Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (14 page)

‘Don’t worry about old Eric,’ he said. ‘He lost it in the war. Today he thinks I’m Paul, tomorrow it will be someone else.’

Bowen nodded, understanding.

There were many strange things about Stuart Gill, all of which seemed to have a rational explanation, yet that explanation somehow never quite answered the question in full.

Aged in his late thirties, he was much older and far more worldly than Craig Bowen. He had very, very pale skin--so pasty it looked as though he had never sat in the sun in his life.

Gill drew Bowen into the complex web of his life. Soon he told the young hacker that he wasn’t just running Hackwatch, he was also involved in intelligence work. For the Australian Federal Police. For ASIO. For the National Crime Authority. For the Victoria Police’s Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (BCI). He showed Bowen some secret computer files and documents, but he made him sign a special form first--a legal-looking document demanding non-disclosure based on some sort of official secrets act.

Bowen was impressed. Why wouldn’t he be? Gill’s cloak-and-dagger world looked like the perfect boy’s own adventure. Even bigger and better than hacking. He was a little strange, but that was part of the allure.

Like the time they took a trip to Sale together around Christmas 1988.

Gill told Bowen he had to get out of town for a few days--certain undesirable people were after him. He didn’t drive, so could Craig help him out? Sure, no problem. They had shared an inexpensive motel room in Sale, paid for by Gill.

Being so close to Christmas, Stuart told Craig he had brought him two presents. Craig opened the first--a John Travolta fitness book. When Craig opened the second gift, he was a little stunned. It was a red G-string for men. Craig didn’t have a girlfriend at the time--perhaps Stuart was trying to help him get one.

‘Oh, ah, thanks,’ Craig said, a bit confused.

‘Glad you like it,’ Stuart said. ‘Go on. Try it on.’

‘Try it on?’ Craig was now very confused.

‘Yeah, mate, you know, to see if it fits. That’s all.’

‘Oh, um, right.’

Craig hesitated. He didn’t want to seem rude. It was a weird request, but never having been given a G-string before, he didn’t know the normal protocol. After all, when someone gives you a jumper, it’s normal for them to ask you to try it on, then and there, to see if it fits.

Craig tried it on. Quickly.

‘Yes, seems to fit,’ Stuart said matter of factly, then turned away.

Craig felt relieved. He changed back into his clothing.

That night, and on many others during their trips or during Craig’s overnight visits to Stuart’s uncle’s house, Craig lay in bed wondering about his secretive new friend.

Stuart was definitely a little weird, but he seemed to like women so Craig figured he couldn’t be interested in Craig that way. Stuart bragged that he had a very close relationship with a female newspaper reporter, and he always seemed to be chatting up the girl at the video store.

Craig tried not to read too much into Stuart’s odd behaviour, for the young man was willing to forgive his friend’s eccentricities just to be part of the action. Soon Stuart asked Craig for access to PI--unrestricted access.

The idea made Craig uncomfortable, but Stuart was so persuasive. How would he be able to continue his vital intelligence work without access to Victoria’s most important hacking board? Besides, Stuart Gill of Hackwatch wasn’t after innocent-faced hackers like Craig Bowen. In fact, he would protect Bowen when the police came down on everyone. What Stuart really wanted was the carders--the fraudsters.

Craig didn’t want to protect people like that, did he?

Craig found it a little odd, as usual, that Stuart seemed to be after the carders, yet he had chummed up with Ivan Trotsky. Still, there were no doubt secrets Stuart couldn’t reveal--things he wasn’t allowed to explain because of his intelligence work.

Craig agreed.

What Craig couldn’t have known as he pondered Stuart Gill from the safety of his boyish bedroom was exactly how much innocence the underground was still to lose. If he had foreseen the next few years--the police raids, the Ombudsman’s investigation, the stream of newspaper articles and the court cases--Craig Bowen would, at that very moment, probably have reached over and turned off his beloved PI and Zen forever.

_________________________________________________________________

US forces give the nod

It’s a setback for your country

-- from ‘US Forces’, on 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 by Midnight Oil1

Force had a secret. The Parmaster wanted it.

Like most hackers, The Parmaster didn’t just want the secret, he needed it. He was in that peculiar state attained by real hackers where they will do just about anything to obtain a certain piece of information. He was obsessed.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time The Parmaster craved a juicy piece of information. Both he and Force knew all about infatuation. That’s how it worked with real hackers. They didn’t just fancy a titbit here and there. Once they knew information about a particular system was available, that there was a hidden entrance, they chased it down relentlessly. So that was exactly what Par was doing. Chasing Force endlessly, until he got what he wanted.

It began innocently enough as idle conversation between two giants in the computer underground in the first half of 1988. Force, the well-known Australian hacker who ran the exclusive Realm BBS in Melbourne, sat chatting with Par, the American master of X.25

networks, in Germany. Neither of them was physically in Germany, but Altos was.

Altos Computer Systems in Hamburg ran a conference feature called Altos Chat on one of its machines. You could call up from anywhere on the X.25 data communications network, and the company’s computer would let you connect. Once connected, with a few brief keystrokes, the German machine would drop you into a real-time, on-screen talk session with anyone else who happened to be on-line. While the rest of the company’s computer system grunted and toiled with everyday labours, this corner of the machine was reserved for live on-line chatting. For free. It was like an early form of the Internet Relay Chat. The company probably hadn’t meant to become the world’s most prestigious hacker hang-out, but it soon ended up doing so.

Altos was the first significant international live chat channel, and for most hackers it was an amazing thing. The good hackers had cruised through lots of computer networks around the world. Sometimes they bumped into one another on-line and exchanged the latest gossip.

Occasionally, they logged into overseas BBSes, where they posted messages. But Altos was different. While underground BBSes had a tendency to simply disappear one day, gone forever, Altos was always there. It was live. Instantaneous communications with a dozen other hackers from all sorts of exotic places. Italy. Canada. France.

England. Israel. The US. And all these people not only shared an interest in computer networks but also a flagrant contempt for authority of any type. Instant, real-time penpals--with attitude.

However, Altos was more exclusive than the average underground BBS.

Wanna-be hackers had trouble getting into it because of the way X.25

networks were billed. Some systems on the network took reverse-charge connections--like a 1-800 number--and some, including Altos, didn’t.

To get to Altos you needed a company’s NUI (Network User Identifier), which was like a calling card number for the X.25 network, used to bill your time on-line. Or you had to have access to a system like Minerva which automatically accepted billing for all the connections made.

X.25 networks are different in various ways from the Internet, which developed later. X.25 networks use different communication protocols and, unlike the Internet at the user-level, they only use addresses containing numbers not letters. Each packet of information travelling over a data network needs to be encased in a particular type of envelope. A ‘letter’ sent across the X.25 network needs an X.25

‘stamped’ envelope, not an Internet ‘stamped’ envelope.

The X.25 networks were controlled by a few very large players, companies such as Telenet and Tymnet, while the modern Internet is, by contrast, a fragmented collection of many small and medium-sized sites.

Altos unified the international hacking world as nothing else had done. In sharing information about their own countries’ computers and networks, hackers helped each other venture further and further abroad. The Australians had gained quite a reputation on Altos. They knew their stuff. More importantly, they possessed DEFCON, a program which mapped out uncharted networks and scanned for accounts on systems within them. Force wrote DEFCON based on a simple automatic scanning program provided by his friend and mentor, Craig Bowen (Thunderbird1).

Like the telephone system, the X.25 networks had a large number of

‘phone numbers’, called network user addresses (NUAs). Most were not valid. They simply hadn’t been assigned to anyone yet. To break into computers on the network, you had to find them first, which meant either hearing about a particular system from a fellow hacker or scanning. Scanning--typing in one possible address after another--was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. 02624-589004-0004. Then increasing the last digit by one on each attempt. 0005. 0006. 0007.

Until you hit a machine at the other end.

Back in 1987 or early 1988, Force had logged into Pacific Island for a talk with Craig Bowen. Force bemoaned the tediousness of hand scanning.

‘Well, why the hell are you doing it manually?’ Bowen responded. ‘You should just use my program.’ He then gave Force the source code for his simple automated scanning program, along with instructions.

Force went through the program and decided it would serve as a good launchpad for bigger things, but it had a major limitation. The program could only handle one connection at a time, which meant it could only scan one branch of a network at a time.

Less than three months later, Force had rewritten Bowen’s program into the far more powerful DEFCON, which became the jewel in the crown of the Australian hackers’ reputation. With DEFCON, a hacker could automatically scan fifteen or twenty network addresses simultaneously.

He could command the computer to map out pieces of the Belgian, British and Greek X.25 communications networks, looking for computers hanging off the networks like buds at the tips of tree branches.

Conceptually, the difference was a little like using a basic PC, which can only run one program at a time, as opposed to operating a more sophisticated one where you can open many windows with different programs running all at once. Even though you might only be working in one window, say, writing a letter, the computer might be doing calculations in a spreadsheet in another window in the background. You can swap between

different functions, which are all running in the background simultaneously.

While DEFCON was busy scanning, Force could do other things, such as talk on Altos. He continued improving DEFCON, writing up to four more versions of the program. Before long, DEFCON didn’t just scan twenty different connections at one time; it also automatically tried to break into all the computers it found through those connections.

Though the program only tried basic default passwords, it had a fair degree of success, since it could attack so many network addresses at once. Further, new sites and mini-networks were being added so quickly that security often fell by the wayside in the rush to join in. Since the addresses were unpublished, companies often felt this obscurity offered enough protection.

DEFCON produced lists of thousands of computer sites to raid. Force would leave it scanning from a hacked Prime computer, and a day or two later he would have an output file with 6000 addresses on different networks. He perused the list and selected sites which caught his attention. If his program had discovered an interesting address, he would travel over the X.25 network to the site and then try to break into the computer at that address. Alternatively, DEFCON might have already successfully penetrated the machine using a default password, in which case the address, account name and password would all be waiting for Force in the log file. He could just walk right in.

Everyone on Altos wanted DEFCON, but Force refused to hand over the program. No way was he going to have other hackers tearing up virgin networks. Not even Erik Bloodaxe, one of the leaders of the most prestigious American hacking group, Legion of Doom (LOD), got DEFCON

when he asked for it. Erik took his handle from the name of a Viking king who ruled over the area now known as York, England. Although Erik was on friendly terms with the Australian hackers, Force remained adamant. He would not let the jewel out of his hands.

But on this fateful day in 1988, Par didn’t want DEFCON. He wanted the secret Force had just discovered, but held so very close to his chest.

And the Australian didn’t want to give it to him.

Force was a meticulous hacker. His bedroom was remarkably tidy, for a hacker’s room. It had a polished, spartan quality. There were a few well-placed pieces of minimalist furniture: a black enamel metal single bed, a modern black bedside table and a single picture on the wall--a photographic poster of lightning, framed in glass. The largest piece of furniture was a blue-grey desk with a return, upon which sat his computer, a printer and an immaculate pile of print-outs. The bookcase, a tall modern piece matching the rest of the furniture, contained an extensive collection of fantasy fiction books, including what seemed to be almost everything ever written by David Eddings. The lower shelves housed assorted chemistry and programming books. A chemistry award proudly jutted out from the shelf housing a few Dungeons and Dragons books.

He kept his hacking notes in an orderly set of plastic folders, all filed in the bottom of his bookcase. Each page of notes, neatly printed and surrounded by small, tidy handwriting revealing updates and minor corrections, had its own plastic cover to prevent smudges or stains.