Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The Prisoner's Dilemma.
Chapter 11 — The Prisoner's Dilemma.
Harrisburg Oh Harrisburg; The plant is melting down; The people out in Harrisbug; Are getting out of town; And when this stuff gets in; You cannot get it out .
— from `Harrisburg', Red Sails in the Sunset.
Anthrax thought he would never get caught. But in some strange way, he also wanted to get caught. When he thought about being busted, he found himself filled with a strange emotion—impatience. Bring on the impending doom and be done with it. Or perhaps it was frustration at how inept his opponents seemed to be. They kept losing his trail and he was impatient with their incompetence. It was more fun outwitting a worthy opponent.
Perhaps he didn't really want to be caught so much as tracked. Anthrax liked the idea of the police tracking him, of the system administrators pursuing him. He liked to follow the trail of their investigations through other people's mail. He especially liked being on-line, watching them trying to figure out where he was coming from. He would cleverly take control of their computers in ways they couldn't see. He watched every character they typed, every spelling error, every mistyped command, each twist and turn taken in the vain hope of catching him.
He hadn't been caught back in early 1991, when it seemed everyone was after him. In fact Anthrax nearly gave up hacking and phreaking completely in that year after what he later called `The Fear of God' speech.
Late at night, on a university computer system, he bumped into another hacker. It wasn't an entirely uncommon experience. Once in a while, hackers recognised another of their kind. Strange connections to strange places in the middle of the night. Inconsistencies in process names and sizes. The clues were visible for those who knew how to find them.
The two hackers danced around each other, trying to determine who the other was without giving away too much information. Finally the mystery hacker asked Anthrax, `Are you a disease which affects sheep?'
Anthrax typed the simple answer back. `Yes.'
The other hacker revealed himself as Prime Suspect, one of the
International Subversives. Anthrax recognised the name. He had seen
Prime Suspect around on the BBSes, had read his postings. Before
Anthrax could get started on a friendly chat, the IS hacker jumped in
with an urgent warning.
He had unearthed emails showing the Feds were closing in on Anthrax. The mail, obtained from system admins at Miden Pacific, described the systems Anthrax had been visiting. It showed the phone connections he had been using to get to them, some of which Telecom had traced back to his phone. One of the admins had written, `We're on to him. I feel really bad. He's seventeen years old and they are going to bust him and ruin his life.' Anthrax felt a cold chill run down his spine.
Prime Suspect continued with the story. When he first came across the email, he thought it referred to himself. The two hackers were the same age and had evidently been breaking into the same systems. Prime Suspect had freaked out over the mail. He took it back to the other two IS hackers, and they talked it through. Most of the description fitted, but a few of the details didn't seem to make sense. Prime Suspect wasn't calling from a country exchange. The more they worked it through, the clearer it became that the email must have been referring to someone else. They ran through the list of other options and Anthrax's name came up as a possibility. The IS hackers had all seen him around a few systems and BBSes. Trax had even spoken to him once on a conference call with another phreaker. They pieced together what they knew of him and the picture fitted. The AFP were onto Anthrax and they seemed to know a lot about him. They had traced his telephone connection back to his house. They knew his age, which implied they knew his name. The phone bills were in his parents' names, so there may have been some personal surveillance of him. The Feds were so close they were all but treading on his heels. The IS hackers had been keeping an eye out for him, to warn him, but this was the first time they had found him.
Anthrax thanked Prime Suspect and got out of the system. He sat frozen in the night stillness. It was one thing to contemplate getting caught, to carry mixed emotions on the hypothetical situation. It was another to have the real prospect staring you in the face. In the morning, he gathered up all his hacking papers, notes, manuals—everything. Three trunks' worth of material. He carried it all to the back garden, lit a bonfire and watched it burn. He vowed to give up hacking forever.
And he did give it up, for a time. But a few months later he somehow found himself back in front of his computer screen, with his modem purring. It was so tempting, so hard to let go. The police had never shown up. Months had come and gone, still nothing. Prime Suspect must have been wrong. Perhaps the AFP were after another hacker entirely.
Then, in October 1991, the AFP busted Prime Suspect, Mendax and Trax. But Anthrax continued to hack, mostly on his own as usual, for another two years. He reminded himself that the IS hackers worked in a team. If the police hadn't nailed him when they busted the others, surely they would never find him now. Further, he had become more skilled as a hacker, better at covering his tracks, less likely to draw attention to himself. He had other rationalisations too. The town where he lived was so far away, the police would never bother travelling all the way into the bush. The elusive Anthrax would remain at large forever, the unvanquished Ned Kelly of the computer underground.
Mundane matters were on Anthrax's mind on the morning of 14 July 1994. The removalists were due to arrive to take things from the half-empty apartment he had shared with another student. His room-mate had already departed and the place was a clutter of boxes stuffed with clothes, tapes and books.
Anthrax sat in bed half-asleep, half-watching the `Today' show when he heard the sound of a large vehicle pulling up outside. He looked out the window expecting to see the removalists. What he saw instead was at least four men in casual clothes running toward the house.
They were a little too enthusiastic for removalists and they split up before getting to the door, with two men forking off toward opposite sides of the building. One headed for the car port. Another dove around the other side of the building. A third banged on the front door. Anthrax shook himself awake.
The short, stocky guy at the front door was a worry. He had puffy, longish hair and was wearing a sweatshirt and acid-wash jeans so tight you could count the change in his back pocket. Bad ideas raced through Anthrax's head. It looked like a home invasion. Thugs were going to break into his home, tie him up and terrorise him before stealing all his valuables.
`Open up. Open up,' the stocky one shouted, flashing a police badge.
Stunned, and still uncomprehending, Anthrax opened the door. `Do you know who WE are?' the stocky one asked him.
Anthrax looked confused. No. Not sure.
`The Australian Federal Police.' The cop proceeded to read out the search warrant.
What happened from this point forward is a matter of some debate. What is fact is that the events of the raid and what followed formed the basis of a formal complaint by Anthrax to the Office of the Ombudsman and an internal investigation within the AFP. The following is simply Anthrax's account of how it happened.
The stocky one barked at Anthrax, `Where's your computer?'
`What computer?' Anthrax looked blankly at the officer. He didn't have a computer at his apartment. He used the uni's machines or friend's computers.
`Your computer. Where is it? Which one of your friends has it?'
`No-one has it. I don't own one.'
`Well, when you decide to tell us where it is, you let us know.'
Yeah. Right. If Anthrax did have a hidden computer at uni, revealing its location wasn't top of the must-do list.
The police pawed through his personal letters, quizzed Anthrax about them. Who wrote this letter? Is he in the computer underground? What's his address?
Anthrax said `no comment' more times than he could count. He saw a few police moving into his bedroom and decided it was time to watch them closely, make sure nothing was planted. He stood up to follow them in and observe the search when one of the cops stopped him. Anthrax told them he wanted a lawyer. One of the police looked on with disapproval.
`You must be guilty,' he told Anthrax. `Only guilty people ask for lawyers. And here I was feeling sorry for you.'
Then one of the other officers dropped the bomb. `You know,' he began casually, `we're also raiding your parents' house …'
Anthrax freaked out. His mum would be hysterical. He asked to call his mother on his mobile, the only phone then working in the apartment. The police refused to let him touch his mobile. Then he asked to call her from the pay phone across the street. The police refused again. One of the officers, a tall, lanky cop, recognised a leverage point if ever he saw one. He spread the guilt on thick.
`Your poor sick mum. How could you do this to your poor sick mum? We're going to have to take her to Melbourne for questioning, maybe even to charge her, arrest her, take her to jail. You make me sick. I feel sorry for a mother having a son like you who is going to cause her all this trouble.'
From that moment on, the tall officer took every opportunity to talk about Anthrax's `poor sick mum'. He wouldn't let up. Not that he probably knew the first thing about scleroderma, the creeping fatal disease which affected her. Anthrax often thought about the pain his mother was in as the disease worked its way from her extremities to her internal organs. Scleroderma toughened the skin on the fingers and feet, but made them overly sensitive, particularly to changes in weather. It typically affected women native to hot climates who moved to colder environments.
Anthrax's mobile rang. His mother. It had to be. The police wouldn't let him answer it.
The tall officer picked up the call, then turned to the stocky cop and said in a mocking Indian accent, `It is some woman with an Indian accent'. Anthrax felt like jumping out of his chair and grabbing the phone. He felt like doing some other things too, things that would have undoubtedly landed him in prison then and there.
The stocky cop nodded to the tall one, who handed the mobile to
Anthrax.
At first, he couldn't make sense of what his mother was saying. She was a terrified mess. Anthrax tried to calm her down. Then she tried to comfort him.
`Don't worry. It will be all right,' she said it, over and over. No matter what Anthrax said, she repeated that phrase, like a chant. In trying to console him, she was actually calming herself. Anthrax listened to her trying to impose order on the chaos around her. He could hear noises in the background and he guessed it was the police rummaging through her home. Suddenly, she said she had to go and hung up.
Anthrax handed the phone back to the police and sat with his head in his hands. What a wretched situation. He couldn't believe this was happening to him. How could the police seriously consider taking his mother to Melbourne for questioning? True, he phreaked from her home office phone, but she had no idea how to hack or phreak. As for charging his mother, that would just about kill her. In her mental and physical condition, she would simply collapse, maybe never to get up again.
He didn't have many options. One of the cops was sealing up his mobile phone in a clear plastic bag and labelling it. It was physically impossible for him to call a lawyer, since the police wouldn't let him use the mobile or go to a pay phone. They harangued him about coming to Melbourne for a police interview.
`It is your best interest to cooperate,' one of the cops told him. `It would be in your best interest to come with us now.'
Anthrax pondered that line for a moment, considered how ludicrous it sounded coming from a cop. Such a bald-faced lie told so matter-of-factly. It would have been humorous if the situation with his mother hadn't been so awful. He agreed to an interview with the police, but it would have to be done on another day.
The cops wanted to search his car. Anthrax didn't like it, but there was nothing incriminating in the car anyway. As he walked outside in the winter morning, one of the cops looked down at Anthrax's feet, which were bare in accordance with the Muslim custom of removing shoes in the house. The cop asked if he was cold.
The other cop answered for Anthrax. `No. The fungus keeps them warm.'
Anthrax swallowed his anger. He was used to racism, and plenty of it, especially from cops. But this was over the top.
In the town where he attended uni, everyone thought he was Aboriginal.
There were only two races in that country town—white and Aboriginal.
Indian, Pakistani, Malay, Burmese, Sri Lankan—it didn't matter. They
were all Aboriginal, and were treated accordingly.
Once when he was talking on the pay phone across from his house, the police pulled up and asked him what he was doing there. Talking on the phone, he told them. It was pretty obvious. They asked for identification, made him empty his pockets, which contained his small mobile phone. They told him his mobile must be stolen, took it from him and ran a check on the serial number. Fifteen minutes and many more accusations later, they finally let him go with the flimsiest of apologies. `Well, you understand,' one cop said. `We don't see many of your type around here.'
Yeah. Anthrax understood. It looked pretty suspicious, a dark-skinned boy using a public telephone. Very suss indeed.
In fact, Anthrax had the last laugh. He had been on a phreaked call to Canada at the time and he hadn't bothered to hang up when the cops arrived. Just told the other phreakers to hang on. After the police left, he picked up the conversation where he left off.
Incidents like that taught him that sometimes the better path was to toy with the cops. Let them play their little games. Pretend to be manipulated by them. Laugh at them silently and give them nothing. So he appeared to ignore the fungus comment and led the cops to his car. They found nothing.
When the police finally packed up to leave, one of them handed Anthrax a business card with the AFP's phone number.
`Call us to arrange an interview time,' he said.
`Sure,' Anthrax replied as he shut the door.
Anthrax keep putting the police off. Every time they called hassling him for an interview, he said he was busy. But when they began ringing up his mum, he found himself in a quandary. They were threatening and yet reassuring to his mother all at the same time and spoke politely to her, even apologetically.
`As bad as it sounds,' one of them said, `we're going to have to charge you with things Anthrax has done, hacking, phreaking, etc. if he doesn't cooperate with us. We know it sounds funny, but we're within our rights to do that. In fact that is what the law dictates because the phone is in your name.'
He followed this with the well-worn `it's in your son's best interest to cooperate' line, delivered with cooing persuasion.
Anthrax wondered why there was no mention of charging his father, whose name appeared on the house's main telephone number. That line also carried some illegal calls.
His mother worried. She asked her son to cooperate with the police. Anthrax felt he had to protect his mother and finally agreed to a police interview after his uni exams. The only reason he did so was because of the police threat to charge his mother. He was sure that if they dragged his mother through court, her health would deteriorate and lead to an early death.
Anthrax's father picked him up from uni on a fine November day and drove down to Melbourne. His mother had insisted that he attend the interview, since he knew all about the law and police. Anthrax didn't mind having him along: he figured a witness might prevent any use of police muscle.
During the ride to the city, Anthrax talked about how he would handle the interview. The good news was that the AFP had said they wanted to interview him about his phreaking, not his hacking. He went to the interview understanding they would only be discussing his `recent stuff'—the phreaking. He had two possible approaches to the interview. He could come clean and admit everything, as his first lawyer had advised. Or he could pretend to cooperate and be evasive, which was what his instincts told him to do.
His father jumped all over the second option. `You have to cooperate fully. They will know if you are lying. They are trained to pick out lies. Tell them everything and they will go easier on you.' Law and order all the way.
`Who do they think they are anyway? The pigs.' Anthrax looked away, disgusted at the thought of police harassing people like his mother.
`Don't call them pigs,' his father snapped. `They are police officers. If you are ever in trouble, they are the first people you are ever going to call.'
`Oh yeah. What kind of trouble am I going to be in that the first people I call are the AFP?' Anthrax replied.
Anthrax would put up with his father coming along so long as he kept his mouth shut during the interview. He certainly wasn't there for personal support. They had a distant relationship at best. When his father began working in the town where Anthrax now lived and studied, his mother had tried to patch things between them. She suggested his father take Anthrax out for dinner once a week, to smooth things over. Develop a relationship. They had dinner a handful of times and Anthrax listened to his father's lectures. Admit you were wrong. Cooperate with the police. Get your life together. Own up to it all. Grow up. Be responsible. Stop being so useless. Stop being so stupid.
The lectures were a bit rich, Anthrax thought, considering that his father had benefited from Anthrax's hacking skills. When he discovered Anthrax had got into a huge news clipping database, he asked the boy to pull up every article containing the word `prison'. Then he had him search for articles on discipline. The searches should have cost a fortune, probably thousands of dollars. But his father didn't pay a cent, thanks to Anthrax. And he didn't spend much time lecturing Anthrax on the evils of hacking then.
When they arrived at AFP headquarters, Anthrax made a point of putting his feet up on the leather couch in the reception area and opened a can of Coke he had brought along. His father got upset.
`Get your feet off that seat. You shouldn't have brought that can of
Coke. It doesn't look very professional.'
`Hey, I'm not going for a job interview here,' Anthrax responded.
Constable Andrew Sexton, a redhead sporting two earrings, came up to
Anthrax and his father and took them upstairs for coffee. Detective
Sergeant Ken Day, head of the Computer Crime Unit, was in a meeting,
Sexton said, so the interview would be delayed a little.
Anthrax's father and Sexton found they shared some interests in law enforcement. They discussed the problems associated with rehabilitation and prisoner discipline. Joked with each other. Laughed. Talked about `young Anthrax'. Young Anthrax did this. Young Anthrax did that.
Young Anthrax felt sick. Watching his own father cosying up to the enemy, talking as if he wasn't even there.
When Sexton went to check on whether Day had finished his meeting, Anthrax's father growled, `Wipe that look of contempt off your face, young man. You are going to get nowhere in this world if you show that kind of attitude, they are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.'
Anthrax didn't know what to say. Why should he treat these people with any respect after the way they threatened his mother?
The interview room was small but very full. A dozen or more boxes, all filled with labelled print-outs.
Sexton began the interview. `Taped record of interview conducted at Australian Federal Police Headquarters, 383 Latrobe Street Melbourne on 29 November 1994.' He reeled off the names of the people present and asked each to introduce himself for voice recognition.
`As I have already stated, Detective Sergeant Day and I are making enquiries into your alleged involvement into the manipulation of private automated branch exchanges [PABXes] via Telecom 008 numbers in order to obtain free phone calls nationally and internationally. Do you clearly understand this allegation?'
`Yes.'
Sexton continued with the necessary, and important, preliminaries. Did Anthrax understand that he was not obliged to answer any questions? That he had the right to communicate with a lawyer? That he had attended the interview of his own free will? That he was free to leave at any time?
Yes, Anthrax said in answer to each question.
Sexton then ploughed through a few more standard procedures before he finally got to the meat of the issue—telephones. He fished around in one of the many boxes and pulled out a mobile phone. Anthrax confirmed that it was his phone.
`Was that the phone that you used to call the 008 numbers and subsequent connections?' Sexton asked.
`Yes.'
`Contained in that phone is a number of pre-set numbers. Do you agree?'
`Yes.'
`I went to the trouble of extracting those records from it.' Sexton looked pleased with himself for hacking Anthrax's speed-dial numbers from the mobile. `Number 22 is of some interest to myself. It comes up as Aaron. Could that be the person you referred to before as Aaron in South Australia?'
`Yes, but he is always moving house. He is a hard person to track down.'
Sexton went through a few more numbers, most of which Anthrax hedged.
He asked Anthrax questions about his manipulation of the phone system,
particularly about the way he made free calls overseas using
Australian companies' 008 numbers.
When Anthrax had patiently explained how it all worked, Sexton went through some more speed-dial numbers.
`Number 43. Do you recognise that one?'
`That's the Swedish Party Line.'
`What about these other numbers? Such as 78? And 30?'
`I'm not sure. I couldn't say what any of these are. It's been so long,' Anthrax paused, sensing the pressure from the other side of the table. `These ones here, they are numbers in my town. But I don't know who. Very often, 'cause I don't have any pen and paper with me, I just plug a number into the phone.'
Sexton looked unhappy. He decided to go in a little harder. `I'm going to be pretty blunt. So far you have admitted to the 008s but I think you are understating your knowledge and your experience when it comes to these sort of offences.' He caught himself. `Not offences. But your involvement in all of this … I think you have got a little bit more … I'm not saying you are lying, don't get me wrong, but you tend to be pulling yourself away from how far you were really into this. And how far everyone looked up to you.'
There was the gauntlet, thrown down on the table. Anthrax picked it up.
`They looked up to me? That was just a perception. To be honest, I don't know that much. I couldn't tell you anything about telephone exchanges or anything like that. In the past, I guess the reason they might look up to me in the sense of a leader is because I was doing this, as you are probably aware, quite a bit in the past, and subsequently built up a reputation. Since then I decided I wouldn't do it again.'
`Since this?' Sexton was quick off the mark.
`No. Before. I just said, "I don't want anything to do with this any more. It's just stupid". When I broke up with my girlfriend … I just got dragged into it again. I'm not trying to say that I am any less responsible for any of this but I will say I didn't originate any of these 008s. They were all scanned by other people. But I made calls and admittedly I did a lot of stupid things.'
But Sexton was like a dog with a bone.
`I just felt that you were tending to … I don't know if it's because your dad's here or … I have read stuff that "Anthrax was a legend when it came to this, and he was a scanner, and he was the man to talk to about X.25, Tymnet, hacking, Unix. The whole kit and kaboodle".'
Anthrax didn't take the bait. Cops always try that line. Play on a hacker's ego, get them to brag. It was so transparent.
`It's not true,' he answered. `I know nothing about … I can't program. I have an Amiga with one meg of memory. I have no formal background in computers whatsoever.'
That part was definitely true. Everything was self-taught. Well, almost everything. He did take one programming class at uni, but he failed it. He went to the library to do extra research, used in his final project for the course. Most of his classmates wrote simple 200-line programs with few functions; his ran to 500 lines and had lots of special functions. But the lecturer flunked him. She told him, `The functions in your program were not taught in this course'.
Sexton asked Anthrax if he was into carding, which he denied emphatically. Then Sexton headed back into scanning. How much had Anthrax done? Had he given scanned numbers to other hackers? Anthrax was evasive, and both cops were getting impatient.
`What I am trying to get at is that I believe that, through your scanning, you are helping other people break the law by promoting this sort of thing.' Sexton had shown his hand.
`No more than a telephone directory would be assisting someone, because it's really just a list. I didn't actually break anything. I just looked at it.'
`These voice mailbox systems obviously belong to people. What would you do when you found a VMB?'
`Just play with it. Give it to someone and say, "Have a look at this.
It is interesting," or whatever.'
`When you say play with it you would break the code out to the VMB?'
`No. Just have a look around. I'm not very good at breaking VMBs.'
Sexton tried a different tack. `What are 1-900 numbers? On the back of that document there is a 1-900 number. What are they generally for?'
Easy question. `In America they like cost $10 a minute. You can ring them up, I think, and get all sorts of information, party lines, etc.'
`It's a conference type of call?'
`Yes.'
`Here is another document, contained in a clear plastic sleeve labelled AS/AB/S/1. Is this a scan? Do you recognise your handwriting?'
`Yes, it's in my handwriting. Once again it's the same sort of scan.
It's just dialling some commercial numbers and noting them.'
`And once you found something, what would you do with it?'
Anthrax had no intention of being painted as some sort of ringleader of a scanning gang. He was a sociable loner, not a part of a team.
`I'd just look at it, like in the case of this one here—630. I just punched in a few numbers and it said that 113 diverts somewhere, 115 says goodbye, etc. I'd just do that and I probably never came back to it again.'
`And you believe that if I pick up the telephone book, I would get all this information?'
`No. It's just a list of numbers in the same sense that a telephone book is.'
`What about a 1-800 number?'
`That is the same as a 0014.'
`If you rang a 1-800 number, where would you go?'
Anthrax wondered if the Computer Crimes Unit gained most of its technical knowledge from interviews with hackers.
`You can either do 0014 or you can do 1-800. It's just the same.'
`Is it Canada—0014?'
`It's everywhere.' Oops. Don't sound too cocky. `Isn't it?'
`No, I'm not familiar.' Which is just what Anthrax was thinking.
Sexton moved on. `On the back of that document there is more type scans …'
`It's all just the same thing. Just take a note of what is there. In this case, box 544 belongs to this woman …'
`So, once again, you just release this type of information on the bridge?'
`Not all of it. Most of it I would probably keep to myself and never look at it again. I was bored. Is it illegal to scan?'
`I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm just trying to show that you were really into this. I'm building a picture and I am gradually getting to a point and I'm going to build a picture to show that for a while there …' Sexton then interrupted himself and veered down a less confrontational course. `I'm not saying you are doing it now, but back then, when all these offences occurred, you were really into scanning telephone systems, be it voice mailboxes … I'm not saying you found the 008s but you … anything to bugger up Telecom. You were really getting into it and you were helping other people.'
Anthrax took offence. `The motivation for me doing it wasn't to bugger up Telecom.'
Sexton backpedalled. `Perhaps … probably a poor choice of words.'
He began pressing forward on the subject of hacking, something the police had not said they were going to be discussing. Anthrax felt a little unnerved, even rattled.
Day asked if Anthrax wanted a break.
`No,' he answered. `I just want to get it over and done with, if that's OK. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to say "no comment". I'm going to admit to everything 'cause, based on what I have been told, it's in my best interest to do so.'
The police paused. They didn't seem to like that last comment much.
Day tried to clear things up.
`Before we go any further, based on what you have been told, it is in your best interests to tell the truth. Was it any member of the AFP that told you this?'
`Yes.'
`Who?' Day threw the question out quickly.
Anthrax couldn't remember their names. `The ones who came to my house. I think Andrew also said it to me,' he said, nodding in the direction of the red-headed constable.
Why were the cops getting so uncomfortable all of a sudden? It was no secret that they had told both Anthrax and his mother repeatedly that it was in his best interest to agree to an interview.
Day leaned forward, peered at Anthrax and asked, `What did you interpret that to mean?'
`That if I don't tell the truth, if I say "no comment" and don't cooperate, that it is going to be … it will mean that you will go after me with …' Anthrax grasped for the right words, but he felt tongue-tied, `with … more force, I guess.'
Both officers stiffened visibly.
Day came back again. `Do you feel that an unfair inducement has been placed on you as a result of that?'
`In what sense?' The question was genuine.
`You have made the comment and it has now been recorded and I have to clear it up. Do you feel like, that a deal has been offered to you at any stage?'
A deal? Anthrax thought about it. It wasn't a deal as in `Talk to us now and we will make sure you don't go to jail'. Or `Talk now and we won't beat you with a rubber hose'.
`No,' he answered.
`Do you feel that as a result of that being said that you have been pressured to come forward today and tell the truth?'
Ah, that sort of deal. Well, of course.
`Yes, I have been pressured,' Anthrax answered. The two police officers looked stunned. Anthrax paused, concerned about the growing feeling of disapproval in the room. `Indirectly,' he added quickly, almost apologetically.
For a brief moment, Anthrax just didn't care. About the police. About his father. About the pressure. He would tell the truth. He decided to explain the situation as he saw it.
`Because since they came to my house, they emphasised the fact that if I didn't come for an interview, that they would then charge my mother and, as my mother is very sick, I am not prepared to put her through that.'
The police looked at each other. The shock waves reverberated around the room. The AFP clearly hadn't bargained on this coming out in the interview tape. But what he said about his mother being threatened was the truth, so let it be on the record with everything else.
Ken Day caught his breath, `So you are saying that you have now been …' he cut himself off … `that you are not here voluntarily?'
Anthrax thought about it. What did `voluntarily' mean? The police didn't cuff him to a chair and tell him he couldn't leave until he talked. They didn't beat him around the head with a baton. They offered him a choice: talk or inflict the police on his ailing mother. Not a palatable choice, but a choice nonetheless. He chose to talk to protect his mother.
`I am here voluntarily,' he answered.
`That is not what you have said. What you have just said is that pressure has been placed on you and that you have had to come in here and answer the questions. Otherwise certain actions would take place. That does not mean you are here voluntarily.'
The police must have realised they were on very thin ice and Anthrax felt pressure growing in the room. The cops pushed. His father did not looked pleased.
`I was going to come anyway,' Anthrax answered, again almost apologetically. Walk the tightrope, he thought. Don't get them too mad or they will charge my mother. `You can talk to the people who carried out the warrant. All along, I said to them I would come in for an interview. Whatever my motivations are, I don't think should matter. I am going to tell you the truth.'
`It does matter,' Day responded, `because at the beginning of the interview it was stated—do you agree—that you have come in here voluntarily?'
`I have. No-one has forced me.'
Anthrax felt exasperated. The room was getting stuffy. He wanted to finish this thing and get out of there. So much pressure.
`And is anyone forcing you to make the answers you have given here today?' Day tried again.
`No individuals are forcing me, no.' There. You have what you want.
Now get on with it and let's get out of here.
`You have to tell the truth. Is that what you are saying?' The police would not leave the issue be.
`I want to tell the truth. As well.' The key words there were `as well'. Anthrax thought, I want to and I have to.
`It's the circumstances that are forcing this upon you, not an individual?'
`No.' Of course it was the circumstances. Never mind that the police created the circumstance.
Anthrax felt as if the police were just toying with him. He knew and they knew they would go after his mother if this interview wasn't to their liking. Visions of his frail mother being hauled out of her house by the AFP flashed through his mind. Anthrax felt sweaty and hot. Just get on with it. Whatever makes them happy, just agree to it in order to get out of this crowded room.
`So, would it be fair to summarise it, really, to say that perhaps … of your activity before the police arrived at your premises, that is what is forcing you?'
What was this cop talking about? His `activity' forcing him? Anthrax felt confused. The interview had already gone on some time. The cops had such obscure ways of asking things. The room was oppressively small.
Day pressed on with the question, `The fact that you could see you had broken the law, and that is what is forcing you to come forward here today and tell the truth?'
Yeah. Whatever you want. `OK,' Anthrax started to answer, `That is a fair assump—'
Day cut him off. `I just wanted to clarify that because the interpretation I immediately got from that was that we, or members of the AFP, had unfairly and unjustly forced you to come in here today, and that is not the case?'
Define `unfairly'. Define `unjustly'. Anthrax thought it was unfair the cops might charge his mother. But they told her it was perfectly legal to do so. Anthrax felt light-headed. All these thoughts whirring around inside his head.
`No, that is not the case. I'm sorry for …' Be humble. Get out of that room faster.
`No, that is OK. If that is what you believe, say it. I have no problems with that. I just like to have it clarified. Remember, other people might listen to this tape and they will draw inferences and opinions from it. At any point where I think there is an ambiguity, I will ask for clarification. Do you understand that?'
`Yes. I understand.' Anthrax couldn't really focus on what Day was saying. He was feeling very distressed and just wanted to finish the interview.
The cops finally moved on, but the new topic was almost as unpleasant. Day began probing about Anthrax's earlier hacking career—the one he had no intention of talking about. Anthrax began to feel a bit better. He agreed to talk to the police about recent phreaking activities, not hacking matters. Indeed, he had repeatedly told them that topic was not on his agenda. He felt like he was standing on firmer ground.
After being politely stonewalled, Day circled around and tried again. `OK. I will give you another allegation; that you have unlawfully accessed computer systems in Australia and the United States. In the US, you specifically targeted military computer systems. Do you understand that allegation?'
`I understand that. I wouldn't like to comment on it.' No, sir. No way.
Day tried a new tack. `I will further allege that you did work with a person known as Mendax.'
What on earth was Day talking about? Anthrax had heard of Mendax, but they had never worked together. He thought the cops must not have very good informants.
`No. That is not true. I know no-one of that name.' Not strictly true, but true enough.
`Well, if he was to turn around to me and say that you were doing all this hacking, he would be lying, would he?'
Oh wonderful. Some other hacker was crapping on to the cops with lies about how he and Anthrax had worked together. That was exactly why Anthrax didn't work in a group. He had plenty of real allegations to fend off. He didn't need imaginary ones too.
`Most certainly would. Unless he goes by some other name, I know no-one by that name, Mendax.' Kill that off quick.
In fact Mendax had not ratted on Anthrax at all. That was just a technique the police used.
`You don't wish to comment on the fact that you have hacked into other computer systems and military systems?' If there was one thing Anthrax could say for Day, it was that he was persistent.
`No. I would prefer not to comment on any of that. This is the advice I have received: not to comment on anything unrelated to the topic that I was told I would be talking about when I came down here.'
`All right, well are you going to answer any questions in relation to unlawfully accessing any computer systems?'
`Based upon the legal advice that I received, I choose not to.'
Day pursed his lips. `All right. If that is your attitude and you don't wish to answer any of those questions, we won't pursue the matter. However, I will inform you now that the matter may be reported and you may receive a summons to answer the questions or face charges in relation to those allegations, and, at any time that you so choose, you can come forward and tell us the truth.'
Woah. Anthrax took a deep breath. Could the cops make him come answer questions with a summons? They were changing the game midway through. Anthrax felt as though the carpet had been pulled out from beneath his feet. He needed a few minutes to clear his head.
`Is it something I can think over and discuss?' Anthrax asked.
`Yes. Do you want to have a pause and a talk with your father? The constable and I can step out of the room, or offer you another room. You may wish to have a break and think about it if you like. I think it might be a good idea. I think we might have a ten-minute break and put you in another room and let you two have a chat about it. There is no pressure.'
Day and the Sexton stopped the interview and guided father and son into another room. Once they were alone, Anthrax looked to his father for support. This voice inside him still cried out to keep away from his earlier hacking journeys. He needed someone to tell him the same thing.
His father was definitely not that someone. He railed against Anthrax with considerable vehemence. Stop holding back. You have to tell everything. How could you be so stupid? You can't fool the police. They know. Confess it all before it's too late. At the end of the ten-minute tirade, Anthrax felt worse than he had at the beginning.
When the two returned to the interview room, Anthrax's father turned to the police and said suddenly, `He has decided to confess'.
That was not true. Anthrax hadn't decided anything of the sort. His father was full of surprises. It seemed every time he opened his mouth, an ugly surprise came out.
Ken Day and Andrew Sexton warmed up a shaky Anthrax by showing him various documents, pieces of paper with Anthrax's scribbles seized during the raid, telephone taps. At one stage, Day pointed to some handwritten notes which read `KDAY'. He looked at Anthrax.
`What's that? That's me.'
Anthrax smiled for the first time in a long while. It was something to be happy about. The head of the AFP's Computer Crime Unit in Melbourne sat there, so sure he was onto something big. There was his name, bold as day, in the hacker's handwriting on a bit of paper seized in a raid. Day seemed to be expecting something good.
Anthrax said, `If you ring that up you will find it is a radio station.' An American radio station. Written on the same bit of paper were the names of an American clothing store, another US-based radio station, and a few records he wanted to order.
`There you go,' Day laughed at his own hasty conclusions. `I've got a radio station named after me.'
Day asked Anthrax why he wrote down all sorts of things, directory paths, codes, error messages.
`Just part of the record-keeping. I think I wrote this down when I had first been given this dial-up and I was just feeling my way around, taking notes of what different things did.'
`What were your intentions at the time with these computer networks?'
`At this stage, I was just having a look, just a matter of curiosity.'
`Was it a matter of curiosity—"Gee, this is interesting" or was it more like "I would like to get into them" at this stage?'
`I couldn't say what was going through my mind at the time. But initially once I got into the first system—I'm sure you have heard this a lot—but once you get into the first system, it's like you get into the next one and the next one and the next one, after a while it doesn't …' Anthrax couldn't find the right words to finish the explanation.
`Once you have tasted the forbidden fruit?'
`Exactly. It's a good analogy.'
Day pressed on with questions about Anthrax's hacking. He successfully elicited admissions from the hacker. Anthrax gave Day more than the police officer had before, but probably not as much as he would have liked.
It was, however, enough. Enough to keep the police from charging
Anthrax's mother. And enough for them to charge him.
Anthrax didn't see his final list of charges until the day he appeared in court on 28 August 1995. The whole case seemed to be a bit disorganised. His Legal Aid lawyer had little knowledge of computers, let alone computer crime. He told Anthrax he could ask for an adjournment because he hadn't seen the final charges until so late, but Anthrax wanted to get the thing over and done with. They had agreed that Anthrax would plead guilty to the charges and hope for a reasonable magistrate.
Anthrax looked through the hand-up brief provided by the prosecution, which included a heavily edited transcript of his interview with the police. It was labelled as a `summary', but it certainly didn't summarise everything important in that interview. Either the prosecution or the police had cut out all references to the fact that the police had threatened to charge Anthrax's mother if he didn't agree to be interviewed.
Anthrax pondered the matter. Wasn't everything relevant to his case supposed to be covered in a hand-up brief? This seemed very relevant to his case, yet there wasn't a mention of it anywhere in the document. He began to wonder if the police had edited down the transcript just so they could cut out that portion of the interview. Perhaps the judge wouldn't be too happy about it. He thought that maybe the police didn't want to be held accountable for how they had dealt with his mother.
The rest of the hand-up brief wasn't much better. The only statement by an actual `witness' to Anthrax's hacking was from his former room-mate, who claimed that he had watched Anthrax break into a NASA computer and access an `area of the computer system which showed the latitude/longitude of ships'.
Did space ships even have longitudes and latitudes? Anthrax didn't know. And he had certainly never broken into a NASA computer in front of the room-mate. It was absurd. This guy is lying, Anthrax thought, and five minutes under cross-examination by a reasonable lawyer would illustrate as much. Anthrax's instincts told him the prosecution had a flimsy case for some of the charges, but he felt overwhelmed by pressure from all sides—his family, the bustle in the courtroom, even the officiousness of his own lawyer quickly rustling through his papers.
Anthrax looked around the room. His eyes fell on his father, who sat waiting on the public benches. Anthrax's lawyer wanted him there to give evidence during sentencing. He thought it would look good to show there was a family presence. Anthrax gave the suggestion a cool reception. But he didn't understand how courts worked, so he followed his lawyer's advice.
Anthrax's mother was back at his apartment, waiting for news. She had been on night duty and was supposed to be sleeping. That was the ostensible reason she didn't attend. Anthrax thought perhaps that the tension was too much for her. Whatever the reason, she didn't sleep all that day. She tidied the place, washed the dishes, did the laundry, and kept herself as busy as the tiny apartment would allow her.
Anthrax's girlfriend, a pretty, moon-faced Turkish girl, also came to court. She had never been into the hacking scene. A group of school children, mostly girls, chatted in the rows behind her.
Anthrax read through the four-page summary of facts provided by the prosecution. When he reached the final page, his heart stopped. The final paragraph said:
31. Penalty
s85ZF (a)—12 months, $6000 or both
s76E(a)—2 years, $12000 or both
Pointing to the last paragraph, Anthrax asked his lawyer what that was all about. His lawyer told him that he would probably get prison but, well, it wouldn't be that bad and he would just have `to take it on the chin'. He would, after all, be out in a year or two.
Rapists sometimes got off with less than that. Anthrax couldn't believe the prosecution was asking for prison. After he cooperated, suffering through that miserable interview. He had no prior convictions. But the snowball had been set in motion. The magistrate appeared and opened the court.
Anthrax felt he couldn't back out now and he pleaded guilty to 21 counts, including one charge of inserting data and twenty charges of defrauding or attempting to defraud a carrier.
His lawyer put the case for a lenient sentence. He called Anthrax's father up on the stand and asked him questions about his son. His father probably did more harm than good. When asked if he thought his son would offend again, his father replied, `I don't know'.
Anthrax was livid. It was further unconscionable behaviour. Not long before the trial, Anthrax had discovered that his father had planned to sneak out of the country two days before the court case. He was going overseas, he told his wife, but not until after the court case. It was only by chance that she discovered his surreptitious plans to leave early. Presumably he would find his son's trial humiliating. Anthrax's mother insisted he stayed and he begrudgingly delayed the trip.
His father sat down, a bit away from Anthrax and his lawyer. The lawyer provided a colourful alternative to the prosecutor. He perched one leg up on his bench, rested an elbow on the knee and stroked his long, red beard. It was an impressive beard, more than a foot long and thick with reddish brown curls. Somehow it fitted with his two-tone chocolate brown suit and his tie, a breathtakingly wide creation with wild patterns in gold. The suit was one size too small. He launched into the usual courtroom flourish—lots of words saying nothing. Then he got to the punch line.
`Your worship, this young man has been in all sorts of places. NASA, military sites, you wouldn't believe some of the places he has been.'
`I don't think I want to know where he has been,' the magistrate answered wryly.
The strategy was Anthrax's. He thought he could turn a liability into an asset by showing that he had been in many systems—many sensitive systems—but had done no malicious damage in any of them.
The strategy worked and the magistrate announced there was no way he was sending the young hacker to jail.
The prosecutor looked genuinely disappointed and launched a counter proposal—1500 hours of community service. Anthrax caught his breath. That was absurd. It would take almost nine months, full time. Painting buildings, cleaning toilets. Forget about his university studies. It was almost as bad as prison.
Anthrax's lawyer protested. `Your Worship, that penalty is something out of cyberspace.' Anthrax winced at how corny that sounded, but the lawyer looked very pleased with himself.
The magistrate refused to have a bar of the prosecutor's counter proposal. Anthrax's girlfriend was impressed with the magistrate. She didn't know much about the law or the court system, but he seemed a fair man, a just man. He didn't appear to want to give a harsh punishment to Anthrax at all. But he told the court he had to send a message to Anthrax, to the class of school children in the public benches and to the general community that hacking was wrong in the eyes of the law. Anthrax glanced back at the students. They looked like they were aged thirteen or fourteen, about the age he got into hacking and phreaking.
The magistrate announced his sentence. Two hundred hours of community service and $6116.90 of restitution to be paid to two telephone companies—Telecom and Teleglobe in Canada. It wasn't prison, but it was a staggering amount of money for a student to rake up. He had a year to pay it off, and it would definitely take that long. At least he was free.
Anthrax's girlfriend thought how unlucky it was to have landed those giggling school children in the courtroom on that day. They laughed and pointed and half-whispered. Court was a game. They didn't seem to take the magistrate's warning seriously. Perhaps they were gossiping about the next party. Perhaps they were chatting about a new pair of sneakers or a new CD.
And maybe one or two murmured quietly how cool it would be to break into NASA.
Afterword.
It was billed as the `largest annual gathering of those in, related to, or wishing to know more about the computer underground', so I thought I had better go.
HoHoCon in Austin, Texas, was without a doubt one of the strangest conferences I have attended. During the weekend leading up to New Year's Day 1995, the Ramada Inn South was overrun by hackers, phreakers, ex-hackers, underground sympathisers, journalists, computer company employees and American law enforcement agents. Some people had come from as far away as Germany and Canada.
The hackers and phreakers slept four or six to a room—if they slept at all. The feds slept two to a room. I could be wrong; maybe they weren't feds at all. But they seemed far too well dressed and well pressed to be anything else. No one else at HoHoCon ironed their T-shirts.
I left the main conference hall and wandered into Room 518—the computer room—sat down on one of the two hotel beds which had been shoved into a corner to make room for all the computer gear, and watched. The conference organisers had moved enough equipment in there to open a store, and then connected it all to the Internet. For nearly three days, the room was almost continuously full. Boys in their late teens or early twenties lounged on the floor talking, playing with their cell phones and scanners or tapping away at one of the six or seven terminals. Empty bags of chips, Coke cans and pizza boxes littered the room. The place felt like one giant college dorm floor party, except that the people didn't talk to each other so much as to their computers.
These weren't the only interesting people at the con. I met up with an older group of nonconformists in the computer industry, a sort of Austin intelligentsia. By older, I mean above the age of 26. They were interested in many of the same issues as the young group of hackers—privacy, encryption, the future of a digital world—and they all had technical backgrounds.
This loose group of blue-jean clad thinkers, people like Doug Barnes, Jeremy Porter and Jim McCoy, like to meet over enchiladas and margueritas at university-style cafes. They always seemed to have three or four projects on the run. Digital cash was the flavour of the month when I met them. They were unconventional, perhaps even a little weird, but they were also bright, very creative and highly innovative. They were just the sort of people who might marry creative ideas with maturity and business sense, eventually making widespread digital cash a reality.
I began to wonder how many of the young men in Room 518 might follow the same path. And I asked myself: where are these people in Australia?
Largely invisible or perhaps even non-existent, it seems. Except maybe in the computer underground. The underground appears to be one of the few places in Australia where madness, creativity, obsession, addiction and rebellion collide like atoms in a cyclotron.
After the raids, the arrests and the court cases on three continents, what became of the hackers described in this book?
Most of them went on to do interesting and constructive things with their lives. Those who were interviewed for this work say they have given up hacking for good. After what many of them had been through, I would be surprised if any of them continued hacking.
Most of them, however, are not sorry for their hacking activities. Some are sorry they upset people. They feel badly that they caused system admins stress and unhappiness by hacking their systems. But most do not feel hacking is wrong—and few, if any, feel that `look-see hacking', as prosecuting barrister Geoff Chettle termed non-malicious hacking, should be a crime.
For the most part, their punishments have only hardened their views on the subject. They know that in many cases the authorities have sought to make examples of them, for the benefit of rest of the computer underground. The state has largely failed in this objective. In the eyes of many in the computer underground, these prosecuted hackers are heroes.
PAR
When I met Par in Tucson, Arizona, he had travelled from a tiny, snow-laden Mid-Western town where he was living with his grandparents. He was looking for work, but hadn't been able to find anything.
As I drove around the outskirts of Tucson, a little jetlagged and disoriented, I was often distracted from the road by the beauty of the winter sun on the Sonoran desert cacti. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Par said calmly, `I always wondered what it would be like to drive on the wrong side of the road'.
I swerved back to the right side of the road.
Par is still like that. Easy-going, rolling with the punches, taking what life hands him. He is also on the road again.
He moved back to the west coast for a while, but will likely pack up and go somewhere else before long. He picks up temporary work where he can, often just basic, dull data-entry stuff. It isn't easy. He can't just explain away a four-year gap in his resumé with `Successfully completed a telecommuting course for fugitives. Trained by the US Secret Service'. He thought he might like to work at a local college computer lab, helping out the students and generally keeping the equipment running. Without any professional qualifications, that seemed an unlikely option these days.
Although he is no longer a fugitive, Par's life hasn't changed that much. He speaks to his mother very occasionally, though they don't have much in common. Escaping his computer crimes charges proved easier than overcoming the effects of being a fugitive for so long on his personality and lifestyle. Now and again, the paranoia sets in again. It seems to come in waves. There aren't many support mechanisms in the US for an unemployed young man who doesn't have health insurance.
PRIME SUSPECT
Prime Suspect has no regrets about his choices. He believed that he and Mendax were headed in different directions in life. The friendship would have ended anyway, so he decided that he was not willing to go to prison for Mendax.
He completed a TAFE course in computer programming and found a job in the burgeoning Internet industry. He likes his job. His employer, who knows about his hacking convictions, recently gave him a pay rise. In mid-1994, he gave up drugs for good. In 1995 he moved into a shared house with some friends, and in August 1996 he stopped smoking cigarettes.
Without hacking, there seems to be time in his life to do new things. He took up sky-diving. A single jump gives him a high which lasts for days, sometimes up to a week. Girls have captured his interest. He's had a few girlfriends and thinks he would like to settle into a serious relationship when he finds the right person.
Recently, Prime Suspect has been studying martial arts. He tries to attend at least four classes a week, sometimes more, and says he has a special interest in the spiritual and philosophical sides of martial arts. Most days, he rises at 5 a.m., either to jog or to meditate.
MENDAX
In 1992 Mendax and Trax teamed up with a wealthy Italian real-estate investor, purchased La Trobe University's mainframe computer (ironically, a machine they had been accused of hacking) and started a computer security company. The company eventually dissolved when the investor disappeared following actions by his creditors.
After a public confrontation in 1993 with Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, Mendax and two others formed a civil rights organisation to fight corruption and lack of accountability in a Victorian government department. As part of this ongoing effort, Mendax acted as a conduit for leaked documents and became involved in a number of court cases against the department during 1993-94. Eventually, he gave evidence in camera to a state parliamentary committee examining the issues, and his organisation later facilitated the appearance of more than 40 witnesses at an investigation by the Auditor-General.
Mendax volunteers his time and computer expertise for several other non-profit community organisations. He believes strongly in the importance of the non-profit sector, and spends much of his free time as an activist on different community projects. Mendax has provided information or assistance to law-enforcement bodies, but not against hackers. He said, `I couldn't ethically justify that. But as for others, such as people who prey on children or corporate spies, I am not concerned about using my skills there.'
Still passionate about coding, Mendax donates his time to various international programming efforts and releases some of his programs for free on the Internet. His philosophy is that most of the lasting social advances in the history of man have been a direct result of new technology.
NorTel and a number of other organisations he was accused of hacking use his cryptography software—a fact he finds rather ironic.
ANTHRAX
Anthrax moved to Melbourne, where he is completing a university course and working on freelance assignments in the computer networking area of a major corporation.
His father and mother are divorcing. Anthrax doesn't talk to his father at all these days.
Anthrax's mother's health has stabilised somewhat since the completion of the court case, though her condition still gives her chronic pain. Despite some skin discolouration caused by the disease, she looks well. As a result of her years of work in the local community, she has a loyal group of friends who support her through bad bouts of the illness. She tries to live without bitterness and continues to have a good relationship with both her sons.
Anthrax is no longer involved in the Nation of Islam, but he is still a devout Muslim. An acquaintance of his, an Albanian who ran a local fish and chips shop, introduced him to a different kind of Islam. Not long after, Anthrax became a Sunni Muslim. He doesn't drink alcohol or gamble, and he attends a local mosque for Friday evening prayers. He tries to read from the Qu'raan every day and to practise the tenets of his religion faithfully.
With his computer and business skills now sought after by industry, he is exploring the possibility of moving to a Muslim country in Asia or the Middle East. He tries to promote the interests of Islam worldwide.
Most of his pranking needs are now met by commercial CDs—recordings
of other people's pranking sold through underground magazines and
American mail order catalogues. Once in a long while, he still rings
Mr McKenny in search of the missing shovel.
Anthrax felt aggrieved at the outcome of his written complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman. In the complaint, Anthrax gave an account of how he believed the AFP had behaved inappropriately throughout his case. Specifically, he alleged that the AFP had pressured his mother with threats and had harassed him, taken photographs of him without his permission, given information to his university about his case prior to the issue of a summons and the resolution of his case, and made racist comments toward him during the raid.
In 1995-96, a total of 1157 complaints were filed against the AFP, 683 of which were investigated by the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Of the complaint investigations completed and reviewed, only 6 per cent were substantiated. Another 9 per cent were deemed to be `incapable of determination', about 34 per cent were `unsubstantiated', and in more than a quarter of all cases the Ombudsman either chose not to investigate or not to continue to investigate a complaint.
The Office of the Ombudsman referred Anthrax's matter to the AFP's Internal Investigations office. Although Anthrax and his mother both gave statements to the investigating officers, there was no other proof of Anthrax's allegations. In the end, it came down to Anthrax and his mother's words against those of the police.
The AFP's internal investigation concluded that Anthrax's complaints could either not be substantiated or not be determined, in part due to the fact that almost two years had passed since the original raid. For the most part, the Ombudsman backed the AFP's finding. No recommendation was made for the disciplining of any officers.
Anthrax's only consolation was a concern voiced by the Ombudsman's Office. Although the investigating officer agreed with the AFP investigators that the complaint could not be substantiated, she wrote, `I am concerned that your mother felt she was compelled to pressure you into attending an interview based on a fear that she would be charged because her phone was used to perpetrate the offences'.
Anthrax remains angry and sceptical about his experience with the police. He believes a lot of things need to be changed about the way the police operate. Most of all, he believes that justice will never be assured in a system where the police are allowed to investigate themselves.
PAD AND GANDALF
After Pad and Gandalf were released from prison, they started up a free security advisory service on the Internet. One reason they began releasing 8lgm advisories, as they were known, was to help admins secure their own systems. The other reason was to thumb their noses at the conservatives in the security industry.
Many on the Internet considered the 8lgm advisories to be the best available at the time—far better than anything CERT had ever produced. Pad and Gandalf were sending their own message back to the establishment. The message, though never openly stated, was something like this: `You busted us. You sent us to prison. But it didn't matter. You can't keep information like this secret. Further, we are still better than you ever were and, to prove it, we are going to beat you at your own game.'
Believing that the best way to keep a hacker out of your system is to secure it properly in the first place, the two British hackers rejected security gurus who refused to tell the world about new security holes. Their 8lgm advisories began marginalising the traditional industry security reports, and helped to push the industry toward its current, more open attitude.
Pad and Gandalf now both work, doing computer programming jobs on contract, sometimes for financial institutions. Their clients like them and value their work. Both have steady girlfriends.
Pad doesn't hack any more. The reason isn't the risk of getting caught or the threat of prison. He has stopped hacking because he has realised what a headache it is for a system administrator to clean up his or her computer after an attack. Searching through logs. Looking for backdoors the hacker might have left behind. The hours, the hassle, the pressure—he thinks it is wrong to put anyone through that. Pad understands far better now how much strain a hacker intrusion can cause another human being.
There is another reason Pad has given up hacking: he has simply outgrown the desire. He says that he has better things to do with his time. Computers are a way for him to earn a living, not a way to spend his leisure time. After a trip overseas he decided that real travel—not its electronic cousin—was more interesting than hacking. He has also learned to play the guitar, something he believes he would have done years ago if he hadn't spent so much time hacking.
Gandalf shares Pad's interest in travelling. One reason they like contract work is because it lets them work hard for six months, save some money, and then take a few months off. The aim of both ex-hackers for now is simply to sling backpacks over their shoulders and bounce around the globe.
Pad still thinks that Britain takes hacking far too seriously and he is considering moving overseas permanently. The 8lgm court case made him wonder about the people in power in Britain—the politicians, the judges, the law enforcement officers. He often thinks: what kind of people are running this show?
STUART GILL
In 1993, the Victorian Ombudsman1 and the Victoria Police2 both investigated the leaking of confidential police information in association with Operation Iceberg—a police investigation into allegations of corruption against Assistant Commissioner of Police Frank Green. Stuart Gill figured prominently in both reports.
The Victoria Police report concluded that `Gill was able to infiltrate the policing environment by skilfully manipulating himself and information to the unsuspecting'. The Ombudsman concluded that a `large quantity of confidential police information, mainly from the ISU database, was given to … Gill by [Victoria Police officer] Cosgriff'.
The police report stated that Inspector Chris Cosgriff had deliberately leaked confidential police information to Gill, and reported that he was `besotted with Gill'. Superintendent Tony Warren, ex-Deputy Commissioner John Frame and ex-Assistant Commissioner Bernice Masterston were also criticised in the report.
The Ombudsman concluded that Warren and Cosgriff's relationship with Gill was `primarily responsible for the release of confidential information'. Interestingly, however, the Ombudsman also stated, `Whilst Mr Gill may have had his own agenda and taken advantage of his relationship with police, [the] police have equally used and in some cases misused Mr Gill for their own purposes'.
The Ombudsman's report further concluded that there was no evidence of criminal conduct by Frank Green, and that the `allegations made over the years against Mr Green should have been properly and fully investigated at the time they were made'.
PHOENIX
As his court case played in the media, Phoenix was speeding on his motorcycle through an inner-city Melbourne street one rainy night when he hit a car. The car's driver leapt from the front seat and found a disturbing scene. Phoenix was sprawled across the road. His helmet had a huge crack on the side, where his head had hit the car's petrol tank, and petrol had spilled over the motorcycle and its rider.
Miraculously, Phoenix was unhurt, though very dazed. Some bystanders helped him and the distraught driver to a nearby halfway house. They called an ambulance, and then made the two traumatised young men some tea in the kitchen. Phoenix's mother arrived, called by a bystander at Phoenix's request. The ambulance workers confirmed that Phoenix had not broken any bones but they recommended he go to hospital to check for possible concussion.
Still both badly shaken, Phoenix and the driver exchanged names and phone numbers. Phoenix told the driver he did technical work for a 0055 telephone service, then said, `You might recognise me. I'm Phoenix. There's this big computer hacking case going on in court—that's my case'.
The driver looked at him blankly.
Phoenix said, `You might have seen me on the TV news.'
No, the driver said, somewhat amazed at the strange things which go through the dazed mind of a young man who has so narrowly escaped death.
Some time after Phoenix's close brush with death, the former hacker left his info-line technician's job and began working in the information technology division of a large Melbourne-based corporation. Well paid in his new job, Phoenix is seen, once again, as the golden-haired boy. He helped to write a software program which reduces waste in one of the production lines and reportedly saved the company thousands of dollars. Now he travels abroad regularly, to Japan and elsewhere.
He had a steady girlfriend for a time, but eventually she broke the relationship off to see other people. Heartbroken, he avoided dating for months. Instead, he filled his time with his ever-increasing corporate responsibilities.
His new interest is music. He plays electric guitar in an amateur band.
ELECTRON
A few weeks after his sentencing, Electron had another psychotic episode, triggered by a dose of speed. He was admitted to hospital again, this time at Larundel. After a short stay, he was released and underwent further psychiatric care.
Some months later, he did speed again, and suffered another bout of psychosis. He kept reading medical papers on the Internet about his condition and his psychiatrists worried that his detailed research might interfere with their ability to treat him.
He moved into special accommodation for people recovering from mental instabilities. Slowly, he struggled to overcome his illness. When people came up to him and said things like, `What a nice day it is!' Electron willed himself to take their words at face value, to accept that they really were just commenting on the weather, nothing more. During this time, he quit drugs, alcohol and his much-hated accounting course. Eventually he was able to come off his psychiatric medicines completely. He hasn't taken drugs or had alcohol since December 1994. His only chemical vice in 1996 was cigarettes. By the beginning of 1997 he had also given up tobacco.
Electron hasn't talked to either Phoenix or Nom since 1992.
In early 1996, Electron moved into his own flat with his steady girlfriend, who studies dance and who also successfully overcame mental illness after a long, hard struggle. Electron began another university course in a philosophy-related field. This time university life agreed with him, and his first semester transcript showed honours grades in every class. He is considering moving to Sydney for further studies.
Electron worked off his 300 hours of community service by painting walls and doing minor handyman work at a local primary school. Among the small projects the school asked him to complete was the construction of a retaining wall. He designed and dug, measured and fortified. As he finished off the last of his court-ordered community service hours on the wall, he discovered that he was rather proud of his creation. Even now, once in a while, he drives past the school and looks at the wall.
It is still standing.
There are still hacking cases in Australia. About the same time as Mendax's case was being heard in Victoria, The Crawler pleaded guilty to 23 indictable offences and thirteen summary offences—all hacking related charges—in Brisbane District Court. On 20 December 1996, the 21-year-old Queenslander was given a three-year suspended prison sentence, ordered to pay $5000 in reparations to various organisations, and made to forfeit his modem and two computers. The first few waves of hackers may have come and gone, but hacking is far from dead. It is merely less visible.
Law enforcement agencies and the judiciaries of several countries have tried to send a message to the next generation of would-be hackers. The message is this: Don't hack.
But the next generation of elite hackers and phreakers have heard a very different message, a message which says: Don't get caught.
The principle of deterrence has not worked with hackers at this level. I'm not talking here about the codes-kids—the teeny-bopper, carding, wanna-be nappies who hang out on IRC (Internet relay chat). I'm talking about the elite hackers. If anything, law enforcement crackdowns have not only pushed them further underground, they have encouraged hackers to become more sophisticated than ever before in the way they protect themselves. Adversity is the mother of invention.
When police officers march through the front door of a hacker's home today, they may be better prepared than their predecessors, but they will also be facing bigger hurdles. Today, top hackers encrypt everything sensitive. The data on their hard drives, their live data connections, even their voice conversations.
So, if hackers are still hacking, who are their targets?
It is a broad field. Any type of network provider—X.25, cellular phone or large Internet provider. Computer vendors—the manufacturers of software and hardware, routers, gateways, firewalls or phone switches. Military institutions, governments and banks seem to be a little less fashionable these days, though there are still plenty of attacks on these sorts of sites.
Attacks on security experts are still common, but a new trend is the increase in attacks on other hackers' systems. One Australian hacker joked, `What are the other hackers going to do? Call the Feds? Tell the AFP, "Yes, officer, that's right, some computer criminal broke into my machine and stole 20000 passwords and all my exploitation code for bypassing firewalls".'
For the most part, elite hackers seem to work alone, because of the well-advertised risks of getting caught. There are still some underground hacking communities frequented by top hackers, most notably UPT in Canada and a few groups like the l0pht in the US, but such groups are far less common, and more fragmented than they used to be.
These hackers have reached a new level of sophistication, not just in the technical nature of their attacks, but in their strategies and objectives. Once, top hackers such as Electron and Phoenix were happy to get copies of Zardoz, which listed security holes found by industry experts. Now top hackers find those holes themselves—by reading line by line through the proprietary source code from places like DEC, HP, CISCO, Sun and Microsoft.
Industrial espionage does not seem to be on the agenda, at least with anyone I interviewed. I have yet to meet a hacker who has given proprietary source code to a vendor's competitor. I have, however, met a hacker who found one company's proprietary source code inside the computer of its competitor. Was that a legal copy of the source code? Who knows? The hacker didn't think so, but he kept his mouth shut about it, for obvious reasons.
Most of the time, these hackers want to keep their original bugs as quiet as possible, so vendors won't release patches.
The second popular target is source code development machines. The top hackers have a clear objective in this area: to install their own backdoors before the product is released. They call it `backdooring' a program or an operating system. The word `backdoor' is now used as both a noun and a verb in the underground. Hackers are very nervous discussing this subject, in part because they don't want to see a computer company's stock dive and people lose their jobs.
What kind of programs do these hackers want to backdoor? Targets mentioned include at least one major Internet browser, a popular game, an Internet packet filter and a database product used by law enforcement agencies.
A good backdoor is a very powerful device, creating a covert channel through even the most sturdy of firewalls into the heart of an otherwise secure network. In a net browser, a backdoor would in theory allow a hacker to connect directly into someone's home computer every time he or she wandered around the World Wide Web. However, don't expect hackers to invade your suburban home just yet. Most elite hackers couldn't care less about the average person's home computer.
Perhaps you are wondering who might be behind this sort of attack. What sort of person would do this? There are no easy answers to that question. Some hackers are good people, some are bad, just like any group of people. The next generation of elite hackers are a diverse bunch, and relaying their stories would take another book entirely. However, I would like to introduce you to just one, to give you a window into the future.
Meet SKiMo.
A European living outside Australia, SKiMo has been hacking for at least four years, although he probably only joined the ranks of world-class hackers in 1995 or 1996. Never busted. Young—between the age of 18 and 25—and male. From a less than picture-perfect family. Fluent in English as a second language. Left-leaning in his politics—heading toward environmentally green parties and anarchy rather than traditional labour parties. Smokes a little dope and drinks alcohol, but doesn't touch the hard stuff.
His musical tastes include early Pink Floyd, Sullen, Dog Eat Dog,
Biohazard, old Ice-T, Therapy, Alanis Morissette, Rage Against the
Machine, Fear Factory, Life of Agony and Napalm Death. He reads
Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, Tom Clancy and Aldous Huxley. And any
good books about physics, chemistry or mathematics.
Shy in person, he doesn't like organised team sports and is not very confident around girls. He has only had one serious girlfriend, but the relationship finished. Now that he hacks and codes about four to five hours per day on average, but sometimes up to 36 hours straight, he doesn't have time for girls.
`Besides,' he says, `I am rather picky when it comes to girls. Maybe if the girl shared the same interests … but those ones are hard to find.' He adds, by way of further explanation, `Girls are different from hacking. You can't just brute force them if all else fails.'
SKiMo has never intentionally damaged a computer system, nor would he. Indeed, when I asked him, he was almost offended by the question. However, he has accidentally done damage on a few occasions. In at least one case, he returned to the system and fixed the problem himself.
Bored out of his mind for most of his school career, SKiMo spent a great deal of time reading books in class—openly. He wanted to send the teacher a message without actually jacking up in class.
He got into hacking after reading a magazine article about people who hacked answering machines and VMBs. At that time, he had no idea what a VMB was, but he learned fast. One Sunday evening, he sat down with his phone and began scanning. Soon he was into phreaking, and visiting English-speaking party lines. Somehow, he always felt more comfortable speaking in English, to native English-speakers, perhaps because he felt a little like an outsider in his own culture.
`I have always had the thought to leave my country as soon as I can,' he said.
From the phreaking, it was a short jump into hacking.
What made him want to hack or phreak in the first place? Maybe it was the desire to screw over the universally hated phone company, or `possibly the sheer lust for power' or then again, maybe he was simply answering his desire `to explore an intricate piece of technology'. Today, however, he is a little clearer on why he continues to hack. `My first and foremost motivation is to learn,' he said.
When asked why he doesn't visit his local university or library to satisfy that desire, he answered, `in books, you only learn theory. It is not that I dislike the theory but computer security in real life is much different from theory'. Libraries also have trouble keeping pace with the rate of technological change, SKiMo said. `Possibly, it is also just the satisfaction of knowing that what I learn is proprietary—is "inside knowledge",' he added. There could, he said, be some truth in the statement that he likes learning in an adrenalin-inducing environment.
Is he addicted to computers? SKiMo says no, but the indications are there. By his own estimate, he has hacked between 3000 and 10000 computers in total. His parents—who have no idea what their son was up to day and night on his computer—worry about his behaviour. They pulled the plug on his machine many times. In SKiMo's own words, `they tried everything to keep me away from it'.
Not surprisingly, they failed. SKiMo became a master at hiding his equipment so they couldn't sneak in and take it away. Finally, when he got sick of battling them over it and he was old enough, he put his foot down. `I basically told them, "Diz is ma fuckin' life and none o' yer business, Nemo"—but not in those words.'
SKiMo says he hasn't suffered from any mental illnesses or instabilities—except perhaps paranoia. But he says that paranoia is justified in his case. In two separate incidents in 1996, he believed he was being followed. Try as he might, he couldn't shake the tails for quite some time. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but he can never really be sure.
He described one hacking attack to me to illustrate his current interests. He managed to get inside the internal network of a German mobile phone network provider, DeTeMobil (Deutsche Telekom). A former state-owned enterprise which was transformed into a publicly listed corporation in January 1995, Deutsche Telekom is the largest telecommunications company in Europe and ranks number three in the world as a network operator. It employs almost a quarter of a million people. By revenue, which totalled about $A37 billion in 1995, it is one of the five largest companies in Germany.
After carefully researching and probing a site, SKiMo unearthed a method of capturing the encryption keys generated for DeTeMobil's mobile phone conversations.
He explained: `The keys are not fixed, in the sense that they are generated once and then stored in some database. Rather, a key is generated for each phone conversation by the company's AUC [authentication centre], using the "Ki" and a random value generated by the AUC. The Ki is the secret key that is securely stored on the smart card [inside the cellphone], and a copy is also stored in the AUC. When the AUC "tells" the cellphone the key for that particular conversation, the information passes through the company's MSC [mobile switching centre].
`It is possible to eavesdrop on a certain cellphone if one actively monitors either the handovers or the connection set-up messages from the OMC [operations and maintenance centre] or if one knows the Ki in the smart card.
`Both options are entirely possible. The first option, which relies on knowing the A5 encryption key, requires the right equipment. The second option, using the Ki, means you have to know the A3/A8 algorithms as well or the Ki is useless. These algorithms can be obtained by hacking the switch manufacturer, i.e. Siemens, Alcatel, Motorola …
`As a call is made from the target cellphone, you need to feed the A5 key into a cellphone which has been modified to let it eavesdrop on the channel used by the cellphone. Normally, this eavesdropping will only produce static—since the conversation is encrypted. However, with the keys and equipment, you can decode the conversation.'
This is one of the handover messages, logged with a CCITT7 link monitor, that he saw:
13:54:46"3 4Rx< SCCP 12-2-09-1 12-2-04-0 13 CR
BSSM HOREQ
BSSMAP GSM 08.08 Rev 3.9.2 (BSSM) HaNDover REQuest (HOREQ)
———-0 Discrimination bit D BSSMAP
0000000- Filler
00101011 Message Length 43
00010000 Message Type 0x10
Channel Type
00001011 IE Name Channel type
00000011 IE Length 3
00000001 Speech/Data Indicator Speech
00001000 Channel Rate/Type Full rate TCH channel Bm
00000001 Speech Encoding Algorithm GSM speech algorithm Ver 1
Encryption Information
00001010 IE Name Encryption information
00001001 IE Length 9
00000010 Algorithm ID GSM user data encryption V. 1
******** Encryption Key C9 7F 45 7E 29 8E 08 00
Classmark Information Type 2
00010010 IE Name Classmark information type 2
00000010 IE Length 2
——-001 RF power capability Class 2, portable
—-00—- Encryption algorithm Algorithm A5
000——- Revision level
——-000 Frequency capability Band number 0
——1—- SM capability present
-000—— Spare
0———- Extension
Cell Identifier
00000101 IE Name Cell identifier
00000101 IE Length 5
00000001 Cell ID discriminator LAC/CI used to ident cell
******** LAC 4611
******** CI 3000
PRIority
00000110 IE Name Priority
00000001 IE Length 1
———-0 Preemption allowed ind not allowed
———0- Queueing allowed ind not allowed
—0011— Priority level 3
00——— Spare
Circuit Identity Code
00000001 IE Name Circuit identity code
00000000 PCM Multiplex a-h 0
—-11110 Timeslot in use 30
101——- PCM Multiplex i-k 5
Downlink DTX flag
00011001 IE Name Downlink DTX flag
———-1 DTX in downlink direction disabled
0000000- Spare
Cell Identifier
00000101 IE Name Cell identifier
00000101 IE Length 5
00000001 Cell ID discriminator LAC/CI used to ident cell
******** LAC 4868
******** CI 3200
The beauty of a digital mobile phone, as opposed to the analogue mobile phones still used by some people in Australia, is that a conversation is reasonably secure from eavesdroppers. If I call you on my digital mobile, our conversation will be encrypted with the A5 encryption algorithm between the mobile phone and the exchange. The carrier has copies of the Kis and, in some countries, the government can access these copies. They are, however, closely guarded secrets.
SKiMo had access to the database of the encrypted Kis and access to some of the unencrypted Kis themselves. At the time, he never went to the trouble of gathering enough information about the A3 and A8 algorithms to decrypt the full database, though it would have been easy to do so. However, he has now obtained that information.
To SKiMo, access to the keys generated for each of thousands of German mobile phone conversations was simply a curiosity—and a trophy. He didn't have the expensive equipment required to eavesdrop. To an intelligence agency, however, access could be very valuable, particularly if some of those phones belonged to people such as politicians. Even more valuable would be ongoing access to the OMC, or better still, the MSC. SkiMo said he would not provide this to any intelligence agency.
While inside DeTeMobil, SKiMo also learned how to interpret some of the mapping and signal-strength data. The result? If one of the company's customers has his mobile turned on, SKiMo says he can pinpoint the customer's geographic location to within one kilometre. The customer doesn't even have to be talking on the mobile. All he has to do is have the phone turned on, waiting to receive calls.
SKiMo tracked one customer for an afternoon, as the man travelled across Germany, then called the customer up. It turned out they spoke the same European language.
`Why are you driving from Hamburg to Bremen with your phone on stand-by mode?' SKiMo asked.
The customer freaked out. How did this stranger at the end of the phone know where he had been travelling?
SKiMo said he was from Greenpeace. `Don't drive around so much. It creates pollution,' he told the bewildered mobile customer. Then he told the customer about the importance of conserving energy and how prolonged used of mobile phones affected certain parts of one's brain.
Originally, SKiMo broke into the mobile phone carriers' network because he wanted `to go completely cellular'—a transition which he hoped would make him both mobile and much harder to trace. Being able to eavesdrop on other people's calls— including those of the police—was going to be a bonus.
However, as he pursued this project, he discovered that the code from a mobile phone manufacturer which he needed to study was `a multi-lingual project'. `I don't know whether you have ever seen a multi-lingual project,' SKiMo says, `where nobody defines a common language that all programmers must use for their comments and function names? They look horrible. They are no fun to read.' Part of this one was in Finnish.
SKiMo says he has hacked a number of major vendors and, in several cases, has had access to their products' source codes.
Has he had the access to install backdoors in primary source code for major vendors? Yes. Has he done it? He says no. On other hand, I asked him who he would tell if he did do it. `No-one,' he said, `because there is more risk if two people know than if one does.'
SKiMo is mostly a loner these days. He shares a limited amount of information about hacking exploits with two people, but the conversations are usually carefully worded or vague. He substitutes a different vendor's names for the real one, or he discusses technical computer security issues in an in-depth but theoretical manner, so he doesn't have to name any particular system.
He doesn't talk about anything to do with hacking on the telephone. Mostly, when he manages to capture a particularly juicy prize, he keeps news of his latest conquest to himself.
It wasn't always that way. `When I started hacking and phreaking, I had the need to learn very much and to establish contacts which I could ask for certain things—such as technical advice,' SKiMo said. `Now I find it much easier to get that info myself than asking anyone for it. I look at the source code, then experiment and discover new bugs myself.'
Asked if the ever-increasing complexity of computer technology hasn't forced hackers to work in groups of specialists instead of going solo, he said in some cases yes, but in most cases, no. `That is only true for people who don't want to learn everything.'
SKiMo can't see himself giving up hacking any time in the near future.
Who is on the other side these days?
In Australia, it is still the Australian Federal Police, although the agency has come a long way since the early days of the Computer Crimes Unit. When AFP officers burst in on Phoenix, Nom and Electron, they were like the Keystone Cops. The police were no match for the Australian hackers in the subsequent interviews. The hackers were so far out in front in technical knowledge it was laughable.
The AFP has been closing that gap with considerable alacrity. Under the guidance of officers like Ken Day, they now run a more technically skilled group of law enforcement officers. In 1995-96, the AFP had about 2800 employees, although some 800 of these worked in `community policing'—serving as the local police in places like the ACT and Norfolk Island. The AFP's annual expenditure was about $270 million in that year.
As an institution, the AFP has recently gone through a major reorganisation, designed to make it less of a command-and-control military structure and more of an innovative, service oriented organisation.
Some of these changes are cosmetic. AFP officers are now no longer called `constable' or `detective sergeant'—they are all just `federal agents'. The AFP now has a `vision' which is `to fight crime and win'.3 Its organisational chart had been transformed from a traditional, hierarchical pyramid of square boxes into a collection of little circles linked to bigger circles—all in a circle shape. No phallo-centric structures here. You can tell the politically correct management consultants have been visiting the AFP.
The AFP has, however, also changed in more substantive ways. There are now `teams' with different expertise, and AFP investigators can draw on them on an as-needed basis. In terms of increased efficiency, this fluidity is probably a good thing.
There are about five permanent officers in the Melbourne computer crimes area. Although the AFP doesn't release detailed budget breakdowns, my back-of-the-envelope analysis suggested that the AFP spends less than $1 million per year on the Melbourne computer crimes area in total. Sydney also has a Computer Crimes Unit.
Catching hackers and phreakers is only one part of the unit's job. Another important task is to provide technical computer expertise for other investigations.
Day still runs the show in Melbourne. He doesn't think or act like a street cop. He is a psychological player, and therefore well suited to his opponents. According to a reliable source outside the underground, he is also a clean cop, a competent officer, and `a nice guy'.
However, being the head of the Computer Crimes Unit for so many years makes Day an easy target in the underground. In particular, hackers often make fun of how seriously he seems to take both himself and his job. When Day appeared on the former ABC show `Attitude', sternly warning the audience off hacking, he told the viewers, `It's not a game. It's a criminal act'.
To hackers watching the show, this was a matter of opinion. Not long after the episode went to air, a few members of Neuro-cactus, an Australian group of hackers and phreakers which had its roots in Western Australia, decided to take the mickey out of Day. Two members, Pick and Minnow, clipped Day's now famous soundbite. Before long, Day appeared to be saying, `It's not a criminal act. It's a game'—to the musical theme of `The Bill'. The Neuro-cactus crowd quickly spread their lampoon across the underground via an illicit VMB connected to its own toll-free 008 number.
Although Day does perhaps take himself somewhat seriously, it can't be much fun for him to deal with this monkey business week in and week out. More than one hacker has told me with great excitement, `I know someone who is working on getting Day's home number'. The word is that a few members of the underground already have the information and have used it. Some people think it would be hilarious to call up Day at home and prank him. Frankly, I feel a bit sorry for the guy. You can bet the folks in traffic operations don't have to put up with this stuff.
But that doesn't mean I think these pranksters should be locked up either.
If we, as a society, choose not to lock hackers up, then what should we do with them?
Perhaps a better question is, do we really need to do anything with them?
One answer is to simply ignore look-see hacking. Society could decide that it makes more sense to use valuable police resources to catch dangerous criminals—forgers, embezzlers, white-collar swindlers, corporate spies and malicious hackers—than to chase look-see hackers.
The law must still maintain the capacity to punish hard where someone has strayed into what society deems serious crime. However, almost any serious crime committed by a hacker could be committed by a non-hacker and prosecuted under other legislation. Fraud, wilful damage and dealing in stolen property are crimes regardless of the medium—and should be punished appropriately.
Does it make sense to view most look-see hackers—and by that I mean hackers who do not do malicious damage or commit fraud—as criminals? Probably not. They are primarily just a nuisance and should be treated as such. This would not be difficult to do. The law-makers could simply declare look-see hacking to be a minor legal infringement. In the worst-case scenario, a repeat offender might have to do a little community service. But such community service needs to be managed properly. In one Australian case, a corrections officer assigned a hacker to dig ditches with a convicted rapist and murderer.
Many hackers have never had a job—in part because of the high youth unemployment in some areas—and so their community service might be their first `position'. The right community service placement must involve hackers using their computer skills to give something back to society, preferably in some sort of autonomous, creative project. A hacker's enthusiasm, curiosity and willingness to experiment can be directed toward a positive outcome if managed properly.
In cases where hacking or phreaking has been an addiction, the problem should be treated, not criminalised. Most importantly, these hackers should not have convictions recorded against them, particularly if they're young. As Paul Galbally said to the court at Mendax's sentencing, `All the accused are intelligent—but their intelligence outstretched their maturity'. Chances are, most will be able to overcome or outgrow their addiction.
In practice, most Australia's judges have been reasonably fair in their sentencing, certainly compared to judges overseas. None of the Australian hackers detailed in this work received a prison sentence. Part of this is due to happenstance, but part is also due to the sound judgments of people like Judge Lewis and Judge Kimm. It must be very tempting, sitting on the bench every day, to shoot from the hip interpreting new laws.
As I sat in court listening to each judge, it quickly became clear that these judges had done their homework. With psychologist Tim Watson-Munro on the stand, Judge Lewis rapidly zeroed in on the subject of `free will'—as applied to addiction—regarding Prime Suspect. In Trax's case, Judge Kimm asked pointed questions which he could only have formulated after serious study of the extensive legal brief. Their well-informed judgments suggested a deeper understanding both of hacking as a crime, and of the intent of the largely untested computer crime legislation.
However, a great deal of time and money has been wasted in the pursuit of look-see hackers, largely because this sort of hacking is treated as a major crime. Consider the following absurd situation created by Australia's federal computer criminal legislation.
A spy breaks into a computer at the Liberal Party's headquarters and reads the party's top-secret election strategy, which he may want to pass on to the Labor Party. He doesn't insert or delete any data in the process, or view any commercial information. The penalty under this legislation? A maximum of six months in prison.
That same spy decides he wants to get rich quick. Using the local telephone system, he hacks into a bank's computer with the intention of defrauding the financial institution. He doesn't view any commercial or personal information, or delete or insert any files. Yet the information he reviews—about the layout of a bank building, or how to set off its fire alarm or sprinkler system—proves vital in his plan to defraud the bank. His penalty: a maximum of two years prison.
Our spy now moves onto bigger and better things. He penetrates a Department of Defence computer with the intention of obtaining information about Australia's military strategies and passing it on to the Malaysians. Again, he doesn't delete or insert any data—he just reads every sensitive planning document he can find. Under the federal anti-hacking laws, the maximum penalty he would receive would also be two years prison.
Meanwhile, a look-see hacker breaks into a university computer without doing any damage. He doesn't delete any files. He FTPs a public-domain file from another system and quietly tucks it away in a hidden, unused corner of the university machine. Maybe he writes a message to someone else on-line. If caught, the law, as interpreted by the AFP and the DPP, says he faces up to ten years in prison. The reason? He has inserted or deleted data.
Although the spy hacker might also face other charges—such as treason—this exercise illustrates some of the problems with the current computer crime legislation.
The letter of the law says that our look-see hacker might face a prison term five times greater than the bank fraud criminal or the military spy, and twenty times greater than the anti-Liberal Party subversive, if he inserts or deletes any data. The law, as interpreted by the AFP, says that the look-see hacking described above should have the same maximum ten-year prison penalty as judicial corruption. It's a weird mental image—the corrupt judge and the look-see hacker sharing a prison cell.
Although the law-makers may not have fully understood the technological aspects of hacking when they introduced the computer crimes legislation, their intent seems clear. They were trying to differentiate between a malicious hacker and a look-see hacker, but they could have worded it better.
As it's worded, the legislation puts malicious, destructive hacking on a par with look-see hacking by saying that anyone who destroys, erases, alters or inserts data via a carrier faces a prison term, regardless of the person's intent. There is no gradation in the law between mere deletion of data and `aggravated deletion'—the maximum penalty is ten years for both. The AFP has taken advantage of this lack of distinction, and the result has been a steady stream of look-see hackers being charged with the most serious computer crime offences.
Parliament makes the laws. Government institutions such as the AFP, the DPP and the courts interpret and apply those laws. The AFP and to some extent the DPP have applied the strict letter of the law correctly in most of the hacking cases described in this book. They have, however, missed the intention of the law. Change the law and they may behave differently. Make look-see hacking a minor offence and the institutions will stop going after the soft targets and hopefully spend more time on the real criminals.
I have seen some of these hackers up close, studied them for two years and learned a bit about what makes them tick. In many ways, they are quintessentially Australian, always questioning authority and rebelling against `the establishment'. They're smart—in some cases very smart. A few might even be classified as technical geniuses. They're mischievous, but also very enterprising. They're rebels, public nuisances and dreamers.
Most of all, they know how to think outside the box.
This is not a flaw. Often, it is a very valuable trait—and one which pushes society forward into new frontiers. The question shouldn't be whether we want to crush it but how we should steer it in a different direction.
END
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Underground — Glossary and Abbreviations.
AARNET Australian Academic Research Network
ACARB Australian Computer Abuse Research Bureau, once called CITCARB
AFP Australian Federal Police
Altos West German chat system and hacker hang-out, connected to X.25 network and run by Altos Computer Systems, Hamburg
ANU Australian National University
ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
Backdoor A program or modification providing secret access to a computer system, installed by a hacker to bypass normal security. Also used as a verb
BBS Bulletin Board System
BNL Brookhaven National Laboratory (US)
BRL Ballistics Research Laboratory (US)
BT British Telecom
CCITT Committee Consultatif Internationale Telegraph et Telephonie:
Swiss telecommunications standards body (now defunct; see ITU)
CCS Computer Crime Squad
CCU Computer Crimes Unit (Australian Federal Police)
CERT Computer Emergency Response Team
CIAC Computer Incident Advisory Capability: DOE's computer security team
CITCARB Chisholm Institute of Technology Computer Abuse Research
Bureau (now defunct. See ACARB)
COBE Cosmic Background Explorer project: a NASA research project
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US)
DCL Digital Command Language, a computer programming language used on
VMS computers
DDN Defense Data Network
DEC Digital Equipment Corporation
DECNET A network protocol used to convey information between (primarily) VAX/VMS machines
DEFCON (a) Defense Readiness Conditions, a system of progressive alert postures in the US; (b) the name of Force's computer program which automatically mapped out computer networks and scanned for accounts
DES Data Encryption Standard, an encryption algorithm developed by
IBM, NSA and NIST
Deszip Fast DES Unix password-cracking system developed by Matthew
Bishop
Dial-up Modem access point into a computer or computer network
DMS-100 Computerised telephone switch (exchange) made by NorTel
DOD Department of Defense (US)
DOE Department of Energy (US)
DPP Director of Public Prosecutions
DST Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire— French secret service agency
EASYNET Digital Equipment Corporation's internal communication network
(DECNET)
GTN Global Telecommunications Network: Citibank's international data network
HEPNET High Energy Physics Network: DECNET-based network, primarily controlled by DOE, connected to NASA's SPAN
IID Internal Investigations Division. Both the Victoria Police and the
AFP have an IID
IP Internet Protocol (RFC791): a data communications protocol, used to transmit packets of data between computers on the Internet
IS International Subversive (electronic magazine)
ISU Internal Security Unit: anti-corruption unit of the Victoria
Police
ITU International Telecommunications Union, the international telecommunications standards body
JANET Joint Academic Network (UK), a network of computers
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory—a California-based NASA research centre affiliated with CalTech
LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US)
LOD Legion of Doom
Lutzifer West German computer, connected to the X.25 network, which had a chat facility
MFC Multi Frequency Code (Group III): inter-exchange telecommunications system used by Telstra (Telecom)
MILNET Military Network: TCP/IP unclassified US DOD computer network
MOD Masters of Deception (or Destruction)
Modem Modulator De-modulator: a device used to transmit computer data over a regular telephone line
NCA National Crime Authority
Netlink A Primos/Dialcom command used to initiate a connection over an
X.25 network
NIST National Institute of Standards (US)
NIC Network Information Center (US), run by DOD: a computer which assigned domain names for the Internet.
NRL Naval Research Laboratory (US)
NSA National Security Agency (US)
NUA Network User Address: the `telephone' number of a computer on an
X.25 network
NUI Network User Identifier (or Identification): combined username/password used on X.25 networks for billing purposes
NorTel Northern Telecom, Canadian manufacturer of telecommunications equipment
PABX Private Automatic Branch Exchange
PAD Packet Assembler Disassembler—ASCII gateway to X.25 networks
PAR `PAR?'—command on PAD to display PAD parameters
RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
RTG Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, space probe Galileo's plutonium-based power system
RTM Robert Tappan Morris (Jr), the Cornell University student who wrote the Internet worm, also known as the RTM worm
Scanner A program which scans and compiles information, such as a list of NUAs
SPAN Space Physics Analysis Network: global DECNET- based network, primarily controlled by NASA
Sprint US telecommunications company, an X.25 network provider
Sprinter Word used by some Australian and English hackers to denote scanner. Derived from scanning attacks on Sprint communications
Sprintnet X.25 network controlled by Sprint communications
Sun Sun Microsystems—a major producer of Unix workstations
TCP Transmission Control Protocol (RFC793): a standard for data connection between two computers on the Internet
TELENET An X.25 network, DNIC 3110
Telnet A method of connection between two computers on the Internet or other TCP/IP networks
Trojan A program installed by hackers to secretly gather information, such as passwords. Can also be a backdoor
Tymnet An X.25 network controlled by MCI, DNIC 3106
Unix Multi-user computer operating system developed by AT&T and
Berkeley CSRG
VAX Virtual Address Extension: series of mini/mainframe computer systems produced by DEC
VMS Virtual Memory System: computer operating system produced by DEC and used on its VAX machines
WANK Worms Against Nuclear Killers: the title of DECNET/VMS-based worm released into SPAN/DEC/HEPNET in 1989
X.25 International data communications network, using the X.25 communications protocol. Network is run primarily by major telecommunications companies. Based on CCITT standard # X.25
Zardoz A restricted computer security mailing list
Notes.
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This book is part of the public domain. Suelette Dreyfus (2003). Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4686/pg4686.html
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