Terminal Compromise, Winn Schwartau [sight word books txt] 📗

the

professional hacker circuit that made Waldo a valuable commodity.

The way it works, he explained, was that he would trade access

codes for outlines of the contents of the computers. If he

wanted to look further, he maintained a complete indexing system

on the contents of thousands of computers world wide. He admit-

ted it was the only exciting part of his life. “The most fun a

CPA has,” he said calmly, “is cutting up client’s credit cards.

But me,” he added proudly, “I’ve been in and out of the IRS

computers more times than Debbie did it in Dallas.”

“The IRS computers? You’ve been in there?”

“Where else does a CPA go, but to the scene of the crime.” Waldo

laughed at his joke. “At first it was a game, but once I got

into the IRS backplane, which connects the various IRS districts

together, the things I found scared me. No one is in control

over there. No one. They abuse taxpayers, basically honest

taxpayers who are genuinely in trouble and need some understand-

ing by their government. Instead they are on the receiving end of

a vicious attack by a low level government paper slave who gets

his thrills by seizing property. The IRS is immune from due

process.” Scott immediately thought of Tyrone and his constitu-

tional ravings the other night.

“The IRS’s motto is, ‘guilty until we cash the check’. And IRS

management ignores it. Auditors are on a quota basis, and if

they don’t recover their allotted amounts of back taxes, they can

kiss their jobs goodbye.” The innocent looking Waldo, too, had

found a cause, a raison d’tre, for hacking away at government

computers.

“You know that for a fact?” Asked Scott. This alone was a major

story. Such a policy was against everything the Constitution

stood for. Waldo nodded and claimed to have seen the internal

policy memoranda. Who was in charge? Essentially, said Waldo,

no one. It was anarchy.

“They have the worst security of any agency that should by all

rights have the best. It’s a crime against American citizens.

Our rights and our privacy have shriveled to nothing.” Waldo,

the small CPA, extolled the virtues of fighting the system from

within. From within he could battle the computers that had

become the system.

“Have you ever, shall I say, fixed files in the IRS computers?”

“Many times,” Waldo said proudly. “For my clients who were being

screwed, sometimes I am asked to help. It’s all part of the

job,” he said of his beloved avocation.

“How many systems have you cracked?” Asked Scott, visibly im-

pressed.

“I am,” Waldo said modestly, “the best. I have cracked 1187

systems in 3 years. 1040 was my personal goal for a while, then

1099, but it’s kind of open ended now.”

“That’s almost one a day?”

“You could look at it like that, but sometimes you can get into

10 or twenty in one day. You gotta remember,” Waldo said with

pride, “a lot of homework goes into this. You just don’t decide

one day to crack a system. You have to plan it.”

“So how do you do it?”

“O.K., it’s really pretty simple. D’you speak software?”

“Listen, you make it real simple, and I won’t interrupt. OK?”

“Interrupt. Hah! That’s a good one. Here, let me show you on the

computer,” Waldo said as he leaned over to peck at the keyboard.

“The first step to getting into computers is to find where they

are located, electronically speaking, O.K.?” Scott agreed that

you needed the address of the bank before you could rob it.

“So what we do is search for computers by running a program, like

an exchange autodialer. Here, look here,” Waldo said pointing at

the computer screen. “We select the area code here, let’s say

203, that’s Connecticut. Then we pick the prefix, the first

three numbers, that’s the local exchange. So let’s choose 968,”

he entered the numbers carefully. “That’s Stamford. By the way,

I wrote this software myself.” Waldo spoke of his software as a

proud father would of his first born son. Scott patted him on

the back, urging him to continue.

“So we ask the computer to call every number in the 203-968 area

sequentially. When the number is answered, my computer records

whether a voice, a live person answered, or a computer answered

or if it was a fax machine.” Scott never had imagined that

hacking was so systematic.

“Then, the computer records its findings and we have a complete

list of every computer in that area,” Waldo concluded.

“That’s 10,000 phone calls,” Scott realized. “It must cost a

fortune and take forever?”

“Nah, not a dime. The phone company has a hole. It takes my

program less than a second to record the response and we’re off

to the next call. It’s all free, courtesy of TPC,” Waldo

bragged.

“TPC?” Questioned Scott.

“The Phone Company,” Waldo chuckled.

“I don’t see how you can do the entire country that way, 10,000

calls at a shot. In New York there must be ten million phones.”

“Yes,” agreed Waldo, “it is a never ending job. Phone numbers

change, computers come and go, security gets better. But you

have to remember, there are a lot of other people out there doing

the same thing, and we all pool our information. You could ask

for the number to almost any computer in the world, and someone

in our group, somewhere, will have the number and likely the

passwords.”

“Jesus . . .”

“I run my program at night, every night, when I sleep. On a good

night, if the calls are connected quickly enough, I can go

through about a thousand phone numbers. I figure roughly a month

per prefix.”

“I am amazed, simply amazed. Truly impressed,” said Scott. “You

know, you always kind of imagine these things are possible, but

until it stares you in the face it’s black magic.”

“You wanna know the best part?” Waldo said teasingly. “I get

paid for it, too.” Waldo crouched over and spoke to Scott secre-

tively. “Not everyone here approves, but, I sell lists to junk

fax mail-order houses. They want the fax lists. On a good night

I can clear a couple hundred while my modem does the dialing.”

The underground culture of Scott’s day, demonstrating against the

war, getting gassed while marching by George Washington Universi-

ty, getting thrown out of a Nixon rally at Madison Square Garden

seemed so innocent in comparison. He continued to be in awe of

the possible applications for a technology not as benign as its

creators had intended.

Scott met other hackers; they were proud of the term even with

the current negative connotations it carried. He saw how system-

ic attacks against the front door to computers were the single

biggest challenge to hackers; the proverbial chase before the

catch, the romance to many.

At another tabletop laden with computers Scott learned that there

are programs designed to try passwords according to certain

rules. Some try every possible combination of letters and num-

bers, although that is considered an antique method of brute

force. More sophisticated hackers use advanced algorithms which

try to open the computer with ‘likely’ passwords. It was all

very scientific, the approach to the problem, thought Scott.

He met communications gurus who knew more about the switching

networks inside the phone company than AT&T engineers. They had

complete diagrams and function calls and source code for even the

latest software revisions on the 4ESS and the new 5ESS switches.

“Once you’re into the phone computers,” one phone phreak ex-

tolled, “you have an immense amount of power at your fingertips.

Incredible. Let me give you an example.”

The speaker was another American, one that Scott would have

classified as an ex-Berkeley-hippie still living in the past.

His dirty shoulder length hair capped a skinny frame which held

his jeans up so poorly that there was no question where the sun

didn’t shine.

“You know that the phone company is part of the Tri-Lateral

Commission, working with Kissinger and the Queen of England to

control the world. Right?” His frazzled speech was matched by

an annoying habit of sweeping his stringy hair off his face every

few words. “It’s up to us to stop them.”

Scott listened politely as Janis, (who adopted the moniker from

his favorite singer) rewrote history with tortured explanations

of how the phone company is the hidden seat of the American

government, and how they have been lying to the public for dec-

ades. And the Rockefellers are involved too, he assured Scott.

“They could declare martial law, today, and take over the coun-

try. Those who control the communications control the power,” he

oracled. “Did you know,” he took Scott into his confidence,

“that phones are always on and they have computers recording

everything you say and do in your own home. That’s illegal!”

Janis bellowed. Not to mention crazy, thought Scott.

One of Janis’