The Hacker Chronicles - A…the Computer Underground/The Hacker Chronicles - A Tour of the Computer Underground (P-80 Systems).iso/phrk3/phrack33.2c

Text File | 1992-09-26 | 16KB | 315 lines

                              ==Phrack Classic==

                     Volume Three, Issue 33, File #2 of 10

                          ==Phrack Classic Spotlight==


        This spotlight will be on a person which most of you should be familiar
with.  Most of you will remember his 'famous' file in LOD/H Tech Journal #1.  I
can remember that file spawning hundred's of Unix wanna-be hackers into trying
to create their own crypt-compare hacker.  This of course is...

                               Shooting Shark
                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personal
~~~~~~~~
              Handle:  Shooting Shark
            Call him:  'Shark' will do.
        Past handles:  None
       Handle origin:  It's the title of the 3rd song on "Revolution By
                       Night," which many consider to be Blue Oyster Cult's
                       last good album.
       Date of Birth:  11/25/66
 Age at current date:  24
Approximate Location:  San Francisco Bay Area.
              Height:  5'10"
              Weight:  150 lbs.
           Eye color:  Hazel
          Hair Color:  Dark Brown
           Computers:  First: Apple //e. Presently:  ALR Business V EISA
                                                     386/33.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Story of my Hacking Career:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        In 1984 I was lucky enough to be a Senior at a high
school that had one of the pilot "Advanced Placement Computer Science"
classes.  I didn't know much about computers at the time, but I had a
strong interest, so I signed up.  "Advanced Placement Computer Science"
meant programming in Pascal using the UCSD P-System on the
newly-released Apple //e.  I wasn't too crazy about programming in
Pascal - does ANYBODY really like Pascal? - but I did enjoy the software
piracy sessions that the class had after school and, much of the time,
during class when the Instructor was lecturing about DO WHILE loops or
something equally fascinating.  Some of our favorite games at the time
were ZORK II and what I still consider to be the best Apple ][ game
ever, RESCUE RAIDERS.  A few months into the school year, I somehow
convinced my mother to buy me my very own Apple //e, with an entire 64K
of RAM, a monochrome monitor, and a floppy drive.  The first low-cost
hard drive for the Apple ][, the Sider, was $700 for 10Mb at the time,
so it was out of the question.

        Now at about this time, Coleco was touting their Adam add-on to
the ColecoVision game unit, and they had these great guilt-inducing
advertisements that had copy something like this:

        TEACHER: "I want to talk to you about Billy.  He's not doing
                  very well in school.  He just doesn't seem to
                  understand new concepts as well as the other kids.
                  All he does is sit there and pick his nose."

        CONCERNED
        FATHER:  "Well, golly, I just don't know what to do.  It's
                  probably because his mother drank so much when she was
                  pregnant."

        TEACHER: "Have you considered getting Billy a computer?"

        And of course the next scene showed little Billy inserting a
tape cartridge into his new Adam and pecking his way to higher grades.

        Such was not the case with me when I got MY computer.  All I did
was go home after school and play "Wizardry."  I stopped doing homework.
I failed 3 out of 6 classes my last semester of my Senior year of high
school.  Luckily enough, I had already been accepted to the local state
University, so it didn't really matter.  Shortly before graduating, I
took the AP Computer Science test and got the minimum passing score.  (I
didn't feel so bad when Sir Francis Drake later told me that he failed
it.  Then again, he completed all the questions in BASIC.)

        Worse yet, "Wargames" came out around this time.  I'll admit it
- my interest in hacking was largely influenced by that film.

        Sooo, shortly after I (barely) graduated from high school, I
saved up my money and bought a - get this - Hayes MicroModem //e.  It
was only something like $250 and I was in 300 baud heaven.  I started
calling the local "use your real name" BBSs and shortly graduated to the
various small-time hacker BBSs.  Note that 90% of the BBSs at this time
were running on Apples using Networks, GBBS or some other variant.  Few
were faster than 300 baud.  It was on one of these Apple Networks BBSs
that I noticed some users talking about these mysterious numbers called
"800 extenders."  I innocently inquired as to what these were, and got a
reply from Elric of Imrryr.  He explained that all I needed to do was
dial an 800 number, enter a six-digit code, and then I could call
anywhere I wanted for FREE!  It was the most amazing thing.  So, I
picked a handle, and began calling systems like Sherwood Forest ][ and
Sherwood Forest ]I[, OSUNY, and PloverNet.  At their height, you could
call any of these systems and read dozens of new messages containing
lots of new Sprint and extender codes EVERY DAY.  It was great!  I kept
pestering my mentor, Elric, and despite his undoubted annoyance with my
stupid questions, we remained friends.  By this time, I realized that my
Hayes MicroModem //e was just not where it was at, and saved up the $400
to buy a Novation Apple Cat 300, the most awesomest modem of its day.
This baby had a sound generation chip which could be used to generate
speech, and more importantly, DTMF and 2600Hz tones.  Stupidly enough, I
began blue boxing.  Ironically, at this time I was living in the very
town that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had gotten busted in for boxing
ten years previously.

        And THEN I started college.  I probably would have remained a
two-bit Apple hacker (instead of what I am today, a two-bit IBM hacker)
to this day if a friend hadn't told me that it was easy to hack into the
school's new Pyramid 90x, a "super mini" that ran a BSD 4.2 variant.
"The professor for the C class has created a bunch of accounts,
sequentially numbered, all with the same default password." he told me.
"Just keep trying them until you get an account that hasn't been used by
a student yet!"  I snagged an account which I still use to this day,
seven years later.

        At about this time, I called The Matrix, run by Dr. Strangelove.
This was my first experience with Ken's FORUM-PC BBS software.  Dr.
Strangelove was a great guy, even though he looks somewhat like a wood
mouse (and I mean that in the nicest possible way).  DSL helped me build
my first XT clone for a total cost of about $400.  He even GAVE me a lot
of the components I needed, like a CGA card and a keyboard.

        Shortly after that, The Matrix went down and was quickly
replaced by IDI, run by Aiken Drum.  It is here that I met Sir Francis
Drake.  Shortly after THAT, IDI went down and was quickly replaced by
Lunatic Labs Unltd, run by my old friend The Mad Alchemist.  TMA lived
within walking distance of my house, so I called LunaLabs quite a bit.
LunaLabs later became the home base of Phrack for a few issues.

        And so during this time I just got really into Unix and started
writing files for Phrack.  I wrote about six articles for Phrack and
then one for the 2nd LOD Technical Journal, which featured a brute-force
password hacker.  I know, that sounds archaic, but this was back in
1984, and I was actually one of the few people in the hacker community
that knew quite a bit about Unix.  I've been told by several people that
it was my LOD TJ article that got *them* into Unix hacking (shucks).  I
also wrote the original Unix Nasties article for Phrack, and on two
occasions, when I was later heavily into massive Internet node hopping,
I would get into a virgin system at some backwoods college like MIT and
find *my file* in somebody's directory.

        THEN, in around 1987, I got a letter from the local FBI office.
It was addressed to my real name and asked for any information I might wish
to provide on a break-in in San Diego.  I of course declined (even
though they sent me more letters) but let's just say that I stopped
doing illegal things at around that time.  Also, being over 18 sort of
stopped me, as well.  I know..."what a weenie."  So Lunatic Labs, now
being run by The Mad Alchemist, became my exclusive haunt because it was
a local board.  When Elric and Sir Francis Drake took over the
editorship of Phrack for a few issues, I wrote all their intro files.

        THEN my computer broke, and I let those days just fade away
behind me.  Occasionally, old associates would manage to find me and
call me voice, much to my surprise.  Somebody called me once and told me
an account had been created for me on a BBS called "Catch 22,"  a system
that must have been too good to last.  I think I called it twice before
it went down.  Then Crimson Death called me, asked me to write a
ProPhile, and here we are.

What I'm Doing Now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        After two years in the Computer Science program in college, I
switched my major to Theater Arts for three reasons: 1) Theater Arts
people were generally nicer people, 2) Most CS students were just too
geeky for me (note I said "most") and 3) I just couldn't manage to pass
Calculus III!  I graduated last year with a BA in Theater Arts, and like
all newly graduated Theater majors, started practicing my lines, such as
"Do you want fries with that?" and "Can I tell you about today's
special?"  However, I managed to have the amazing luck of getting a job
in upper management at one of the west coast's most famous IBM video
graphics card manufacturers.  My position lets me play with a lot of
different toys like AutoDesk 3D Studio and 24-bit frame buffers.  A
24-bit image I created was featured on the cover of the November 1990
issue of Presentation Products magazine.  For a while I was the system
administrator of the company's Unix system, with an IP address and
netnews and the whole works.  Now I'm running the company's two-line BBS
- if you can figure out what company I work for, give it a call and
leave me some mail sometime.  I'm also into MIDI, and I've set my mother
up with a nice little studio including a Tascam Porta One and a Roland
MT-32.  I was an extra in the films "Patty Hearst" (with The $muggler)
and "The Doors" (for which I put in a 22-hour day at the Warfield
Theater in San Francisco for a concert scene that WAS CUT FROM THE #*%&
FILM) and I look forward to working on more films in a capacity that
does not require me to wear bell-bottoms.  I've also acted in local
college theater and I'll be directing a full-length production at a
local community theater next year.  I like to consider myself a
well-rounded person.

        Oh yeah.  I also got married last October.

People I Have Known
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elric of Imrryr - my true mentor.  He got me into the business.  Too bad
he moved to Los Angeles.

The late Shadow 2600 - early in my career he mentioned me and listed me
as a collaborator for a 2600 article.  That was the first time I saw my
name in print.

Oryan QUEST - After I had my first Phrack article published, he started
calling me (he lived about 20 miles away at the time).  He would just
call me and give me c0deZ like he was trying to impress me or something.
I don't know why he needed me for his own personal validation. I was one
of the first people to see through him and I realized early on that he
was a pathological liar.  Later on he lied about me on a BBS and got me
kicked off, because the Sysop though he was this great guy.  Sheesh.

Sir Francis Drake - certainly one of the more unique people I've met.
He printed a really crappy two-part fiction story I wrote in his WORM
magazine.  Shortly after that the magazine folded; I think there's a
connection.

David Lightman - never met him, but he used to share my Unix account at
school.

The Disk Jockey - he pulled a TRW report on the woman that I later ended
up marrying.  Incidentally, he can be seen playing basketball in the
background in one scene of the film "Hoosiers."

Lex - I have to respect somebody who would first publish my article in
LOD TJ and then call me up for no reason a year later and give me his
private Tymnet outdial code.

Dr. Strangelove - he runs a really cool BBS called JUST SAY YES.  Call
it at [phone].  DSL is probably singularly responsible for getting
me into IBM clones, which in turn got me my job (how many Apple //
programmers are they hiring nowadays?).

BBSs
~~~~

Sherwood Forest ][ and ]I[, OSUNY - I just thought they were the
greatest systems ever.

Pirate's Bay - run by Mr. KRACK-MAN, who considered himself the greatest
Apple pirate that ever lived.  It's still up, for all I know.

The 2600 Magazine BBS - run on a piece of Apple BBS software called
TBBS.  It is there that I met David Flory.

The Police Station - Remember THAT one?

The Matrix, IDI, Lunatic Labs - three great Bay Area Forum-PC boards.

Catch-22 - 25 Users, No Waiting!

And, of course, net.telecom (the original), comp.risks,
rec.arts.startrek...

Memories
~~~~~~~~

        Remember Alliance Teleconferencing?  Nothing like putting the
receiver down to go get something to eat, forgetting about it, coming
back in 24 hours, and finding the conference still going on.

        Playing Wizardry and Rescue Raiders on my Apple //e until I lost
the feeling in my fingers...

        Carding 13 child-sized Garfield sleeping bags to people I didn't
particularly care for in high school...

        Calling Canadian DA Ops and playing a 2600Hz tone for them was
always fun...

        Trashing all the local COs with The Mad Alchemist...

        My brush with greatness: I was riding BART home from school one
night a few years ago when Steve Wozniak got onto my car with two of his
kids.  He was taking them to a Warriors game.  I was the only person in
the car that recognized him.  He signed a copy of BYTE that I happened
to have on me and we talked about his new venture, CL-9, the universal
remote controller.  (Do you know anybody who ever BOUGHT one of those?)

...And now, for the question:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Of the general population of phreaks you have met, would you consider
most phreaks, if any, to be computer geeks?"

        Back in my Apple pirating days, I met quite a few young men who
were definitely members of the Order of the Geek.  However, I can count
the number of true phreaks/hackers I have met personally on one hand.
None of them are people I'd consider geeks, nerds, spazzes, dorks, etc.
They're all people who live on the fringe and do things a bit
differently - how many LEGAL people do you know that have a nose ring? -
but they're all people I've respected.  Well, let me take back what I
just said.  Dr. Strangelove looks kinda geeky in my opinion (my mother
thinks he's cute, but then again she said that Sir Francis Drake is
"cute" and when I told him that it bothered him to no end), but I
consider him a good friend and a generally k-kool d00d.  (I'm sure I'll
be getting a voice call from him on that one...)  The only phreak that
I've ever taken a genuine disliking to was Oryan QUEST, but that was
only because he was a pathological liar and a pest.  Who knows, he might
be a nice person now, so no offense intended, especially if he knows my
home address.

        So, Anyway...

Thanks for your time Shooting Shark.

                                             Crimson Death
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