Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
by Bruce Sterling
CONTENTS
Crackdown*
Introduction
You can put the book on disks and give the disks
away, as long as you don't take any money for it.
1988
1989
1990
January 24. USSS and New York State Police raid "Phiber
Optik," "Acid Phreak," and "Scorpion" in New York City.
1991
Introduction
The Bell ethos was about public service; and that was
gratifying; but it was also about private *power,* and that
was gratifying too. As a corporation, Bell was very special.
Bell was privileged. Bell had snuggled up close to the
state. In fact, Bell was as close to government as you could
get in America and still make a whole lot of legitimate
money.
But the line isn't busy. So you pop the cord all the
way in. Relay circuits in your board make the distant
phone ring, and if somebody picks it up off the hook, then
a phone conversation starts. You can hear this
conversation on your answering cord, until you unplug it.
In fact you could listen to the whole conversation if you
wanted, but this is sternly frowned upon by management,
and frankly, when you've overheard one, you've pretty
much heard 'em all.
For their part, ancient rival MCI took out snide full-
page newspaper ads in New York, offering their own long-
distance services for the "next time that AT&T goes down."
+------------+
|Anarchy|
+------------+
Now, you too can share codes. You can trade codes
to learn other techniques. If you're smart enough to catch
on, and obsessive enough to want to bother, and ruthless
enough to start seriously bending rules, then you'll get
better, fast. You start to develop a rep. You move up to a
heavier class of board -- a board with a bad attitude, the
kind of board that naive dopes like your classmates and
your former self have never even heard of! You pick up
the jargon of phreaking and hacking from the board. You
read a few of those anarchy philes -- and man, you never
realized you could be a real *outlaw* without ever leaving
your bedroom.
"414 Private" was the home board for the first *group*
to attract conspicuous trouble, the teenage "414 Gang,"
whose intrusions into Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and
Los Alamos military computers were to be a nine-days-
wonder in 1982.
The St. Louis scene was not to rank with major centers
of American hacking such as New York and L.A. But St.
Louis did rejoice in possession of "Knight Lightning" and
"Taran King," two of the foremost *journalists* native to
the underground. Missouri boards like Metal Shop,
Metal Shop Private, Metal Shop Brewery, may not have
been the heaviest boards around in terms of illicit
expertise. But they became boards where hackers could
exchange social gossip and try to figure out what the heck
was going on nationally -- and internationally. Gossip
from Metal Shop was put into the form of news files, then
assembled into a general electronic publication, *Phrack,*
a portmanteau title coined from "phreak" and "hack." The
*Phrack* editors were as obsessively curious about other
hackers as hackers were about machines.
The first big break in the case came very early on:
July 1989, the following month. The perpetrator of the
"Tina" switch was caught, and confessed. His name was
"Fry Guy," a 16-year-old in Indiana. Fry Guy had been a
very wicked young man.
Fry Guy had earned his handle from a stunt involving
French fries. Fry Guy had filched the log-in of a local
MacDonald's manager and had logged-on to the
MacDonald's mainframe on the Sprint Telenet system.
Posing as the manager, Fry Guy had altered MacDonald's
records, and given some teenage hamburger-flipping
friends of his, generous raises. He had not been caught.
Fry Guy had broken the case wide open and alerted
telco security to the scope of the problem. But Fry Guy's
crimes would not put the Atlanta Three behind bars --
much less the wacko underground journalists of *Phrack.*
So on July 22, 1989, the same day that Fry Guy was raided
in Indiana, the Secret Service descended upon the Atlanta
Three.
The Leftist himself had been out after work with his
co-workers, surrounding a couple of pitchers of
margaritas. As he came trucking on tequila-numbed feet
up the pavement, toting a bag full of floppy-disks, he
noticed a large number of unmarked cars parked in his
driveway. All the cars sported tiny microwave antennas.
The Secret Service had knocked the front door off its
hinges, almost flattening his Mom.
AT&T has not exactly kept the UNIX cat in the bag,
but it kept a grip on its scruff with some success. By the
rampant, explosive standards of software piracy, AT&T
UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-guarded,
well-licensed. UNIX was traditionally run only on
mainframe machines, owned by large groups of suit-and-
tie professionals, rather than on bedroom machines where
people can get up to easy mischief.
Who?
The day after the raid, Steve Jackson visited the local
Secret Service headquarters with a lawyer in tow. There he
confronted Tim Foley (still in Austin at that time) and
demanded his book back. But there was trouble.
*GURPS Cyberpunk,* alleged a Secret Service agent to
astonished businessman Steve Jackson, was "a manual for
computer crime."
.
Part 3: LAW AND ORDER
#
Anyone with an interest in Operation Sundevil -
- or in American computer-crime generally -- could
scarcely miss the presence of Gail Thackeray,
Assistant Attorney General of the State of Arizona.
Computer-crime training manuals often cited
Thackeray's group and her work; she was the
highest-ranking state official to specialize in
computer-related offenses. Her name had been on
the Sundevil press release (though modestly ranked
well after the local federal prosecuting attorney and
the head of the Phoenix Secret Service office).
"Yeah?"
"I went to the cops and now he's got an APB out
on his ass," he says with satisfaction. "You run into
him, you let me know."
"Stanley...."
"No," he says.
Next draft.
Try again.
I heard the story about the guy who, asked for "a
copy" of a computer disk, *photocopied the label on
it.* He put the floppy disk onto the glass plate of a
photocopier. The blast of static when the copier
worked completely erased all the real information
on the disk.
Hmmm.
.
Part 4: THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS
Business - Education
----------------------
Grateful Dead
-------------
Grateful Dead (g gd) Deadplan* (g dp)
Deadlit (g deadlit) Feedback (g feedback)
GD Hour (g gdh) Tapes (g tapes)
Tickets (g tix) Tours (g tours)
Computers
-----------
AI/Forth/Realtime (g realtime) Amiga (g amiga)
Apple (g app) Computer Books (g cbook)
Art & Graphics (g gra) Hacking (g hack)
HyperCard (g hype) IBM PC (g ibm)
LANs (g lan) Laptop (g lap)
Macintosh (g mac) Mactech (g mactech)
Microtimes (g microx) Muchomedia (g mucho)
NeXt (g next) OS/2 (g os2)
Printers (g print) Programmer's Net (g net)
Siggraph (g siggraph) Software Design (g sdc)
Software/Programming (software)
Software Support (g ssc)
Unix (g unix) Windows (g windows)
Word Processing (g word)
Technical - Communications
----------------------------
Bioinfo (g bioinfo) Info (g boing)
Media (g media) NAPLPS (g naplps)
Netweaver (g netweaver) Networld (g networld)
Packet Radio (g packet) Photography (g pho)
Radio (g rad) Science (g science)
Technical Writers (g tec) Telecommunications(g tele)
Usenet (g usenet) Video (g vid)
Virtual Reality (g vr)
But this was just the beginning. There were also the
*hardware expenses.* Eight hundred fifty dollars for a
VT220 computer monitor. *Thirty-one thousand dollars*
for a sophisticated VAXstation II computer. Six thousand
dollars for a computer printer. *Twenty-two thousand
dollars* for a copy of "Interleaf" software. Two thousand
five hundred dollars for VMS software. All this to create
the twelve-page Document.
The time has now come for you yourself, the reader,
to have a look at the E911 Document. This six-page piece
of work was the pretext for a federal prosecution that could
have sent an electronic publisher to prison for thirty, or
even sixty, years. It was the pretext for the search and
seizure of Steve Jackson Games, a legitimate publisher of
printed books. It was also the formal pretext for the search
and seizure of the Mentor's bulletin board, "Phoenix
Project," and for the raid on the home of Erik Bloodaxe. It
also had much to do with the seizure of Richard Andrews'
Jolnet node and the shutdown of Charles Boykin's AT&T
node. The E911 Document was the single most important
piece of evidence in the Hacker Crackdown. There can
be no real and legitimate substitute for the Document
itself.
==Phrack Inc.==
March, 1988
Description of Service
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The control office for Emergency 911 service is assigned in
accordance with the existing standard guidelines to one of
the following centers:
System Overview
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The number 911 is intended as a nationwide universal
telephone number which provides the public with direct
access to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). A PSAP
is also referred to as an Emergency Service Bureau (ESB).
A PSAP is an agency or facility which is authorized by a
municipality to receive and respond to police, fire and/or
ambulance services. One or more attendants are located
at the PSAP facilities to receive and handle calls of an
emergency nature in accordance with the local municipal
requirements.
Preservice/Installation Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When a contract for an E911 system has been signed, it is
the responsibility of Network Marketing to establish an
implementation/cutover committee which should include
a representative from the SSC/MAC. Duties of the E911
Implementation Team include coordination of all phases
of the E911 system deployment and the formation of an
on-going E911 maintenance subcommittee.
Maintenance Guidelines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The CCNC will test the Node circuit from the 202T at the
Host site to the 202T at the Node site. Since Host to Node
(CCNC to MMOC) circuits are official company services,
the CCNC will refer all Node circuit troubles to the
SSC/MAC. The SSC/MAC is responsible for the testing
and follow up to restoration of these circuit troubles.
The PSAP will report troubles with the ANI controller, ALI
controller or set equipment to the SSC/MAC.
When the PSAP reports all screens on all calls, ask if there
is any voice contact with callers. If there is no voice
contact the trouble should be referred to the SCC
immediately since 911 calls are not getting through which
may require alternate routing of calls to another PSAP.
An ANI failure (i.e. all zeroes) indicates that the ANI has
not been received by the PSAP from the tandem office or
was lost by the PSAP ANI controller. The PSAP may
receive "02" alarms which can be caused by the ANI
controller logging more than three all zero failures on the
same trunk. The PSAP has been instructed to report this
condition to the SSC/MAC since it could indicate an
equipment trouble at the PSAP which might be affecting
all subscribers calling into the PSAP. When all zeroes are
being received on all calls or "02" alarms continue, a tester
should analyze the condition to determine the appropriate
action to be taken. The tester must perform cooperative
testing with the SCC when there appears to be a problem
on the Tandem-PSAP trunks before requesting dispatch.
But all the facts did not come out. Those facts that
did, were not very flattering. And the cops were not
vindicated. And Gail Thackeray lost her job. By the end of
1991, William Cook had also left public employment.
Life was never the same for Mike Godwin after that.
As he joined the growing civil liberties debate on the
Internet, it was obvious to all parties involved that here
was one guy who, in the midst of complete murk and
confusion, *genuinely understood everything he was
talking about.* The disparate elements of Godwin's
dilettantish existence suddenly fell together as neatly as
the facets of a Rubik's cube.
"The day after I purchased it," Kapor tells me, "I was
hanging out in a computer store and I saw another guy, a
man in his forties, well-dressed guy, and eavesdropped on
his conversation with the salesman. He didn't know
anything about computers. I'd had a year programming.
And I could program in BASIC. I'd taught myself. So I
went up to him, and I actually sold myself to him as a
consultant." He pauses. "I don't know where I got the
nerve to do this. It was uncharacteristic. I just said, 'I think
I can help you, I've been listening, this is what you need to
do and I think I can do it for you.' And he took me on! He
was my first client! I became a computer consultant the
first day after I bought the Apple II."
Kapor had found his true vocation. He attracted
more clients for his consultant service, and started an
Apple users' group.
"Yeah."
ATTENTION
*Fury*
***********
The year 1990 was not a pleasant one for AT&T. By 1993,
however, AT&T had successfully devoured the computer
company NCR in an unfriendly takeover, finally giving the
pole-climbers a major piece of the digital action. AT&T
managed to rid itself of ownership of the troublesome UNIX
operating system, selling it to Novell, a netware company,
which was itself preparing for a savage market dust-up with
operating-system titan Microsoft. Furthermore, AT&T
acquired McCaw Cellular in a gigantic merger, giving AT&T a
potential wireless whip-hand over its former progeny, the
RBOCs. The RBOCs themselves were now AT&T's clearest
potential rivals, as the Chinese firewalls between regulated
monopoly and frenzied digital entrepreneurism began to melt
and collapse headlong.
From thence, one's bread floats out onto the dark waters
of cyberspace, only to return someday, tenfold. And of course,
thoroughly soggy, and riddled with an entire amazing
ecosystem of bizarre and gnawingly hungry cybermarine life-
forms. For this author at least, that's all that really counts.