Approaching Zero, Paul Mungo [good summer reads TXT] 📗

into the nearest telephone exchange on his little

Commodore and hack into the switch, the computer that controls all the phones

in the area. He discovered that each phone is represented by a long code, the

LEN (Line Equipment Number), which assigns functions and services to the phone,

such as the chosen long-distance carrier, call forwarding, and so on. He knew

how to manipulate the code to reroute calls, reassign numbers, and do dozens of

other tricks, but best of all, he could manipulate the code so that all his

calls would be free.

 

After a while Indiana Bell began to seem tame. It was a convenient launching

pad, but technologically speaking it was a wasteland. So he moved on to

BellSouth in Atlanta, which had all of the latest communications technology.

There he became so familiar with the system that the other hackers recognized

it as his SoI—sphere of influence—just as a New York hacker called Phiber

Optik became the king of NYNEX (the New York-New England telephone system), and

another hacker called Control C claimed the Michigan network. It didn’t mean

that BellSouth was his alone, only that the other members of the computer

underworld identified him as its best hacker.

 

At the age of fifteen he started using chemicals as a way of staying awake.

Working at his computer terminal up to twenty hours a day, sleeping only two or

three hours a night, and sometimes not at all, the chemicals—uppers, speed—

kept him alert, punching away at his keyboard, exploring his new world.

 

But outside this private world, life was getting more confusing. Problems with

school and family were beginning to accumulate, and out of pure frustration, he

thought of a plan to make some money.

 

In 1989 Fry Guy gathered all of the elements for his first hack of CSA. He had

spent two years exploring computer systems and the phone company, and each new

trick he learned added one more

layer to his knowledge. He had become familiar with important computer

operating systems, and he knew how the phone company worked. Since his plan

involved hacking into CSA and then the phone system, it was essential to be

expert in both.

 

The hack of CSA took longer than he thought it would. The account number and

password he extracted from Tom only got him through the credit bureau’s front

door. But the codes gave him legitimacy; to CSA he looked like any one of

thousands of subscribers. Still, he needed to get into the sector that listed

individuals and their accounts—he couldn’t just type in a person’s name, like

a real CSA subscriber; he would have to go into the sector through the back

door, as CSA itself would do when it needed to update its own files.

 

Fry Guy had spent countless hours doing just this sort of thing: every time he

accessed a new computer, wherever it was, he had to learn his way around, to

make the machine yield privileges ordinarily reserved for the company that

owned it. He was proficient at following the menus to new sectors and breaking

through the security barriers that were placed in his way. This system would

yield like all the others.

 

It took most of the afternoon, but by the end of the day he, chanced on an area

restricted to CSA staff that led the way to the account sector. He scrolled

through name after name, reading personal credit histories, looking for an

Indiana resident with a valid credit card.

 

He settled on a Visa card belonging to a Michael B. from Indianapolis; he took

down his full name, account and telephone number. Exiting from the account

sector, he accessed the main menu again. Now he had a name: he typed in Michael

B. for a standard credit check.

 

Michael B., Fry Guy was pleased to see, was a financially responsible

individual with a solid credit line.

 

Next came the easy part. Disengaging from CSA, Fry Guy directed his attention

to the phone company. Hacking into a local switch in Indianapolis, he located

the line equipment number for

Michael B. and rerouted his incoming calls to a phone booth in Paducah,

Kentucky, about 250 miles from Elmwood. Then he manipulated the phone booth’s

setup to make it look like a residential number, and finally rerouted the calls

to the phone box to one of the three numbers on his desk. That was a bit of

extra security: if anything was ever traced, he wanted the authorities to think

that the whole operation had been run from Paducah.

 

And that itself was a private joke. Fry Guy had picked Paducah precisely

because it was not the sort of town that would be home to many hackers:

technology in Paducah, he snickered, was still in the Stone Age.

 

Now he had to move quickly. He had rerouted all of Michael B.‘s incoming calls

to his own phone, but didn’t want to have to deal with his personal messages.

He called Western Union and instructed the company to wire $687 to its office

in Paducah, to be picked up by—and here he gave the alias of a friend who

happened to live there. The transfer would be charged to a certain Visa card

belonging to Michael B.

 

Then he waited. A minute or so later Western Union called Michael B.‘s number

to confirm the transaction. But the call had been intercepted by the

reprogrammed switch, rerouted to Paducah, and from there to a phone on Fry

Guy’s desk.

 

Fry Guy answered, his voice deeper and, he hoped, the sort that would belong to

a man with a decent credit line. Yes, he was Michael B., and yes, he could

confirm the transaction. But seconds later, he went back into the switches and

quickly reprogrammed them. The pay phone in Paducah became a pay phone again,

and Michael B., though he was unaware that anything had ever been amiss, could

once again receive incoming calls. The whole transaction had taken less than

ten minutes.

 

The next day, after his friend in Kentucky had picked up the $687, Fry Guy

carried out a second successful transaction, this time worth $432. He would

perform the trick again and again that summer, as often as he needed to buy

more computer equipment and chemicals. He didn’t steal huge amounts of money—

indeed,

the sums he took were almost insignificant, just enough for his own needs. But

Fry Guy is only one of many, just one of a legion of adolescent computer

wizards worldwide, whose ability to crash through high-tech security systems,

to circumvent access controls, and to penetrate files holding sensitive

information, is endangering our computer-dependent societies. These

technology-obsessed electronic renegades form a distinct subculture. Some

steal—though most don’t; some look for information; some just like to play

with computer systems. Together they probably represent the future of our

computer-dependent society. Welcome to the computer underworld—a metaphysical

place that exists only in the web of international data communications

networks, peopled by electronics wizards who have made it their recreation

center, meeting ground, and home. The members of the underworld are mostly

adolescents like Fry Guy who prowl through computer systems looking for

information, data, links to other webs, and credit card numbers. They are often

extraordinarily clever, with an intuitive feel for electronics and

telecommunications, and a shared antipathy for ordinary rules and regulations.

 

The electronics networks were designed to speed communications around the

world, to link companies and research centers, and to transfer data from

computer to computer. Because they must be accessible to a large number of

users, they have been targeted by computer addicts like Fry Guy—sometimes for

exploration, sometimes for theft.

 

Almost every computer system of note has been hacked: the Pentagon, NATO, NASA,

universities, military and industrial research laboratories. The cost of the

depradations attributed to computer fraud has been estimated at $4 billion each

year in the United States alone. And an estimated 85 percent of computer crime

is not even reported.

 

The computer underworld can also be vindictive. In the past five years the

number of malicious programs—popularly known as viruses—has increased

exponentially. Viruses usually serve no useful purpose: they simply cripple

computer systems and destroy data. And yet the underworld that produces them

continues to flourish. In a very short time it has become a major threat to the

technology-dependent societies of the Western industrial world.

 

Computer viruses began to spread in 1987, though most of the early bugs were

jokes with playful messages, or relatively harmless programs that caused

computers to play tunes. They were essentially schoolboyish tricks. But

eventually some of the jokes became malicious: later viruses could delete or

modify information held on computers, simulate hardware faults, or even wipe

data off machines completely.

 

The most publicized virus of all appeared in 1992. Its arrival was heralded by

the FBI, by Britain’s New Scotland Yard and by Japan’s International Trade

Ministry, all of which issued warnings about the bug’s potential for damage. It

had been programmed to wipe out all data on infected computers on March 6th—

the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth. The virus became known, naturally, as

Michelangelo.

 

It was thought that the bug may have infected as many as 5 million computers

worldwide, and that data worth billions of dollars was at risk. This may have

been true, but the warnings from police and government agencies, and the

subsequent press coverage, caused most companies to take precautions. Computer

systems were cleaned out; back-up copies of data were made; the cleverer (or

perhaps lazier) users simply reprogrammed their machines so that their internal

calendars jumped from March 5th to March 7th, missing the dreaded 6th

completely. (It was a perfectly reasonable precaution: Michelangelo will

normally only strike when the computer’s own calendar registers March 6.)

Still, Michelangelo hasn’t been eradicated. There are certainly copies of the

virus still at large, probably being passed on innocently from computer user to

computer user. And of course March 6th still comes once a year.

 

The rise of the computer underworld to the point at which a single malicious

program like Michelangelo can cause law enforcement agencies, government

ministries, and corporations to take special precautions, when credit bureau

information can be stolen and individuals’ credit card accounts can be easily

plundered, began thirty years ago. Its impetus, curiously enough, was a simple

decision by Bell Telephone to replace its human operators with computers.