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- .oO Phrack 49 Oo.
-
- Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Nine
-
- 4 of 16
-
- -:[ Phrack Pro-Phile ]:-
-
- We discussed for a long time who in the hacking world today best
- exemplifies everything that is right with hacking today, and we came
- up with a unanimous conclusion that it was Mudge. And so we were quite
- happy that our first choice for the first pro-phile that we have done
- accepted our invitation. He cracked your Apple warez when you couldn't,
- he wrote buffer overflows before they were cool, he owned your Sendmail
- (and probably still does), and he still manages to give more back to the
- community than anyone else around. We can't say much more about him so
- let's see what he has to say for himself...
-
- Mudge
- ~~~~~
-
- Personal
- ~~~~~~~~
- Handle: mudge
- Call him: Enough people know it that its not secret, if you know
- it great, if not you probably don't have to.
- Past handles: Many old Apple ][ crackers remember me by a different
- handle. That handle is long put to rest thanks to the
- government.
- Handle origin: Mudge is a very common Irish last name. Though I'm not
- Irish I met someone with the name and couldn't believe
- it was a proper name. Out of homage to this person I
- took it as a handle several years ago (and since I
- couldn't use the old one for legal reasons).
- Date of Birth: Mid to Late '60s
- Age at current date: Mid to Late 20s
- Height: 6'0"
- Weight: 150
- Eye color: Blue
- Hair Color: Brownish / dirty blonde and loooong
- Computer: MPP Risc machine with 16 processors, 4 processor i860
- Cadmus, 2 Sparcs, my original Apple ][+, NeXT cube,
- 486, 4 Sun 3's, Textronix 4051, SouthWest Technical
- Products 75
- Sysop/Co-Sysop of: Cell-Block, Magic Tavern, Co-Sysop on the old Circus
- and Circus-II boards, ATDT, Works, and various AEs
- scattered across the country. And a little place
- called the l0pht.
- Boards Frequented: Terrapin Station, Metal Shop, Black Crawling Systems,
- Used to hang on Rutgers' with the old Darpa people
- (they know who they are) through telenet.
- Net address: mudge@l0pht.com
-
-
- Favorite Things
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Women: Not a big womanizer, when I hook up with someone it's usually
- for quite some time. Though it's always nice when big companies
- try to bribe you other ways. (Moreso 'cause it shows how sleazy
- the big companies are in comparison to human beings :>)
- Cars: Ford GT40, Porsche Wolf, Ferrari 318's, and of course a black
- SVT Cobra with black leather interior.
- Foods: Beer
- Beers: Mateen Triple - with a runner up of Pilsner Urquell
- Music: Frank Zappa, Dream Theater, Rush, Gentle Giant, King Crimson
- Instruments: Guitar. I actually hold advanced degrees in music (hehe had
- to make some money so here I am back in the 'puter world).
- Guitars: Ibanez 7 string, Gibson es225 Jazzer, and a custom built Ibanez
- from an endorsement deal (which is signed by 2 porn stars)
- Books: Jack of Shadows, Roadmarks, Stranger in a Strange Land,
- This Immortal, Steal this Urine Test, Steal this Book, PANIC -
- the wonderful Sparc buffer overflow writers bible.
- Turn Ons: Pet Rocks
- Turn Offs: 7/11 employees who think they can dance to Frank Zappa
-
- Other Passions, Interests, Loves:
-
- I love running the l0pht and the people that are involved in it. There's
- nothing like knowing that you are, at least attempting, to keep information
- flowing and offering back to the community. I love a lot of things. It's
- nice to see there is a sense of humor in the scene, and that there are still
- enough old-school hackers that are willing to help if approached correctly
- Granted there aren't enough of the older ones to answer every aol.com
- e-mail... It's a great feeling to be beneficial to both sides. For instance:
- when the 8.7.5 sploit went out and when we were doing a lot of work on SecureID
- (which much to their schagrin we got *really* far) that both the people writing
- the software and the hackers were happy to see our results. It's all about
- information and learning. If you stop learning... you're not doing it right.
- Unfortunately... it usually takes disseminating sploits to get some of the
- large companies to fix their buggy software.
-
-
- Most Memorable Experiences
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Having a bunch of suits get out of, yes, K-cars and take away most of my
- belongings - learning 6502 (and living it) assembler - writing my first
- buffer overflow a few years back - the band cutting it's first audio CD -
- playing the music for one of Hobbit's laser shows - having Wietse Venema
- ask me "not" to break into bell labs at a talk he was giving - having the
- bellcore author of the OTP RFC write me e-mail realizing that I had beaten
- him to the punch with vulnerabilities - everyday that I spend with my
- girlfriend - hearing one of the songs I wrote and played on being played
- on the radio - The L0pht and it's people - everytime that you finish working
- on a new project and it actually works [especially when you are working on
- a hypothetical exploit and it pans out].
-
-
- Some People to Mention
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Cheshire Catalyst for the initial inspiration. The L0pht folks, Raven,
- Hobbit for being a flat out brilliant fucker, ReDragon (best sense of humor -
- and best patience... look who he works for ;-)), Glyph - one nasty coder,
- Squarewave for providing countless hours of ooh's and aahhh's while
- pouring through his code. The NewHack folks. G-heap, Pope, SpaceRogue,
- Kingpin, Tan, Weld, Stefan, Brian Oblivion, t-com, all the standard
- people that hang out and have a good time at the cons with the l0pht folks
- (ie the r00t, NHC, l0ck/anti l0ck, cDc...) shit ALL the cDc folks. etc.,
- etc. etc. The ASR guys. There are so many people that have contributed so
- much. I'm sure I've left out many.
-
- The biggest one: my father [the only person who could sit there and grin
- through all of it... and explain the leafing procedures and how the 6502
- REALLY worked] (that's not leafing through on the Apple ][+... two
- separate things).
-
-
- A few things you would like to say:
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- French Toast please...
-
- 31337 is not a strong XOR key...
- (unless your secret host key is less than 5 characters long)
-
- Thanks to the new phrack lineup for keeping a good thing going.
- Still remember DL'ing the latest ones along with the Countlegger series
- and having to Dalton's Disk Disintegrator them back together.
-
- Oh yeah...
- and if someone tells you something is secure...
- ask them to prove it, and then STILL don't believe them.
-
-
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- One last thing, in your personal experience, have you found that most
- people in the scene are pretty much computer geeks?
-
- "Absolutely not. I've had the privilege to hang out with everyone from
- Weitse Venema, Dan Farmer, Casper Dik, Peter Guttman, to the hacker scene
- like Hobbit, Daemon9, the l0pht folks... and there's very few out of the
- bunch that I would label 'computer geeks'. Computer geeks seem not to have
- that creative twist in many cases that hackers have. This is the same twist
- that says: I don't care what it's _supposed_ to do - I bet I can make it do
- *this*."
-
- Thanks a lot for the prophile.
-
- "Thanks a lot for the opportunity."
-
-