The Hacker Chronicles - A Tour of the Computer Underground

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Text File | 1992-09-26 | 19KB | 384 lines

==Phrack Inc.== Volume Three, Issue 25, File 9 of 11 PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN P h r a c k W o r l d N e w s PWN PWN ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ PWN PWN Issue XXV/Part 1 PWN PWN PWN PWN March 29, 1989 PWN PWN PWN PWN Created, Written, and Edited PWN PWN by Knight Lightning PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN Standing On The Edge Of The Network ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Greetings once again and welcome to Phrack World News Issue 25, our 25th Anniversary Special. This issue features articles about the New TAP Magazine, a battle between Southwestern Bell and bulletin board operators in Oklahoma City, a whole file's worth of information about the KGB hackers, Matthias Speer, Klaus Brunnstein, an interview with Pengo, and much more. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Suiting Up For SummerCon '89 March 22, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once again, for those who may have missed last issue... SummerCon '89 Saint Louis, Missouri June 23-25, 1989 Brought To You By Forest Ranger / Knight Lightning / Taran King The agenda for this year's SummerCon is going to be a sort of mixture of the first two. We do intend to hold an actual conference on Saturday, June 24, 1989. This conference will last as long as necessary and anyone who wishes to speak should prepare a presentation ahead of time and notify us as soon as possible. The location of SummerCon '89 has been decided upon, but reservations are still in the progress of being made. For this reason, we have declined to print the name of the hotel for the convention at this time. Anyone who is seriously interested in going to SummerCon '89 and thinks that they will be able to attend should contact Taran King or myself as soon as possible. :Knight Lightning _______________________________________________________________________________ Mitnick Plea Bargains March 16, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By Kim Murphy (Los Angeles Times [Excerpts Only]) Kevin Mitnick pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of possessing unauthorized long-distance telephone codes. He admitted penetrating a DEC computer in Mass., secretly obtaining a copy of a sophisticated computer security program which the company had spent $1 million to develop. The program, said Mitnick's attorney, was designed to alert companies when their computers had been penetrated by hackers like Mitnick. Mitnick never attempted to sell or distribute the program, he said. Mitnick also admitted possessing 16 unauthorized MCI long-distance codes that enabled him to make long-distance telephone calls without charge. A prosecutor said Mitnick used the codes to make connections to computers. Mitnick faces one year in prison. Under a plea agreement with the government, he must also submit to three years' supervision by probation officers after his release from prison. Prosecutors said they agreed to a 12-month sentence because the amount of financial damage was relatively low. DEC lost about $100,000 to $200,000 in computer "down time" investigating the security program theft. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to dismiss two additional counts charging Mitnick with illegally accessing the Leeds University computer in England and separate charge related to the DEC computer program. _______________________________________________________________________________ The NEW Technological Advancement Party (TAP) March 11, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By Aristotle and the TAP Magazine Staff How TAP Will Be Printed TAP will be created, edited, and printed on various machines that the staff either owns or has full access to. The computers range from personal computers to mainframes. The printing devices range from dot-matrix printers to industrial laser printers. Again, the staff has full access to all of these devices. In order to upgrade the quality of print and to take some of the load off of the staff, the staff is looking into getting TAP printed by a professional printer. Funding Of TAP Hopefully TAP will be funded majorly by the subscribers. Unlike TAP in it's early years, we cannot afford to just give TAP away. Except for issue 92, we will not GIVE TAP away for free. We feel the policy of the old TAP towards this issue was the major cause of their cronic shortage of money. As far as startup costs, the staff can support all costs except for Printing, Paper, and Postage. For 1.00 an issue, we feel we should be able to sufficiently support TAP from the subscribers fees. All money received will be put into an account that will be used for TAP purposes ONLY. There will be no distributing of wealth between the staff. The three expenses above will be the major areas of spending with an occasional expense of advertising and such. How TAP Will Be Getting Articles As of right now, the staff has enough articles ready to be printed to support TAP for at least 4 issues. We hope TAP will become dependant on articles submitted by subscribers. If people do not submit articles to TAP, we will be forced to fill up space with lesser articles (thus lessening the quality of TAP.) We figure that at the worst, TAP can sustain itself for one year with NO submitted articles. That way we will not be ripping anyone off and we can fade away in peace. (Hopefully we won't have to do that!) Who is involved with TAP As of 03/07/89, the TAP staff consists of five people. These 'staffers' are: Aristotle, Olorin The White, Predat0r, and two others that wish to remain anonymous. The last two have elected to remain anonymous for various reasons, one being to maintain their freedom. The staff does not feel that we need to list names in TAP (yet) to give the newsletter a good reputation. We feel that readers should subscribe to TAP because of the quality of the newsletter and not because of the staff members. Of course, if you submit an article, you will be given credit where it is due. Credit to the author of any article we print will be given unless the author expresses wishes that he/she does not want to be recognized. Of course if TAP cannot find the name of the author of a specific article, we cannot print the credits. Why We Decided To Print A Newsletter After gathering information from bulletin boards and other sources, various members of the staff decided that they would like to print hard to obtain information in hardcopy form and an easy to understand format. We feel that certain information cannot be successfully represented and distributed with computers only. One excellent example is a schematic of any device. We all know how bad ASCII schematics suck. And with practically everyone in the community owning a different computer, how can we communicate efficiently? Well, printed material (on paper) is our answer. In addition to the advantage print has over text files, there are various other reasons for our wanting to print a newsletter. Due to the lack of experts wanting to teach newcomers to the community (excluding certain individuals), we have decided to do something about it. TAP will attempt to explain information so that EVERYONE can understand it. We will not hesitate to help any beginners, nor hesitate to give information to the more experienced members of the community. All members of the community will be supported by TAP. TAP is an equal opportunity informer. Why We Decided To Print TAP When we first received our collection of TAP issues (along with some 2600's), we were astounded. After learning from bbs's and voice calls, the value of TAP and 2600 were obvious. We liked 2600 a lot, but we LOVED TAP. TAP fit our personalities perfectly. It has something for everyone. Around that time, we promptly looked into subscribing to the two magazines. As you know, TAP died in 1984 and 2600 is still in print. Well, we subscribed to 2600 and kept on studying our old TAP issues. When the suggestion came to put out a magazine, the first idea that was suggested was TAP. It was decided after a LONG discussion that TAP would be perfect for our newsletter. Since we are interested in hacking, phreaking, AND other topics, we felt TAP better expressed our opinions and ideas than any other newsletter idea. Hell, we just straight up loved that old TAP and we cannot pass up the opportunity to bring it back into existence and (hopefully) it's original glory. Where To Find TAP If you have any other questions regarding TAP, you can contact the staff via snail mail (US postal service) or via staff accounts on the bulletin boards listed below. US Mailing Address: TAP P.O. Box 20264 Louisville, KY 40220 Beehive BBS - 703-823-6591 Hackers Den - 718-358-9209 Ripco - 312-528-5020 Thank you, Tap Staff - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Editor's Comments ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Upon first hearing about the newly formed TAP Magazine, I scoffed and thought it would be another pipe dream like many other countless previous attempts. To my surprise, the magazine was delivered just like they promised. Issue 92 contained the following: TAP RAP - Basically the staff's remarks about the new magazine and the subscription information. A BIT on BITNET (An Introduction to BITNET) - This was a reprint of Aristotle's Bitnet file that appeared in P/HUN Newsletter Issue 3. BELL PAYS for Evil deeds - News article about Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. TMC PIN - Information about PIN codes of TeleMarketing Company. Pyro-How To - How to make Nitrogen Tri-Iodide. Miscellaneous catalog information for Loompanics Unlimited and Specialized Products Company. Big Brother section - An article about revenge tactics and social engineering taken from Flagship News (employee publication of American Airlines). The article was also previously seen in RISKS Digest. TELEPHONE CONTROLLED TAPE STARTER + Schematics The infamous "Ma Bell Is A Cheap Mother" logo and a few other surprises are also included in this issue. The last part of the newsletter lists information that the TAP Staff is looking for. My reaction to the issue was positive over all. The print quality was very good and extremely readable. The issue itself was a bit crumpled up by the US Postal Service, but that is to be expected. The first issue was a test product and that is the reason for a little bit of un-original material, says Aristotle. It is my understanding that the future holds all sorts of neat articles and overall it would appear that at $12.00 a year, the new TAP is a good investment. :Knight Lightning _______________________________________________________________________________ Two Men Seized As Phone Looters March 13, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two phony repairmen wearing stolen Illinois Bell hardhats and carrying around stolen repairman tools have demonstrated that ripping off payphones is not small change. Arrested in Chicago, Illinois last week were George W. Parratt, age 47, of Sauk Village, IL and Arthur P. Hopkinson, age 40, of Hickory Hills, IL; two south suburbs of Chicago. The two men, posing as Illinois Bell repairmen and driving a white and blue van disguised to look like an Illinois Bell truck, have stolen thousands of dollars from pay telephones all over Chicago. Their average take was about $200 per phone -- and they have hit some phones two or three times. Just the cost of repairing the phones damaged in the past year cost more than $50,000 said Illinois Bell Telephone spokesman Tony Abel. These two fellows were making a full time living looting pay phones, although Mr. Abel did not have the final total of the amount looted immediately available when we discussed the case. Abel said Illinois Bell employees spotted the phony van on two separate days and notified the security department of Bell. Security representatives were able to trace the license plate on the van, and they found it parked in Parratt's driveway. The investigators secretly followed the van and watched Parratt and Hopkinson loot two pay phones in Calumet City, Illinois, and two in Hammond, Indiana; a community on the stateline served by Illinois Bell. When the two men drove back across the stateline into Calumet City, and started breaking into another payphone, the investigators arrested them. Cook County sheriff's Lt. Thomas Oulette, called to the scene, said the two had $120 in change and $650 in stolen tools from Illinois Bell at the time of their arrest. He said they were able to break into a coin box, dump it and get away in less than three minutes. "It was a pretty good scam," said Oulette, who noted that the investigators from Illinois Bell told him they believed the company had been hit by the pair for about $35,000 in the nine months the company was specifically aware of them without knowing who they were. Parratt and Hopkinson were released on bond, and are scheduled to appear in Circuit Court (Markham, Illinois branch) on April 17, 1989. Information Provided by Patrick Townson _______________________________________________________________________________ Bank Fraud Was "Easy" February 24, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From The Independent (London) "A 17-year-old junior cashier cheated the National Westminster Bank out of 1 million pounds in a computer fraud," a court heard yesterday. Judge Helen Palin criticized the bank for lax security and refused to make a compensation order for 15,000 pounds which the bank has not been able to recover. After being given access to the bank's computer system he began by paying 10 pounds into his own account. He then paid himself 12,000 in imaginary cheques. Later, he transferred a credit for 984,252 pounds into the account of a friend and celebrated by buying 50 bottles of champagne. The judge said, "One of the worrying features of this case is that a young man who hasn't long left school is able to work the system in the NatWest bank on a number of occasions without being found out. Indeed, the general chat within the bank seems to be how easy it is to defraud that bank." _______________________________________________________________________________ Two Men Accused Of "Hacker" Crime February 24, 1989 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By James Gribble (Milwaukee Journal) Vowing to step up efforts to stop computer crime, a Milwaukee County prosecutor has charged two Milwaukee men with fraudulently obtaining free long-distance telephone service. The felony charges filed Thursday against Alan Carr, age 35 and David Kelsey, age 26 are the first so-called hacker crimes to be prosecuted by the district attorney's office. Working independently, using home computers and similar software programs, the men are alleged to have obtained calling card codes for customers of an independent long-distance telephone company, Schneider Communications. They then used the codes to bill their personal calls to Schneider's customers, according to a criminal complaint prepared by Assistant District Attorney Jon N. Reddin, head of the district attorney's White Collar Crime Unit. Reddin said the total theft probably was less than $1,000, but he said the case reflected a growing problem. "I have the feeling, from our investigation, that there's a lot of people out there doing this," he said. "The only way to stop it is to prosecute them, because this is theft. It's almost like some one stealing your credit card and using it to make purchases." Schneider Communications was the victim in this case, Reddin said, because the company had to write off the customer billings for which Carr and Kelsey turned out to be responsible. According to court records and Reddin, the investigation was prompted by a complaint from Schneider Communications. The company's computer keeps track of all calls that are rejected because of an improper access code. Clients dialing incorrectly would cause 10 to 30 rejected calls a month, but sometime last year the number jumped to 1,000 or 2,000 per month. Computer printouts showed the unknown parties were repeatedly dialing the computer and changing the access code sequentially, Reddin said. Hundreds of calls at a time were being made in this fashion, and each time the code was changed one digit at a time until a working code was encountered. Because the company had no way of knowing where the calls were coming from, Wisconsin Bell placed a tracing device on the line, through which the calls were traced to the phone numbers of Carr and Kelsey. The men were apparently unaware of each other and simply happened to be involved in similar schemes, Reddin said. Carr is alleged to have used a bootleg computer program called "Hacking Construction Set Documentation." Kelsey is alleged to have used a similar bootleg program called "Mickey-Dialer." The programs were seized in raids at the defendant's houses, according to court records. Reddin acknowledged that technological safeguards can detect such thefts after the fact but not prevent them. What Carr and Kelsey are alleged to have done can be done by any computer buff with the right software and know-how, Reddin said. The key to deterring computer crime, in Reddin's view, lies in it's prompt reporting to authorities. "The best way I can think of to do that is by filing a complaint with our office," Reddin said. _______________________________________________________________________________ Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253 12yrs+