Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (29 page)

Normally, someone used FTP, or file transfer protocol, to transfer files over a network, such as the Internet, from one computer to another. FTPing to another machine was a bit like telnetting, but the user didn’t need a password to login and the commands he could execute once in the other computer were usually very limited.

If it worked, the FTP bug would allow Phoenix to slip in an extra command during the FTP login process. That command would force Spaf’s machine to allow Phoenix to login as anyone he wanted--and what he wanted was to login as someone who had root privileges. The ‘root’

account might be a little obvious

if anyone was watching, and it didn’t always have remote access anyway. So he chose ‘daemon’, another commonly root-privileged account, instead.

It was a shot in the dark. Phoenix was fairly sure Spaf would have secured his machine against such an obvious attack, but Electron urged him to give it a try anyway. The FTP bug had been announced throughout the computer security community long ago, appearing in an early issue of Zardoz. Phoenix hesitated, but he had run out of ideas, and time.

Phoenix typed:

FTP -i uther.purdue.edu

quote user anonymous

quote cd ~daemon

quote pass anything

The few seconds it took for his commands to course from his suburban home in Melbourne and race deep into the Midwest felt like a lifetime.

He wanted Spaf’s machine, wanted Deszip, and wanted this attack to work. If he could just get Deszip, he felt the Australians would be unstoppable.

Spaf’s machine opened its door as politely as a doorman at the Ritz Carlton. Phoenix smiled at his computer. He was in.

It was like being in Aladdin’s cave. Phoenix just sat there, stunned at the bounty which lay before him. It was his, all his. Spaf had megabytes of security files in his directories. Source code for the RTM Internet worm. Source code for the WANK worm. Everything. Phoenix wanted to plunge his hands in each treasure chest and scoop out greedy handfuls, but he resisted the urge. He had a more important--a more strategic--mission to accomplish first.

He prowled through the directories, hunting everywhere for Deszip.

Like a burglar scouring the house for the family silver, he pawed through directory after directory. Surely, Spaf had to have Deszip. If anyone besides Matthew Bishop was going to have a copy, he would. And finally, there it was. Deszip. Just waiting for Phoenix.

Then Phoenix noticed something else. Another file. Curiosity got the better of him and he zoomed in to have a quick look. This one contained a passphrase--the passphrase. The phrase the Australians needed to decrypt the original copy of Deszip they had stolen from the Bear computer at Dartmouth three months earlier. Phoenix couldn’t believe the passphrase. It was so simple, so obvious. But he caught himself. This was no time to cry over spilled milk. He had to get Deszip out of the machine quickly, before anyone noticed he was there.

But as Phoenix began typing in commands, his screen appeared to freeze up. He checked. It wasn’t his computer. Something was wrong at the other end. He was still logged into Spaf’s machine. The connection hadn’t been killed. But when he typed commands, the computer in West Lafayette, Indiana, didn’t respond. Spaf’s machine just sat there, deaf and dumb.

Phoenix stared at his computer, trying to figure out what was happening. Why wouldn’t Spaf’s machine answer? There were two possibilities. Either the network--the connection between the first machine he penetrated at Purdue and Spaf’s own machine--had gone down accidentally. Or someone had pulled the plug.

Why pull the plug? If they knew he was in there, why not just kick him out of the machine? Better still, why not kick him out of Purdue all together? Maybe they wanted to keep him on-line to trace which machine he was coming from, eventually winding backwards from system to system, following his trail.

Phoenix was in a dilemma. If the connection had crashed by accident, he wanted to stay put and wait for the network to come back up again.

The FTP hole in Spaf’s machine was an incredible piece of luck.

Chances were that someone would find

evidence of his break-in after he left and plug it. On the other hand, he didn’t want the people at Purdue tracing his connections.

He waited a few more minutes, trying to hedge his bets. Feeling nervy as the extended silence emanating from Spaf’s machine wore on, Phoenix decided to jump. With the lost treasures of Aladdin’s cave fading in his mind’s eye like a mirage, Phoenix killed his connection.

Electron and Phoenix talked on the phone, moodily contemplating their losses. It was a blow, but Electron reminded himself that getting Deszip was never going to be easy. At least they had the passphrase to

unlock the encrypted Deszip taken from Dartmouth.

Soon, however, they discovered a problem. There had to be one, Electron thought. They couldn’t just have something go off without a hitch for a change. That would be too easy. The problem this time was that when they went searching for their copy from Dartmouth, which had been stored several months before, it had vanished. The Dartmouth system admin must have deleted it.

It was maddening. The frustration was unbearable. Each time they had Deszip just within their grasp, it slipped away and disappeared. Yet each time they lost their grip, it only deepened their desire to capture the elusive prize. Deszip was fast becoming an all-consuming obsession for Phoenix and Electron.

Their one last hope was the second copy of the encrypted Dartmouth Deszip file they had given to Gandalf, but that hope did not burn brightly. After all, if the Australians’ copy had been deleted, there was every likelihood that the Brit’s copy had suffered the same fate.

Gandalf’s copy hadn’t been stored on his own computer. He had put it on some dark corner of a machine in Britain.

Electron and Phoenix logged onto Altos and waited for Pad or Gandalf to show up.

Phoenix typed .s for a list of who was on-line. He saw that Pad was logged on:

No Chan User

0 Guest

1 Phoenix

2 Pad

Guest 0 was Electron. He usually logged on as Guest, partly because he was so paranoid about being busted and because he believed operators monitored his connections if they knew it was Electron logging in.

They seemed to take great joy in sniffing the password to his own account on Altos. Then, when he had logged off, they logged in and changed his password so he couldn’t get back under the name Electron.

Nothing was more annoying. Phoenix typed, ‘Hey, Pad. How’s it going?’

Pad wrote back, ‘Feeny! Heya.’

‘Do you and Gand still have that encrypted copy of Deszip we gave you a few months ago?’

‘Encrypted copy ... hmm. Thinking.’ Pad paused. He and Gandalf hacked dozens of computer systems regularly. Sometimes it was difficult to recall just where they had stored things.

‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t know. It was on a system on JANET,’ Pad said. Britain’s Joint Academic Network was the equivalent of Australia’s AARNET, an early Internet based largely on a backbone of universities and research centres.

‘I can’t remember which system it was on,’ Pad continued.

If the Brits couldn’t recall the institution, let alone the machine where they had hidden Deszip, it was time to give up all hope. JANET comprised hundreds, maybe thousands, of machines. It was far too big a place to randomly hunt around for a file which Gandalf would no doubt have tried to disguise in the first place.

‘But the file was encrypted, and you didn’t have the password,’ Pad wrote. ‘How come you want it?’

‘Because we found the password. ’ That was the etiquette on Altos. If you wanted to suggest an action, you put it in

< >.

‘Gr8!’ Pad answered.

That was Pad and Gandalf’s on-line style. The number eight was the British hackers’ hallmark, since their group was called 8lgm, and they used it instead of letters. Words like ‘great’, ‘mate’ and ‘later’

became ‘gr8’, ‘m8’ and ‘l8r’.

When people logged into Altos they could name a ‘place’ of origin for others to see. Of course, if you were logging from a country which had laws against hacking, you wouldn’t give your real country. You’d just pick a place at random. Some people logged in from places like Argentina, or Israel. Pad and Gandalf logged in from 8lgm.

‘I’ll try to find Gandalf and ask him if he knows where we stashed the copy,’ Pad wrote to Phoenix.

‘Good. Thanks.’

While Phoenix and Electron waited on-line for Pad to return, Par showed up on-line and joined their conversation. Par didn’t know who Guest 0 was, but Guest certainly knew who Par was. Time hadn’t healed Electron’s old wounds when it came to Par. Electron didn’t really admit to himself the bad blood was still there over Theorem. He told himself that he couldn’t be bothered with Par, that Par was just a phreaker, not a real hacker, that Par was lame.

Phoenix typed, ‘Hey, Par. How’s it going?’

‘Feenster!’ Par replied. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Lots and lots.’

Par turned his attention to the mystery Guest 0. He didn’t want to discuss private things with someone who might be a security guy hanging around the chat channel like a bad smell.

‘Guest, do you have a name?’ Par asked.

‘Yeah. It’s "Guest--#0".’

‘You got any other names?’

There was a long pause.

Electron typed, ‘I guess not.’

‘Any other names besides dickhead that is?’

Electron sent a ‘whisper’--a private message--to Phoenix telling him not to tell Par his identity.

‘OK. Sure,’ Phoenix whispered back. To show he would play along with whatever Electron had in mind, Phoenix added a sideways smiley face at the end: ‘:-)’.

Par didn’t know Electron and Phoenix were whispering to each other. He was still waiting to find out the identity of Guest. ‘Well, speak up, Guest. Figured out who you are yet?’

Electron knew Par was on the run at the time. Indeed, Par had been on the run from the US Secret Service for more than six months by the beginning of 1990. He also knew Par was highly paranoid.

Electron took aim and fired.

‘Hey, Par. You should eat more. You’re looking underFED these days.’

Par was suddenly silent. Electron sat at his computer, quietly laughing to himself, halfway across the world from Par. Well, he thought, that ought to freak out Par a bit. Nothing like a subtle hint at law enforcement to drive him nuts.

‘Did you see THAT?’ Par whispered to Phoenix. ‘UnderFED. What did he mean?’

‘I dunno,’ Phoenix whispered back. Then he forwarded a copy of Par’s private message on to Electron. He knew it would make him laugh.

Par was clearly worried. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he whispered to Electron but Guest 0 didn’t answer.

With growing anxiety, Par whispered to Phoenix, ‘Who IS this guy? Do you know him?’

Phoenix didn’t answer.

‘Because, well, it’s weird. Didn’t you see? FED was in caps. What the fuck does that mean? Is he a fed? Is he trying to give me a message from the feds?’

Sitting at his terminal, on the other side of Melbourne from Electron, Phoenix was also laughing. He liked Par, but the American was an easy target. Par had become so paranoid since he went on the run across the US, and Electron knew just the right buttons to push.

‘I don’t know,’ Phoenix whispered to Par. ‘I’m sure he’s not really a fed.’

‘Well, I am wondering about that comment,’ Par whispered back.

‘UnderFED. Hmm. Maybe he knows something. Maybe it’s some kind of warning. Shit, maybe the Secret Service knows where I am.’

‘You think?’ Phoenix whispered to Par. ‘It might be a warning of some kind?’ It was too funny.

‘Can you check his originating NUA?’ Par wanted to know what network address the mystery guest was coming from. It might give him a clue as to the stranger’s identity.

Phoenix could barely contain himself. He kept forwarding the private messages on to Electron. Par was clearly becoming more agitated.

‘I wish he would just tell me WHO he was,’ Par whispered. ‘Shit. It is very fucking weird. UnderFED. It’s spinning me out.’

Then Par logged off.

Electron typed, ‘I guess Par had to go. ’ Then, chuckling to himself, he waited for news on Gandalf’s Deszip copy.

If Pad and Gandalf hadn’t kept their copy of Deszip, the Australians would be back to square one, beginning with a hunt for a system which even had Deszip. It was a daunting task and by the time Pad and Gandalf finally logged back into Altos, Phoenix and Electron had become quite anxious.

‘How did you go?’ Phoenix asked. ‘Do you still have Deszip?’

‘Well, at first I thought I had forgotten which system I left it on

...’

Electron jumped in, ‘And then?’

‘Then I remembered.’

‘Good news?’ Phoenix exclaimed.

‘Well, no. Not exactly,’ Gandalf said. ‘The account is dead.’

Electron felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him.

‘Dead? Dead how?’ he asked.

‘Dead like someone changed the password. Not sure why. I’ll have to re-hack the system to get to the file.’

‘Fuck, this Deszip is frustrating,’ Electron wrote.

‘This is getting ridiculous,’ Phoenix added.

‘I don’t even know if the copy is still in there,’ Gandalf replied. ‘I hid it, but who knows? Been a few months. Admins might have deleted it.’

‘You want some help hacking the system again, Gand?’ Phoenix asked.

‘Nah, It’ll be easy. It’s a Sequent. Just have to hang around until the ops go home.’

If an op was logged on and saw Gandalf hunting around, he or she might kick Gandalf off and investigate the file which so interested the hacker. Then they would lose Deszip all over again.

‘I hope we get it,’ Pad chipped in. ‘Would be gr8!’

‘Gr8 indeed. Feen, you’ve got the key to the encryption?’ Gandalf asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘How many characters is it?’ It was Gandalf’s subtle way of asking for the key itself.

Phoenix wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to give the British hackers the key, but he was torn. He needed Pad and Gandalf’s help to get the copy of Deszip, if it was still around. But he knew Electron was watching the conversation, and Electron was always so paranoid. He disliked giving out any information, let alone giving it over Altos, where the conversations were possibly logged by security people.