrest
him for vandalism or anything else they think of at the moment. It is
hassle, anyway. My friend who was doing electrical Engineering told me
that boxing in Brazil was impossible. The system is just not good enough
to be boxed. Another friend of mine told me that in the Northeast part,
where people are a little bit different and more easy-going, the phone
system can be boxed, because some top-brass asked the company to let
that  feature implemented. The Phone company doesn't admit any knowledge
about that.

Internet access is something quite hard to get today. Until a few weeks
ago, the system would not let the creation of a Internet site that was
not part of some research project. So, only Universities and like were
capable of putting people in the Net Universe. In the University of Sco
Paulo, people in the post-graduation courses could get it with ease, but
graduating students would have to show some connection to a research
project. That in theory, because the students found out that one could
use the IBM CDC 4360 to telnet without a Internet account. Also, all the
faculties that had computer rooms full of AT 386 which where linked by
fiber optics to this computer.  Another one did the file transfers
between the accounts and the computer at the computer rooms  and that
ftp was also possible without an account, but only to a few sites, like
oakland and so. That lasted for about a year, until that thing was
fixed in the router, but only at the Politechnik School. Says the legend
that the guys were downloading too much GIF and JPG pictures of Top
Models from a ftp site nearby. That spent so much bandwidth that the
site started to complain and both things happened: the site stopped to
store GIF's of wonderful women in swimsuit and the router was fixed to
prevent ftp without a Internet account. One can still today connect the
outside world via telnet and many people have accounts in Internet BBS
like Isca BBS, Cleveland Freenet and like. The Bad Boy BBS was "in",
until  it went out of business. This kind of access is not good, though,
for it is very slow, sometimes. Also, it is hard to  download something
bigger than 60 kbyte.  The way I devised, downloading the file inside
the bbs and uuencoding it. This way you could list the file and capture
the screen listing, uudecode it after some editing and have a working
.exe or .zip file.

By these means one could, inside the Campus, do all downloading one
wanted,  from anywhere in the world. Outside the campus, it is  possible
to do it by phone lines, but: the Modem will not go faster than 2400
without character correction  (no Zmodem at all). Which makes quite hard
to download compressed files. One could  an account:  that  would be
possible by these means, but the amount of trash during the phone
connection would make it real hard to type in passwords and like. To try
doing any kind of  thin g but reading letters by modem is some kind of
torture. The real thing is to do it by "linha dedicada", a special line
for computer transmission. It's much more expensive though, but if you
have the money to spend with that...

Perhaps the best way to get access to an Internet account though is to
be part of the research project "Escola do Futuro" that among other
things get schools linked by the Net. That's what I did and they pay me
quite well to search for data in the Net, for  the students of those
schools. The University of Campinas is said to give all students a
Internet account regardless of knowledge of what-it-is, as soon as the
guy(girl) gets in. Of course here there's BITNET also. That's doomed for
extinction, but this or  that reason keeps people from closing it down.
Most teachers use it, guess there's even some post-graduation work
written about that. It's easier to access via modem, also. Old habits
die hard.

Outside the Campus, for common people, there are few opportunities. The
only thing you can get, at least until the opening of commercial
internet sites, something about to happen one of these days, is access
by mail. You join one BBS with Internet access, and your mail is sent by
a Internet account later during the  day. This is not a direct access,
as one can see,  but it's a easy way to access by modem. Problem is that
you have to pay if you use it too much. The BBS's that do it don't do it
for free, also. Connection to the Compuserve is also possible, but it
also costs a lot of money, for my point of view.

Because of the newspapers, the knowledge about Internet is spreading
fast and the number of sites is growing the same way everywhere else in
the world. Even the military people are starting with it. There are plan
s to enhance it and make better connections, and some informative
material is being translated in Portuguese, like "Zen and the Art of
Internet" and made available in the gopher.rnp.br. There are many
mirrors from many famous sites, like Simtel20 and at least one Internet
BBS, the "Jacare BBS" (Alligator bbs, available by telnetting
bbs.secom.ufpa.br - 192.147.210.1 - login bbs. World Wide Web sites are
becoming sort of popular also, but still available only to a few people
who are lucky enough to get the access. Brazilian hackers are not very
fond  of sharing the knowledge of how to get access and other things,
sometimes because of fear of losing it, sometimes because the greed of
it would overcharge the system. There's no hacker magazine here, yet,
and very few people confess their curiosity about hacking for knowledge
for fear of not finding jobs. Anyway most would-be hackers either get a
job and stop hacking for fun or keep their activities secret in order to
pursue their objectives.

Today, Brazilian Hacker Underground did change a little. Lots of
magazines, dealing only with Internet Issues, are being published. There
is a hacker zine, the now famous "Barata Eletrica". This and the hacker
list I created is starting to unite the computer rats, here. But I had
to stop hacking in order to write the e-zine. Too famous to do that.
Another guy just started the thing. He did not learn with my mistake and
is signing it with his name, also. Received lots of letters, even as far
as Mozambique, praising the material, which is very soft, for fear of
losing my net access. Twice my account was "freezed". The people at my
site are paranoid. Suffered too much from break-ins already. Most BBS's
are trying to turn themselves in Internet providers or else, to get
e-mail access. There was a fear the State would control the thing, like
they did with the Phone system. Can any of you guys imagine what it is,
to pay 4.000 US$ dollars for a phone line? In the City of Sao Paulo,
(look like L.A., one can say), that's the average price. Cellular is
cheaper. Motorola rules. The public phone system was changed again. No
more "fichas". At least for long distance calls. It's a small card that
looks like plastic one side and magnetic material in the other. m still
trying to do 2600 meetings. Oh, once in a while, there is a break-in
here and there, and a hacker is interviewed in TV, but people are only
now making the difference between the good guys (hackers) and the  bad
guys (crackers). With Win95, people are losing fear of exchanging
virus-sources files. The lack of philes in Portuguese makes it dificult
for people to learn about hacking. People who know about it, don't have
enough time to write. I started to unite some guys to do a translation
of "hacker crackdown", but that's another story. I shortened the name of
the book to "crack.gz". Guess what's happened? My account is blocked up
to this day. They told me I'll get my access back. One of these days.
One of these days I'll re-write this article, and tell the whole thing
in detail.

Any Portuguese speaker that does not know about my e-zine,
try a ftp.eff.org mirror. The URL:
ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/Publications/CuD/Barata_Eletrica