Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (19 page)

Par took a few more drags of his joint, watched the fish some more, drank his Coke and then turned his attention back to his computer.

That night, Par saw something he shouldn’t have. Not the usual hacker stuff. Not the inside of a university. Not even the inside of an international bank containing private financial information about Middle Eastern sheiks.

What he saw was information about some sort of killer spy satellite--those are the words Par used to describe it to other hackers. He said the satellite was capable of shooting down other satellites caught spying, and he saw it inside a machine connected to TRW’s Space and Defense division network. He stumbled upon it much the same way Force had accidentally found the CitiSaudi machine--through scanning. Par didn’t say much else about it because the discovery scared the hell out of him.

Suddenly, he felt like the man who knew too much. He’d been in and out of so many military systems, seen so much sensitive material, that he had become a little blasé about the whole thing. The information was cool to read but, God knows, he never intended to actually do anything with it. It was just a prize, a glittering trophy testifying to his prowess as a hacker. But this discovery shook him up, slapped him in the face, made him realise he was exposed.

What would the Secret Service do to him when they found out? Hand him another little traffic ticket titled ‘502C’? No way. Let him tell the jury at his trial everything he knew? Let the newspapers print it? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

This was the era of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, of space defence initiatives, of huge defence budgets and very paranoid military commanders who viewed the world as one giant battlefield with the evil empire of the Soviet Union.

Would the US government just lock him up and throw away the key? Would it want to risk him talking to other prisoners--hardened criminals who knew how to make a dollar from that sort of information? Definitely not.

That left just one option. Elimination.

It was not a pretty thought. But to the seventeen-year-old hacker it was a very plausible one. Par considered what he could do and came up with what seemed to be the only solution.

Run.

_________________________________________________________________

There’s one gun, probably more

and the others are pointing at our backdoor

-- from ‘Knife’s Edge’, on Bird Noises by Midnight Oil When Par failed to show up for his hearing on 10 July 1989 in the Monterey County Juvenile Court in Salinas, he officially became a fugitive. He had, in fact, already been on the run for some weeks. But no-one knew. Not even his lawyer.

Richard Rosen had an idea something was wrong when Par didn’t show up for a meeting some ten days before the hearing, but he kept hoping his client would come good. Rosen had negotiated a deal for Par: reparations plus fifteen days or less in juvenile prison in exchange for Par’s full cooperation with the Secret Service.

Par had appeared deeply troubled over the matter for weeks. He didn’t seem to mind telling the Feds how he had broken into various computers, but that’s not what they were really looking for. They wanted him to rat. And to rat on everyone. They knew Par was a kingpin and, as such, he knew all the important players in the underground.

The perfect stooge. But Par couldn’t bring himself to narc. Even if he did spill his guts, there was still the question of what the authorities would do to him in prison. The question of elimination loomed large in his mind.

So, one morning, Par simply disappeared. He had planned it carefully, packed his bags discreetly and made arrangements with a trusted friend outside the circle which included his room-mates. The friend drove around to pick Par up when the

room-mates were out. They never had an inkling that the now eighteen-year-old Par was about to vanish for a very long time.

First, Par headed to San Diego. Then LA. Then he made his way to New Jersey. After that, he disappeared from the radar screen completely.

Life on the run was hard. For the first few months, Par carried around two prized possessions; an inexpensive laptop computer and photos of Theorem taken during her visit. They were his lifeline to a different world and he clutched them in his bag as he moved from one city to another, often staying with his friends from the computer underground.

The loose-knit network of hackers worked a bit like the nineteenth-century American ‘underground railroad’ used by escaped slaves to flee from the South to the safety of the northern states.

Except that, for Par, there was never a safe haven.

Par crisscrossed the continent, always on the move. A week in one place. A few nights in another. Sometimes there were breaks in the electronic underground railroad, spaces between the place where one line ended and another began. Those breaks were the hardest. They meant sleeping out in the open, sometimes in the cold, going without food and being without anyone to talk to.

He continued hacking, with new-found frenzy, because he was invincible. What were the law enforcement agencies going to do? Come and arrest him? He was already a fugitive and he figured things couldn’t get much worse. He felt as though he would be on the run forever, and as if he had already been on the run for a lifetime, though it was only a few months.

When he was staying with people from the computer underground, Par was careful. But when he was alone in a dingy motel room, or with people completely outside that world, he hacked without fear. Blatant, in-your-face feats. Things he knew the Secret Service would see. Even his illicit voice mailbox had words for his pursuers: Yeah, this is Par. And to all those faggots from the Secret Service who keep calling and hanging up, well, lots of luck. ’Cause, I mean, you’re so fucking stupid, it’s not even funny.

I mean, if you had to send my shit to Apple Computers [for analysis], you must be so stupid, it’s pitiful. You also thought I had blue-boxing equipment [for phreaking]. I’m just laughing trying to think what you thought was a blue box. You are so lame.

Oh well. And anyone else who needs to leave me a message, go ahead.

And everyone take it easy and leave me some shit. Alright. Later.

Despite the bravado, paranoia took hold of Par as it never had before.

If he saw a cop across the street, his breath would quicken and he would turn and walk in the opposite direction. If the cop was heading toward him, Par crossed the street and turned down the nearest alley.

Police of any type made him very nervous.

By the autumn of 1989, Par had made his way to a small town in North Carolina. He found a place to stop and rest with a friend who used the handle The Nibbler and whose family owned a motel. A couple of weeks in one place, in one bed, was paradise. It was also free, which meant he didn’t have to borrow money from Theorem, who helped him out while he was on the run.

Par slept in whatever room happened to be available that night, but he spent most of his time in one of the motel chalets Nibbler used in the off-season as a computer room. They spent days hacking from Nibbler’s computer. The fugitive had been forced to sell off his inexpensive laptop before arriving in North Carolina.

After a few weeks at the motel, however, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. There were too many strangers coming and going. He wondered if the hotel guests waiting in their cars were spying on him, and he soon began jumping at shadows. Perhaps, he thought, the Secret Service had found him after all.

Par thought about how he could investigate the matter in more depth.

One of The Atlanta Three hackers, The Prophet, called Nibbler occasionally to exchange hacking information, particularly security bugs in Unix systems. During one of their talks, Prophet told Par about a new security flaw he’d been experimenting with on a network that belonged to the phone company.

The Atlanta Three, a Georgia-based wing of The Legion of Doom, spent a good deal of time weaving their way through BellSouth, the phone company covering the south-eastern US. They knew about phone switching stations the way Par knew about Tymnet. The Secret Service had raided the hackers in July 1989 but had not arrested them yet, so in September The Prophet continued to maintain an interest in his favourite target.

Par thought the flaw in BellSouth’s network sounded very cool and began playing around in the company’s systems. Dial up the company’s computer network, poke around, look at things. The usual stuff.

It occurred to Par that he could check out the phone company’s records of the motel to see if there was anything unusual going on. He typed in the motel’s main phone number and the system fed back the motel’s address, name and some detailed technical information, such as the exact cable and pair attached to the phone number. Then he looked up the phone line of the computer chalet. Things looked odd on that line.

The line which he and Nibbler used for most of their hacking showed a special status: ‘maintenance unit on line’.

What maintenance unit? Nibbler hadn’t mentioned any problems with any of the motel’s lines, but Par checked with him. No problems with the telephones.

Par felt nervous. In addition to messing around with the phone company’s networks, he had been hacking into a Russian computer network from the computer chalet. The Soviet network was a shiny new toy. It had only been connected to the rest of the world’s global packet-switched network for about a month, which made it particularly attractive virgin territory.

Nibbler called in a friend to check the motel’s phones. The friend, a former telephone company technician turned freelancer, came over to look at the equipment. He told Nibbler and Par that something weird was happening in the motel’s phone system. The line voltages were way off.

Par realised instantly what was going on. The system was being monitored. Every line coming in and going out was probably being tapped, which meant only one thing. Someone--the phone company, the local police, the FBI or the Secret Service--was onto him.

Nibbler and Par quickly packed up all Nibbler’s computer gear, along with Par’s hacking notes, and moved to another motel across town. They had to shut down all their hacking activities and cover their tracks.

Par had left programs running which sniffed people’s passwords and login names on a continual basis as they logged in, then dumped all the information into a file on the hacked machine. He checked that file every day or so. If he didn’t shut the programs down, the log file would grow until it was so big the system administrator would become curious and have a look. When he discovered that his system had been hacked he would close the security holes. Par would have problems getting back into that system.

After they finished tidying up the hacked systems, they gathered up all Par’s notes and Nibbler’s computer equipment once again and stashed them in a rented storage space. Then they drove back to the motel.

Par couldn’t afford to move on just yet. Besides, maybe only the telephone company had taken an interest in the motel’s phone system.

Par had done a lot of poking and prodding of the telecommunications companies’ computer systems from the motel phone, but he had done it anonymously. Perhaps BellSouth felt a little curious and just wanted to sniff about for more information. If that was the case, the law enforcement agencies probably didn’t know that Par, the fugitive, was hiding in the motel.

The atmosphere was becoming oppressive in the motel. Par became even more watchful of the people coming and going. He glanced out the front window a little more often, and he listened a little more carefully to the footsteps coming and going. How many of the guests were really just tourists? Par went through the guest list and found a man registered as being from New Jersey. He was from one of the AT&T

corporations left after the break-up of Bell Systems. Why on earth would an AT&T guy be staying in a tiny hick town in North Carolina?

Maybe a few Secret Service agents had snuck into the motel and were watching the chalet.

Par needed to bring the paranoia under control. He needed some fresh air, so he went out for a walk. The weather was bad and the wind blew hard, whipping up small tornadoes of autumn leaves. Soon it began raining and Par sought cover in the pay phone across the street.

Despite having been on the run for a few months, Par still called Theorem almost every day, mostly by phreaking calls through bulk telecommunications companies. He dialled her number and they talked for a bit. He told her about how the voltage was way off on the motel’s PABX and how the phone might be tapped. She asked how he was holding up. Then they spoke softly about when they might see each other again.

Outside the phone box, the storm worsened. The rain hammered the roof from one side and then another as the wind jammed it in at strange angles. The darkened street was deserted. Tree branches creaked under the strain of the wind. Rivulets rushed down the leeward side of the booth and formed a wall of water outside the glass. Then a trash bin toppled over and its contents flew onto the road.

Trying to ignore to the havoc around him, Par curled the phone handset into a small protected space, cupped between his hand, his chest and a corner of the phone booth. He reminded Theorem of their time together in California, of two and a half weeks, and they laughed gently over intimate secrets.

A tree branch groaned and then broke under the force of the wind. When it crashed on the pavement near the phone booth, Theorem asked Par what the noise was.

‘There’s a hurricane coming,’ he told her. ‘Hurricane Hugo. It was supposed to hit tonight. I guess it’s arrived.’

Theorem sounded horrified and insisted Par go back to the safety of the motel immediately.

When Par opened the booth door, he was deluged by water. He dashed across the road, fighting the wind of the hurricane, staggered into his motel room and jumped into bed to warm up. He fell asleep listening to the storm, and he dreamed of Theorem.

Hurricane Hugo lasted more than three days, but they felt like the safest three days Par had spent in weeks. It was a good bet that the Secret Service wouldn’t be conducting any raids during a hurricane.