Other On-line Security Steps

In real life and detective fiction, the real enemies to a person's well being are patterns in that person's life. Having a regular schedule of activity may make life easier for you, but it also allows others to find you when you are trying to hide, and notice you when you are trying to remain inconspicuous.

As an example, consider the case of the oilman who would ask the system manager to mount tem-porary backup tapes every time he began a com-puting session. The oilman would then read from the tapes posted by the system manager before starting his work. The manager got suspicious fast: it was pretty evident that the
oilman was looking for data that others before him had backed-up onto those tapes. That industrial spy, like many other hackers and crackers, was caught because he followed a pattern.

Criminals (and hackers) like to formulate plans of action. But remember, any plan you conceive should have elements of randomness to it. Don't allow yourself to always call at a certain time, from the same workstations or telephones, because one day you will arrive at your favorite hacking loca-tion and find someone standing there with a pair of handcuffs.

Once I got a list of Social Security numbers from sitting in on a computer class on the first day: the professor handed around a sign-up sheet for stu-dents to list their name and number so that ac-counts could be made for them on the computer system. I waited until the accounts were made, then I had to go in and try them
out. But trying them all at one time would have been too suspi-cious. Instead, I tried a new one every few hours, a different name each time, so it would look as though different people were trying it out.

The system was secure in that it asked me to change my password upon first login. After doing so I was able to use the operating system's pass-word-changing command to go back to the Social Security number so the original user could get in.

But in each user's directory I left behind a hidden program that I could use for remote file viewing and playtime later on.

If you ever get into a situation where you can't change the password back to its original form, try re-entering the password as some variation on the Social Security number. For 123-45-6789 you might enter 123456789 or 123-45-6780 or 123-45- 67890, as if the typist's finger has slipped. If security precau-tions require a capital letter or something, use one that is close to the last digit in the ID.

It is equally important that your modus operandi change as you move from one hack to the next. As you know, once you're into a system you should do what you can to create a new account for yourself. But make sure you always use a different name and password, and make anything you input about your fictional persona as noncommittal as possible. It is a minor point, but one of the things investigators noticed when tracking down computer cracker Kevin Mitnick was that the words he used were often identifiable American vernacular, thus implying that he was in fact American (i.e., a spy from a Third World country probably wouldn't use the password "RENANDSTIMPY").



Security Logs

It is easy to get manufacturers of security prod-ucts to mail you everything you would ever want to know about the things they sell. Here I am con-cerned mostly with software which quietly moni-tors the activity on a system, audits the system re-sources for misuses and irregularities, and keeps a disk-based or printed log of
usage. Someone at the company takes a look at the log, then says to him-self, "Hey! Mr. Poultry has been logging on every night at three in the morning. That seems unusual... Better have a chat with him..." Suddenly you're in an unsafe position, and you never even knew it was coming.

From your research into a particular computer you are looking to hack, you will know which se-curity products are in force (by calling system op-erators feigning that you are a computer consult-ant, or by looking through the company's library of reference manuals). Get the descriptive literature from the manufacturer so you'll know what silent enemy you are up against.

Security logs - if they are in place and actually attended to - will alert administrators to any pat-terns which you create. Well, you're not going to create any patterns, but you're probably going to create some problems, and those too, will show up on the security log's report.

If you plan to stay on a given computer for any length of time, for instance if you plan to use that computer as a springboard from which to jump around through the network, you must discover the security auditor and render it useless.

Don't destroy the auditor, simply reprogram it to ignore you when you log on. Or find out how it keeps a record of events and see what can be done to eliminate your own tell-tale traces. This should be piece of cake, considering that if you're in the position to do these sorts of things, you most likely already have root access.

If you have been logging on in a similar way for a while, you might want to change previous log en-tries to reflect a more random login schedule. You may also be able to use a date or time setting cornmand to control how the security monitor judges your behavior.

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There have been many, many instances of hackers carefully editing out personal sections of audit records, only to find to their horror that they've deleted more than they should have. Or hackers who were trying to be helpful by cleaning up a messy program or fixing a typo in a memo, and having some disaster occur. You know you should always keep backups. The backup rule applies every time you use a computer, especially computers which aren't yours. If you feel you must alter a file that doesn't belong to you, alter a backup of that file. When you're done, make certain your changes are perfect, delete the original file and then rename the
backup.

One simple task that most auditors and many secure operating systems will perform is the re-cording of unsuccessful login attempts. Again, re-search is needed to see how your particular target computer responds to inaccurate logon inputs. Some programs will let you try three or four user-name password combinations before resetting and saving the last attempt. In that case you would try to always make your last login attempt something innocuous. Or to be safer, don't type anything for your last allowed login attempt. Instead, press Con-trol-C or Control-Z or whatever it is you can use to break back to the previous level of interaction.

Auditing programs can be a nuisance if you're running a big job, such as a brute force password generator. If you're able, try to write these pro-grams so that they get around the security logs. Going directly to the hardware may be one solution to this problem. Another, depending on what kinds of things the log is keeping track of, would be to rename suspicious commands, so that the log either won't know to record those commands under their new name, or if the supervisor reads through the log printouts, he or she won't notice any question-able activity going on. Printed logs are a big problem. Any hacker worth his salt, can go in and fiddle with records which have been stored on a tape or disk. But what if the security monitor makes a real-time printout of events as they occur? Then, my friend, you are stuck. Once a deed is done, it is trapped on that page for life.

The thing to do is catch any mistakes before you make them. Limit the number of illegal or questionable activities you perform until you can find a way to disable the printer. You may be able to use software switches to program the printer to print everything in a nonexistent font, or if it's a multi-color printer, in a color that has no ink car-tridge or ribbon. Of course, since you're probably doing all this over the phone, you might not know what equipment is being used. However, it might be possible to reroute print jobs to an electronic storage medium, or to an unused port; that is, tell the computer to print stuff out on a printer that doesn't exist. At times it may even be possible to trick the computer into thinking it's printing to the printer when actually it's printing back through its own modem - and so you end up receiving re-Ports of your own activities as you go about your business.

A more troublesome form of paper log is some-times used by organizations to keep track of who does what, when, and why. Some companies insist that each employee enter telephone calls in a log. A monthly review and a comparison of the log with phone bills is done - and if anything doesn't match up, well, you can figure
out what happens next. If you sneak into an office to make long dis-tance calls, you can be easily trapped with such a log, since you probably won't know about it. Even if you're dialing in from home (or a phone booth), a log can trip you up. If you use a company's corn-puters to call other computers, that might be a toll call which would show up on the phone bill, but not in the employee log.

Companies may keep logs to verify employee comings and goings, and use of equipment. Stay on top of things because the littlest errors lead to the biggest downfalls.


In Public And On-Site

Doing any sort of hacking-related function in public or on-site - altering public access comput-ers (PACs) or public access terminals (PATs), sabo-taging for reverse social engineering (RSE), doing in-person social engineering (SE), using a university's computing facilities, or simply doing research at a library - is riskier
than doing the same sorts of things at home. Not only do you have all the threats that a home-based hacker has, you have the additional concerns of whether or not you will be recognized or apprehended.

Use proven burglar's techniques when selecting spot to do public hacking. When a burglar enters a house, the first thing he does is scope out all the exits. Don't sit down at a computer from where you won't be able to escape easily in more than one di-rection. And just as a burglar is always glad to see tall shrubbery to hide
behind, you should try to sit at computers that are hidden in some way; with people or objects sitting in front of you, and hope-fully a wall behind you, so no one can look over your shoulder.

Always be ready to leave a public hack at a moment's notice, and never get so involved with your work that you forget where you are. Remem-ber, that's what happens to regular users when shoulder surfing takes place - they forget where they are and they let people see the secret things they're doing. A hacker must always be more secu-rity-aware than a regular user.

Take care to have a decent story prepared if youre trespassing, or if your actions will seem fishy to a passer-by. Make sure you dress the part of your story. Regardless of your story, clean dressy clothes are always a plus.

Finally, one should always keep in mind that a computer room is very likely occupied by at least one hacker or cracker at any given moment. Be alert to shoulder surfers, and to other tricks of the trade. When I sit down at a public terminal I always press the Break key a few times, and log off several times before logging in - just in case someone has set up a simulation trap.

Be cautious, too, upon log out. Some terminals, such as the Tektronix 4207 and others, maintain a buffer of the screen display. Often that buffer is not cleated, even after log out. What that means is, some unsuspecting soul walks away from the ter-minal, but leaves behind a record of every action taken during his or her
session. Anyone can go over to that terminal now and access, read, even print out dozens or hundreds of screenfuls of data.


While Off-Line: Minimizing Losses

Okay, so what if all of this doesn't help you? What if you still get caught? It's good to be pre-pared for such an emergency so if the feds do catch up to you they at least won't have any evidence on which to base a trial.


Maintaining Your Computer

You should routinely look at the files stored on your computer and destroy those which you ille-gally  acquired. When I say "destroy" I mean it -don't just delete those files: overwrite them with a single repeated character, encrypt them with the lengthiest, twistiest key you can fathom, and only then erase those files. You can use a "Wipefile" or "Wipedisk" program to write over data. That way you won't have compu-cops poking around in your secrets.

Also keep in mind that sometimes pieces of files get lost or unattached from the files to which they belong, or parts of files get duplicated elsewhere on your disks. It's a good idea to regularly check for these orphan text strings and eradicate them if they contain incriminating evidence.

Any computer file which you simply can't de-stroy must be encrypted and, ideally, hidden under an inconspicuous filename, such as PACMAN.EXE.

There are other matters to consider, other things about your computer that might not directly con-vict you, but can lead to evidence that will: termi-nal programs, autodialers, databases of modem numbers and account codes, lists of BBS numbers (especially pirate, phreak or hacking boards), and any other program that could
even remotely be linked with a crime.

To play it safe, I use physical locks on my com-puters along with software "locks." I programmed all my computers to check for a particular key be-ing pressed during the start up procedures. If the computer goes through its entire start up mode without detecting that key, it knows that something's wrong. It will then call a time-and-date sub-routine. The routine shows the correct time and date, and gives me the opportunity to correct them. I must input a certain time and date, otherwise the computer will display a "LOADING MENU"
mes-sage and remove the directory in which I keep all my naughty stuff. There is an opening menu too, which one can not enter or exit without inputting the proper password.

Luckily, I've never had my computers seized. If I ever do, I pity the untrained lummox who gets to go through my stuff; my systems are all booby trapped to destroy incriminating evidence. And even if he's prepared for that, he still won't know how to prevent it from happening!



Keeping Your Other Stuff

Once a law enforcement official has a warrant for your arrest, he or she can legally steal all of your computers and peripherals, blank disks and audio cassettes, commercial software and documentation, printouts and operating logs, telephones and answering machines, any piece of electronic equip-ment as well as any papers
indicating that you are the owner or user of that equipment, wires and loose parts, model rockets, disk boxes, radios, soldering irons, surge protectors, books, journals, magazines, et cetera. These things I've listed are all things that have been seized in past raids. Also, if the crimes which you are suspected of committing are related to a specific place or person, they will seize any papers or evidence with which a connec-tion may be made between that place or person and the crime. They purposely write their warrants to allow seizure of a wide range of items, and believe me - they will take all of it.

And don't expect to get any of it back in one piece, either. This is yet another reason why, as I said in the beginning, it may not be such a great idea for hackers to even own a computer. It's sad but true, and so you should do your best to hide anything when you're out of your house or not us-ing your equipment. If you have
printouts or notes lying around, keep them in folders marked "SCHOOL HOMEWORK" or "CHURCH GROUP". Make the marks big and visible, and innocuous, and maybe they'll overlook the folders' contents.

it is a myth commonly heard that computer printouts can not be used as evidence in court, since they are so easily forged. The truth is, a print-out is just as valid as any other piece of written evi-dence, as long as it can be shown to have been made at or near the time of the criminal act, or during preparation for the act. If a Secret Service thug, after taking your computer, makes a printout of a file contained on it, then that printout is invalid evidence, since he made it and not you. On the other hand, if there is in fact some accessible in-criminating evidence stored on your computer, the prosecuting attorneys will know how they can le-gally present it to the court (I presume by bringing your computer into the courtroom, plugging it in and firing away). On the other hand, the feds are so good at smashing up seized computer equipment that you probably have nothing to worry about!

It is important that when you hide stuff, you make it look as if the stuff has no connection with computers or electronics. Law enforcement officers are smart enough to get warrants that let them take anything even remotely connected to electricity. Let's look at a hypothetical example. Suppose un-derground information were routinely distributed on audio cassettes. Naturally we would resort to putting that information on store-bought tapes with legitimate names -Beatles, Grateful Dead, whatever. The cops would know that, and thus would want to get their hands on every tape we own, including ones that look as harmless as rock and roll.

As hackers, we do exchange information and keep records on disk. So if you have a box of disks containing all your hacker stuff, you can't simply label the disks with names like "Space War" and Pac Man." They will suspect either that the disks have been labeled misleadingly, or that the games themselves are real. (Think of Steve Jackson.) Be-sides, in their raid they won't stop to sort seemingly irrelevant belongings from the obviously illegal ones. So you'll have to hide the disks themselves, and hide them in a way that is unrelated to tech-nology. The same goes for your other electronics equipment, and anything else that might reasonably
be stolen by the feds. For example, I keep my backup disks in a graham cracker box. Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. I store my laptop in a big corn flakes box up in the closet - it's just as easy to keep it there as anywhere else, and doing so makes me feel more secure. You already know how companies leave help-ful information in their garbage bins, but you should realize that your garbage is just as helpful to someone investigating you for computer crime. Anything incriminating you want to discard should be destroyed beyond recoverability first, and discarded from somewhere other than your home. When I say "destroyed" I don't mean putting it through a shredder - I mean completely de-stroyed. If the Secret Service finds shredded paper in your trash, they WILL piece it back together.

Paper printouts should be soaked in water to wash away the lettering, and then shredded. Disk contents should be encrypted, then deleted. Disks should then be zapped with a strong magnet (bulk erasers, called degaussers, are available to do just that) and the disks themselves chopped up.<This behavior is not paranoid
enough for the US Department of Defense, which according to Lance Hoffman in his Modern Methods for Computer Security and Privacy (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1977) "feels that there are techniques for electronically retrieving overwritten information and thus requires destruction of the recording
medium.">These items can be anonymously deposited in some public garbage can, or in the case of paper, a public re-cycling bin. I'm serious! You do this and you've just blown away any "theft of trade secrets" indictments they wanted to hang on you!



Conclusion: How To Get Caught

This is a book of methods after all, and so here is a list of methods NOT to follow. If you do these things, you will definitely get in trouble. Because, you see, there are five ways you, the hacker, can get caught hacking:
1. by traces or technical means,
2. by being finked on,
3. by getting many agencies ganged up against you,
4. by making a mistake, or
5. by being made (recognized).

You will get caught by phone line traces and other technical means, such as audit logs. So don't keep a routine. Switch the phones and computers you call from all the time.

You will get caught by getting ratted on. Maintain contacts with other hackers, but do so discreetly. Don't tell anyone who doesn't need to know about what you're up to. Above all, be nice to the people you come into contact with while sharing hacking tales, doing research, or while performing the hacking itself. Be nice to them, and hope-fully they will be nice to you.

You will get caught by getting many agencies ganged up against you. Don't steal or destroy or vandalize. These things make you look bad, and downgrade hacking in the eyes of those investigat-ing it. Hackers have a bad enough image as it is, mainly because hacking's most public practitioners are nerdish eighth grade heavy
metal pseudo-anarchists with skin problems. If you re-main true to hacking ethics, you will fare better than if you demolish what you hack - because fewer agencies will be willing to pursue you. Tiptoe.

You will get caught by making a mistake. It is a mistake not to take all of these precautions. Always think before you act. Never reveal anything about yourself. Remember to delete backup files. One of the things that tripped up Lt. Col. Oliver North -according to Donn B. Parker in his Computer Crime: Criminal justice
Resource Manual - was that he: did not understand that using the ERASE command in the White House Executive E-mail system merely removed the name and storage address of an E-mail message from the directory of messages; it did not destroy the contents of the message. In addition, frequent backup copies of all messages were made and stored for later retrieval in the event of a com-puter failure. As a result, much of his corre-spondence was retrieved as evidence of possi-ble wrongdoing. You need to be especially vigilant about timed backups which are made automatically, without your consent.

If you're careful, you will make few mistakes. But the most careful hacker can be tripped up by the mistake of assuming a course of action is infal-lible when there are, in fact, gaping holes in it. For example, in 1974 a criminal in Tokyo tried to use one of the fundamental properties of electronic transmission of data in his favor - the delay that comes about from data being shuffled through ca-bles or telephone lines.

The criminal opened a bank account using the false name S. Kobayashi, then proceeded to with-draw small amounts of cash from automatic teller machines (ATMs) scattered around Japan. Each time, after he withdrew some money, he would telephone the bank to find out the status of his ac-count. By doing so,
Kobayashi found that it took twenty minutes for the bank's central computer to register a withdrawal from a remote cash-dis-pensing machine.

Later, Kobayashi used this information after carrying out a kidnapping. He demanded a ransom of 5 million yen to be paid into his account, figur-ing he would have twenty minutes of getaway time while bank officials waited for the main computer to receive the information regarding from which dispenser the sum had been withdrawn. The plan backfired because of this one assumption. What Kobayashi didn't realize was that programmers at the bank were able to reprogram the central com-puter to immediately identify which machine the criminal was using. Police were stationed close by to each of the bank's 348 ATMs, and when the kid-napper retrieved the money, he was caught.

Look out for the unexpected twists in your plans, and remember that there probably are peo-ple on the other side trying to find ways to foil you. Finally, you will get caught by being recog-nized. In public places, make sure you stay unob-trusive.

The surest way to NOT get caught is to NOT start hacking. But then, the surest way not to die is to live an inactive life. Part of your life is computers and the things you can do with computers. Without hacking, all you have to do with computers is busi-ness stuff or school stuff, a little game playing, and possibly some programming.

But WITH hacking, you have instantaneous control of the world. Enough said. May we all have a good many peaceful, happy hacks!

Hacker Security: How To Keep From Getting Caught

Hacking is fun. Hell, it's exhilarating. But it's also illegal, sometimes immoral, and usually punishable. Even if what you're doing is perfectly inno-cent you'll be hard pressed to find an acceptable ex-cuse for it in court. The very least that might happen is the security holes you utilized the first time around might get patched up.

More serious pun-ishments inflicted by the courts can include com-munity service, fines and even prison, as we've seen. Informal punishments include the unofficial destruction of your equipment by law enforcement officers, and being blacklisted from tech-related jobs.

Consequently, the prudent hacker has two goals in mind while hacking. Number one: don't get caught. Number two: if you do, don't make it count. This chapter will present strategies the care-ful hacker will follow to ensure both situations are true.

Hacking - to use one's curiosity about corn-puters to push them beyond their limits - involves not just techrrical knowledge but also the hacker's mindset. Part of the mindset must deal with keep-ing oneself safe, or else the rest of it has been all for naught. Accordingly, the strategies here should not just be known rotely and followed, but expanded upon to apply to new situations. Remember, there have been many computer criminals who've been sent to prison. True, some have even hacked while in prison. Some even learned to hack in prison. But you don't want to go to prison. So when you're on-line, in public, in private, or just living through your life, make sure you apply these guidelines.



In Researching

There may be local ordinances in your area forbidding machines or people to continuously dial up numbers and disconnect, as with an autodialer program which searches for dial-in lines. If you make the calls yourself it's better to say a simple, "Sorry, wrong number," than just hanging up and annoying all those people.
Remember the 'Itpers-prosit rule: The more people you get angry at you, the more likely it is you'll be persecuted, and the more likely it is you'll be prosecuted.



In Social Engineering

Some social engineering and most reverse engi-neering requires authorized user contact over the telephone or through the mail. This is obviously risky since you are giving out your address or tele-phone number to people whom you are about to defraud. Hackers have utilized several ingenious methods to overcome this problem.

Once I found a small business with a technical-sounding name that would be closed for a few weeks over the summer. By doing some hacking, some research, and rubbing my lucky rabbit's foot I was able to come up with the code that released messages left on their answering machine. That gave me a way to have people
contact me without them knowing who I was.

I put up some phony advertising for a com-puter network, instructing people to call and leave their name and vital data. I could call up the ma-chine whenever I wanted, punch in the magic code and listen to those messages. When the store reopened, I called them up, saying I was from the phone company. I told the store
owner that some lines got crossed, so they n-dght get some weird calls.

Some hackers will simply change a pay phone to residential status and work out of there.

In order to work a social engineer through the mails, you could rent a private mail box or mail drop. One hacker found a cheaper solution. He noticed that the P.O. Box underneath his in the college mail room was always empty. Apparently it was unassigned. The mailboxes are open in the back so workers can stuff the mail into them. This hacker took an unbent clothes hanger and a metal clip, fashioned them together into a grabber that he could slide into his box and go fishing into the mailbox below his. Later I showed him how to de-termine the combination of the box, so he wouldn't have to do all that. For a long while the box re-mained unused, and he was able to get all the se-cret mail he wanted sent there.


Dialing In

"If you don't want it known, don't use the phone."
- Nelson Rockefeller
When you're new it may be okay to dial up re-mote computers from your house, but once you've been around a while you'll never know if your phone is being tapped or your computer usage be-ing monitored. So when you're past your hacking childhood, make sure to never make an illicit call from your own house, or
from any number that can be traced to you.

Even when you are new to hacking, you could be in trouble. Imagine if you become a regular on the TECHRIME-USA BBS, right about the time an FBI officer is planning to bust the sysops for con-ducting illegal business on their board! You don't want to get involved with that, especially if you haven't done anything illegal. Even scarier than that are serni-reliable rumors which have been cir-culating through
branches of the technical under-ground which imply that the phone companies routinely monitor and record modern conversations which pass through their lines. This is supposedly done automatically by detectors which listen for modem tones, and will then turn on a recording device to keep a record of the call. Even if the
gos-sip turns out to be false, consider this: (1) We obviously have the technology to do such a thing and, (2) it is well known that the NSA records many, many phone calls.

So... If you must associate with known com-puter culprits, or with established hackers, do so as covertly as possible. Not calling from your house means calling from someplace else. That means you may want to splurge for a portable laptop computer. While you're at it, buy an acoustic coupler and an external modem to go with it. All this should run you about one or two thousand dollars - a lot less than the cost of retaining an attorney to defend you in court.

The acoustic coupler is necessary because not every place you hack will have a telephone jack to plug into. The external modem is needed to plug the coupler into. While many laptops come with mo-dems included, they are generally internal models, and so can not be coupled to a telephone handset. Now that you have your equipment, where should you take it? There are plenty of places. At night and over the weekend you can sneak into many big office buildings and, if the right door happens to be unlocked, sit yourself down at a cu-bicle and chug away.

Two summers ago, I was walking past my local municipal center a little past 9 p.m., and I noticed that every office had their windows open. Every of-fice - at night! Their air conditioner must have malfunctioned during the day, as it had been incredibly hot. Needless to say, if I'd been in the hacking mood I would've scrambled
through a window and hooked up my portable to a tele-phone. I could have been making illegal computer B & Es while making a physical B & E, all just a few doors down from a bustling police station - and with no one being the wiser.

If you have money laying around, or if you have a hacking expense account, you can always hole up in a hotel or motel to do your hacking.

The money problem is one which gets to hackers in other ways. Phone bills add up fast, which is why most serious hackers are phreaks too. A phreak is someone who hacks the telephone net-works. One of the major aspects of phreaking is the producing of code tones which signal the telephone system to perform special
functions, such as place long distance calls for free. Phreaking is definitely a major area for hackers to investigate, and the tele-phone system - and especially the computers which run the system - is something which all hackers should become intimately familiar with.

Many hackers will say that any hacking other than hacking the computers which run the telephone system is child's play. This is true to some extent. The telephone computer networks are incredibly large, sprawling, wonderful masses of intricate functions, enormous databases, technical operations and blinding wizardry which makes hacking anything less look pitiful.

Once the phone line leaves your house it goes to a local switching center. This center controls all phones in your neighborhood, which may mean as many as 15,000 telephone lines. Each neighborhood switch is managed by its own computer. These computers are the essential targets of the phone company hacker; if you can access the computer, you can access every phone that it switches. You can turn phones on and off, reroute calls, change numbers. You could, if you were not a hacker, wreak quite a lot of havoc.

There are also switched networks which con-nect the computers that run switches. From there you can go to regional maintenance systems such as COSMOS (which sends out instructions to create and HI phone numbers among other things) and MIZAR (the local MIZAR actually does the work that COSMOS sets up).

Once you've gotten familiar with the intricacies of these telephone computers, you can use them in ways to protect yourself. For instance, you know you probably don't want to place hacking phone calls from your house. What you can do is connect to a neighborhood switching computer, take the phone numbers of some
local pay phones, and de-activate their need for coins. You then use the pay phones to call or hack any place in the world.

Or you can use a MIZAR - which, as far as is known, does not keep records of its activities, unlike COSMOS - to temporarily change your pre-sent phone number to that of a nearby church. If your call gets traced, you'll be sending the feds on a wild goose chase.

I want to make the point that dialing in to a re-mote computer is not as safe as it feels. Communi-cating through a telephone or through a computer sometimes gives you a false feeling of protection, especially when you become good at hacking and phreaking, and turn from confident to cocky. Don't let that happen to you.
Remember to always follow these safety rules.

Don't set up patterns of behavior. Always call from a different place, at different times of day.

When is a good time to call? Ask hackers this and each one will give you a different answer. Late night is good because system administrators will probably have gone home already - but then, so too have most valid users, so you'll stand out like a clown at a funeral. You can try hiding yourself within the bustle of heavy usage
times, like mid-morning and afternoon, but then the main-frames will be at their slowest, your activity can easily still be noticed, and the account you've hacked may be unavailable for your usage. There really isn't any perfect time to call. Some research into how the company structures its computer guard duty may help.
Time how long you're on the phone with a ma-chine. A phone trace is instantaneous if you're lo-cal, and takes just a half a tweak longer if you're calling from far away. But it's still not wise to stay on a single line half the day. Move around a lot, calling from different phone numbers, to different access numbers. If your target has multiple dial-in lines, randomly choose from all of them.


Laptop Hints

Since you'll be calling from who-knows-where on your portable laptop, here are some suggestions to help you get connected.

When in unfamiliar domain, such as an office, hotel, schoolroom after hours, or otherwise, your laptop is of infinite value - so long as you can get it to work. Never plug your modem into an unfa-miliar phone setup until you've verified that doing so won't bum out your equipment. Many offices have installed their own electronic
phone systems, called PBXs, to facilitate special functions such as in-house dialing and phone menus, or to block certain phones from making long distance calls. Some of these PBXs place a current into the telephone wires that is powerful enough to damage your delicate modem. To see if the line you have in mind is safe, try plugging in a really cheap phone first. If it works, your modem should, too.

PBX-networked phones may not work with your modem because of special audible or numeric codes used in local routing procedures. If you get a dial tone on your cheap test phone but your mo-dem won't work, you can assume that it's the PBX system at fault.

To correct the problem you have to plug the modem into the phone jack, and connect the room phone (not your cheap one) to the modem (you may need a special double port for this). To use the modem you place the call using the room tele-p . hone, and when you hear remote computer ringing, turn your modem online
and hang up.

Alternatively, devices can be bought to process signals as they go between the telephone handset and the modem. The device converts ordinary mo-dem signals so they will work on digital systems such as a PBX. This may be a more suitable alter-native if you find yourself having to bypass PBX phones a lot.

Sometimes you can find yourself in a place with a telephone, but no plug-in jack for your modem. For instance, if you are using the phone from a public fax or automatic teller machine. In these cases, unscrew or pry Off the mouthpiece of the phone and use a cable with attached alligator clips to connect the red and green
wires from your modem wire to the two silver mouthpiece contacts in-side the telephone handset. This can easily generate a poor signal, so if you have the actual telephone (not just the handset) available for vandalism, take apart the entire case and clip your red/green mo-dem wires to the red and green cable leads from the
telephone's transformer. You will then have to hold down the switchhook on the telephone to place the call.


Your On-The-Road Kit

Make sure you have this stuff with you when you go hacking on the road:
• A laptop, or otherwise portable, computer. Must have a modem. Preferably two: an internal, and an
external with acoustic coupling cups.
• One small, cheap, reliable telephone for testing line voltages. You can use a commercial tester for this, but
the phone comes in handy in places like motels, where you may want to connect to a telephone but the
acoustic coupler won't fit on the phone they supplied.
• An extra phone cord, with an RJ-11 modular clip at one end (the standard, square telephone plug-in
thingy) and with alligator clips at the other end.

Wire cutters, screwdrivers, and assorted coil cords with various size ports.


System Tiptoeing

Even the best intentioned, the most honorable and nondestructive of hackers are thought of as evil by the managerial population. This means that if you're caught breaking into computers that don't belong to you, expect some trouble. Even if the hacking you were doing is completely benign you are likely to be punished in some way. I've seen re-Ports that estimate the cost of computer crime per year is $3 billion to $5 billion dollars - and that's on the low end. Other sources list figures as high as $100 billion.

Even the $3 billion figure, to me, seems pumped up for insurance purposes, but the people who run businesses and government don't see it that way. Government and industry people will realize that most computer crimes go unreported, and so the true cost is likely to be much higher than the official estimate. Even if these dollar amounts are bogus, that's what people believe, and so they will be even more inclined to prosecute someone who they believe is contributing to that multi-billion loss every year.

Let's take a brief interlude here and examine the case of the Greenwood Family Hospital BBS.

"Pretty Theft" is the name of a hacker I used to communicate with infrequently. One day she sent me a message on a BBS asking if I knew how to get into the computers of a certain hospital that was in my area. I was puzzled, because that hospital was the easiest thing in the world to get into - in fact, it was one of my
earliest successful hacks.

When you logged onto the system, you were greeted with this informative message (names and numbers are fictitious, of course).

Welcome to GFH-NET!
300-2400 baud (123)456-7890
GREENWOOD FAMILY HOSPITAL
GFH-NET IS MAINTAINED BY ROGER CORNWALL AND HAROLD LIPNICK QUESTIONS
OR COMMENTS? E-MAIL TO THEM!!!

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? TYPE IN FIRST AND LAST:
WHAT IS YOUR PASSWORD? TYPE <RETURN> ON A

BLANK LINE IF YOU DON'T HAVE ONE:
A few months after I began actively hacking, I was using my computer and watching the evening news when a story came on about the governor breaking his arm and being rushed by helicopter to a hospital. I thought to myself, "Hey, hospitals must use computers, right? I can probably get into one!" So I got the supposedly private number for the Greenwood Family Hospital Network, and I called up, and I got that welcoming screen. Guess what I did next? It's not too hard to figure out what I did! Natu-rally, I typed in ROGER CORNWALL for my name. Unfortunately, the real Roger Cornwall had a password of some sort; pressing Return on a blank Me just got me an error message. So I tried HAROLD LIPNICK. Again, no go.

I went into the kitchen, got out the phone book, looked up the telephone number of
Greenwood Family Hospital, and I called it. A woman an-swered:
"Greenwood, may I help you?"
"Yes, please," I said, "Is Tom there?"
'Who?"
"Uhm.... There's some guy there I spoke with earlier... Your supervisor or somebody?"
"Lee Brown., you mean?" she asked.

"Oh yeah, I guess that's it. I don't know where I got Tom from. Uh, is he there?"
"Nope. Lee left at five."
"All right, thanks."
"Bye-bye."

I went back to my computer and called back GFH-NET and tried LEE BROWN for the name. Once again, I was out of luck. However, after a few more phone calls to the various numbers listed for the hospital, I came up with a guy (a resident) who had not bothered with a password.

GFH-NET turned out to be nothing special after all. It had nothing to do with hospital billing, pa-tient records, or anything else pertaining to the ac-tual running of the place. Mostly it was like a doc-tor BBS. From what I could make of it, it was medi-cal students discussing problems with the doctors on the system. No file
transfers or anything; just a very simple messaging system. It was no big deal, but it was fun to get into.

The next day I looked through the doctors in the yellow pages, and I found about eight listed who had Greenwood Hospital addresses. Out of those names, three had no password.

So anyway, I was puzzled as to why Pretty Theft couldn't get on there. I called it up for the first time in years, and to my surprise found this nasty logon screen awaiting me:
USE OF THIS SYSTEM IS
RESTRICTED
TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
ONLY!
EVERYONE ELSE MUST HANG UP
NOW!

All useful information was gone! AU that re-mained was an angry note and a nonuseful arrow prompt.

I tried some of the old names I'd figured out way-back-when, and found that all of them had passwords now. I tried some more social engineer-ing, but everyone I spoke to kept their mouths shut about everything. (Later I was able to get onto the real hospital system with the help of some nice re-ceptionists in the administration
department.)

I e-mailed a letter back to Pretty Theft. I asked her what had happened there. The next day I got her reply:
Last month a friend of mine was in the hospital, so I wanted to see if I could change his bill. I remembered you giving me the number two years ago or something, so I looked it up in my book and I was surprised I still had it. I knew the name of my friend's doctor, and when I was there visiting him, I got the names of lots more
from the paging system (you know, "Calling Dr. Bower...") and from charts on the walls. Then I went on the system and was try-ing all these names, when the sysop came on and threw me off. Every time I tried getting on after that he kicked me off. Next morning at about 8:00, 1 finally got on. One of the doctor's names I tried
had the name as a password too. Well as I guess you know, I couldn't change my friend's hospital bill, but I couldn't do any-thing much else either... after giving my name and password, it just froze. That night I tried it again, and there was a message before it asked for your name. It said, MOST OF THE IM-PORTANT FILES HAVE BEEN DELETED BY SOMEONE OR SOMETHING. THE SYSTEM WILL BE DOWN
FOR A WHILE - ROGER. A week later I tried it again, and the phone just rung. I didn't do anything to it, but I guess the sysop thought I or someone else deleted the files. A few days ago I called back for no reason, and, well, you know. I guess they got smart?

Yes, Pretty Theft was right. They had gotten smart, and because of it, security was tightened. It is for this reason that hackers should not announce their arrival to a system, nor do anything to attract anyone's attention. There is only one case, really, when you would want to show yourself to the system operator, and that is when you've found out everything there is to know about a system and are never going to call back again.

Incidentally, Roger and Harold had gotten smart in some respects, but remained dumb in oth-ers. Through continued perseverance I was able to get onto GFH-NET again. As it turns out, I'd gotten smarter too; the medical conversations between doctors and students seemed a lot more compre-hensible than they had been just two years before. Maybe it was the students getting dumber?

There was also an old bulletin posted from one of the sysops. It explained as much as he knew about what had happened (which wasn't much). mostly it said that certain files were deleted, and many of the bulletins were replaced with obscene musings on female anatomy. From what he said, it sounded like the files could
have been erased by either a clumsy system operator, or perhaps a ma-lignant hacker. I did a little investigating, and found that although it was not listed in the main menu, pressing 'T" brought me to a defunct file transfer system. With a few minutes of thinking, it was easy to see how someone could've uploaded a program that would delete whatever files were in the root directory after a rebooting of the system.

The next day I typed up a long letter to the sy-sops at the hospital, explaining everything, what they could do to correct the problem, and how other security breaches could be curtailed. I signed it, "Sincerely, Polly Wanza Hacker." Then I called back the BBS and uploaded it to them. Soon after, I got this message from
Pretty Theft:
"There's a new logon screen at the hospital. It says: "THANX POLLY! - SIGNED R.C.
& H.L."
I couldn't have been happier.



Lessons From The Hospital

You already know system operators don't want you on their system. That's why you have to hack in the first place. But if you make it known that you're there, you will compound your difficultiesconsiderably. On GFH-NET, the sysops went crazy when they realized their computers were being abused, and they made it a lot harder to get into. On a little BBS like that, you might not care whether or not you get in, but if you're dealing with something big - like some government agency - you don't want to start messing around. If you do show yourself in any way - like by a million log entries of "USER FAILED LOGON PROCEDURE" from when you tried every word in the dictionary as a password - the sysops are go-ing to get concerned, at the very least. Concerned sysops mean no information will be given out over the phone. It may mean changing every legitimate user's password, or cleaning up dead accounts that might otherwise facilitate entry.

Alternately, if you have a nice feeling about a certain system, and don't want to see it get hurt (and you don't mind possibly eliminating your chances of ever getting back on it), you would be wise to consider informing the system operators about all the little quirks you know about their precious system.

Many times, they won't believe you. They won't even bother trying what you suggest they try, either because they have a huge ego that can't be wrong, or because they think it's some kind of a trick, or god knows why else. But if they do believe you, and they take your advice, they will be quite grateful and, if you ask,
might give you a low-level account on the system, or some handy tips. Tell them you'll be their unofficial security advisor. Some of them can be quite good about it, though others will think you're up to no good no matter what.



BBS Protection

This section deals with the two issues of secu rity for the hacker involved with BBSs: hacker as -user, and hacker as sysop. These are actually inter-twined issues, as sysops of one BBS will generally be users of other BBSs. You should take these safety precautions on all BBSs you use and run, and should not hang around
systems which do not employ a high degree of hacker security.

Do not post messages concerning illegal activi-ties on any BBS where you don't feel completely se-cure. This means it's bad practice to brag about your hacking exploits in private e-mail as well as public message bases. If you are actively involved with BBSing, by all means become good friends with non-deviant systems, if only to maintain a balanced perspective of your computorial existence. But make sure that what you say on those boards does not implicate you in any way with any crime.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to imply that posting messages about hacking on a hacker BBS guarantees safety, because it doesn't, of course. When you start sharing secrets on a hacker BBS, you'd better make sure the sysop takes all of the following safety precautions: user screenings, a false front and hidden back boards, double blind anonymity, encryption, and affidavits of intent.

The most important aspect of any hacker group, club, or BBS, is secrecy. A true hacker BBS will not advertise, because it does not need new members. A hacker BBS will seem to be a very homey, fam-ily-style BBS up front, but type a code word from off the menu, enter a password or two, and you en-ter the hidden realm. Hacker BBSs should further protect themselves by only allowing specified users to enter the secret parts of its domain, to prevent unauthorized hackers or pseudohackers from breaking in to your meeting place.

Any hacker BBS which does not take this mini-mal precaution of pretending to be legitimate, is ju-venile, dangerous, and not something you want to be a part of. Going up the scale of stupidity just a bit, I've seen plenty of "hacker" BBSs which allow access to the hidden part by entering words like "DEATH" and, yes, even "PASSWORD" as passwords. Need-less to say, the information found on such boards is very low content, and usually consists of the vari-ous users calling each other dickheads.

No new users should be allowed on a hacker BBS unless one or several existing members can verify that the potential user is not a cop, will abide by the club's law of conduct, has information to share, and will not be a big blabbermouth. As a sysop, you will enjoy composing the list of rules that govern the way the BBS takes in
new members. Remember, any new member should not even know that the BBS exists until the time when he or she is accepted into it. That will keep out law enforcement people, and keep in only the best hackers available.

Once a member has been verified as clean, his or her private information should be destroyed from the computer records. In fact, think about the BBSs on which you are a current member. Are there any which are likely to be busted in a raid? Even if you aren't doing anything wrong on the system even if nobody on the system is doing anything illegal you know very well how mixed-up the feds get when it comes to computers. You don't want your name brought into a computer crime trial, even if the case is thrown out of court before it begins. So if you're a member of any subculture BBS, tell the sysop, to replace your personal infor-mation (name, address, phone number) with false-hoods.

If you ever register with a BBS but decide not to call back, make sure to inform the sysop that you want your information deleted. (Verifying that such information has been altered or deleted is one legitimate reason for hacking a BBS. Legitimate, that is, from a hacker's ethical point of view.) It is important to do all this, because
there are impos-tors out there who are very good at catching hack-ers when they least expect to be caught. In June of 1987, an AT&T security official logged onto a Texas BBS and found messages from a hacker boasting about how he'd gotten into a certain company's computer system. This led to the hacker's arrest.

Note that since the hacker undoubtedly used a handle on the BBS, and it was a hacker board, the official might have hacked himself to get the hacker's real name. In any case, make sure your real name, address and other identifying data never stray to unsafe waters.

Before we start talking more about what you can do as the sysop of a hacker BBS, let's conclude with a real life example of what happens when hackers DON'T follow the advice I've listed above. In 1986 a BBS called simply and arrogantly, "The Board," came into being in Detroit. The Board was run off an HP2000 computer,
and attracted hackers and crackers (and would-be hackers and wannabe crackers) from all over. On August 20, the follow-ing ominous message appeared on The Board when oneloggedin:
Welcome to MIKE WENDLAND'S I-TEAM
sting board!
(Computer Services Provided by BOARDSCAN)
66 Megabytes Strong
300/1200 baud - 24 hours.
Three (3) lines = no busy signals!
Rotary hunting on 313-XXX-XXXX

If you called up that day and read the newest messages posted, you would have been surprised to find these little darlings staring you in the face:
Board: General Information & BBS's
Message: 41
Title: YOU'VE BEEN HAD!!!
To: ALL
From: HIGH TECH
Posted: 8/20/86 @ 12.08 hours
Greetings:
You are now on THE BOARD, a "sting" BBS operated by MIKE WENDLAND of the WDIV-TV I-Team. The purpose? To demon-strate and document the extent of criminal and potentially illegal hacking and telephone fraud activity by the so-called "hacking community."

Thanks for your cooperation. In the past month and a half, we've received all sorts of in-formation from you implicating many of you in credit card fraud, telephone billing fraud, vandalism, and possible break-ins to govern-ment or public safety computers. And the beauty of this is we have your posts, your E-Mail and - most importantly - your REAL names and addresses.

What are we going to do with it? Stay timed to News 4. 1 plan a special series of reports about our experiences with THE BOARD, which saw users check in from coast-to-coast and Canada, users ranging in age from 12 to 48. For our regular users, I have been known as High Tech, among other IDs. John Maxfield of Boardscan served as our consultant and pro-vided the HP2000 that this "sting" ran on. Through call forwarding and other conven-iences made possible by telephone technology, the BBS operated remotely here in the Detroit area.

When will our reports be ready? In a few weeks. We now will be contacting many of you directly, talking with law enforcement and se-curity agents from credit card companies and the telephone services.

It should be a hell of a series. Thanks for your help. And don't bother trying any harassment. Remember, we've got YOUR real names.
Mike Wendland
The I-team
WDIV, Detroit, MI.
Board: General Information & BBS's
Message: 42
Title: BOARDSCAN
To: ALL
From: THE REAPER
Posted: 8/20/86 @ 3.31 hours
This is John Maxfield of Boardscanl. Welcome! Please address all letter bombs to Mike Wend-land at WDIV-TV Detroit. This board was his idea.

The Reaper (a.k.a. Cable Pair)
Is any comment required?
You can see from this that the people who come after hackers - the people who will be coming af-ter YOU - are not all Keystone Cops. Maxfield knew enough to pick '1001" handles like The Reaper and Cable Pair. The newuser password to get into The Board was HEL-N555,Elite,3 - a quite hip password considering its origin. Maxfield, and others like him, are as into hacking as we are. They are knowledgeable of the culture and the lingo and the way we think. This last is particularly hurtful, and it means you can't allow yourself to think like everyone else. You won't become an elite hacker without the strength of your entire common
sense working for you. When you call up BBSs, be sure and exercise that strength. Now let's talk about exercising First Amend-ment rights.

We do have the right to run our own BBS, and to exchange information on it. On a hacker board, that information is likely not going to be the kind of thing you'd read to your mother.

Disclaimers, such as, "This BBS will not tolerate any unlawful discussion of blah blah blah..." are Boardscan is a company headed by John Maxfield, which seeks out and destroys hackers and their ilk.

worthless, but you may want to throw them around anyway to complement my next sugges-tion: Many of the traditional laws which hackers get nailed on have to do with "harmful intent." That is, can it be shown that the hacker or cracker will-ingly caused damage to a computer?

If you are running a hacker BBS or club, you might then consider having members sign an affidavit which makes their good intentions known. Members should sign an agreement stating that they would never willfully damage another's computer or its contents, that any information ex-changed on the BBS was for knowledge
value only and that none of the illegal activities discussed will be actively pursued, etc. Basically this should be a way to let the members feel they are actively participating in your code of ethical hacker conduct which should be prominently displayed upon login to the BBS. Signing such a goody-two-shoes affi-davit may
not get you out of legal trouble, but it will do two things. It will stress the point that a member who does not follow the agreement is un-worthy to be a part of your hacker BBS or club. And to a jury, it will help convince them that you all are just a bunch of innocent hobbyists being persecuted by the Big Bad System.

It has been suggested that sysops should have their members sign an agreement that, in the event of a raid by law enforcement officials, users would join a lawsuit against the officials to win back mo-nies to pay for destroyed equipment, lost time, false arrests, the hassle, and everything else that goes along with being persecuted by Big Brother.

Current e-mail should always be kept on-hand, so that you can use the terms of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act to your favor. The ECPA ensures that electronic mail that was sent within the past 180 days is private and requires a warrant for an official to search and read it. Note that individual warrants are required for each user who has e-mail stored on your BBS, thus increasing the amount of paperwork required by The Law in going after you and your gang of happy hackers.

So, if your users have signed an agreement, and sample e-mail is stored for each user (it may be fudged e-mail whose time and date of origination gets automatically updated every 180 days), you want to make all of this known to invading offi-cials. Make a message such as the following available to all users when they log in for the first time, and every time they use the system:
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO ALL
LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS:
Some of the material on this computer system is being prepared for public dissemination and is therefore "work product material" protected under The First Amendment Privacy Protec-tion Act of 1980 (USC 42, Section 2000aa).

Violation of this statute by law enforcement agents is very likely to result in a civil suit as provided under Section 2000aa-6. Each and every person who has such "work product ma-terial" stored on this system is entitled to re-cover at least minimum damages of $1000 plus all legal expenses. Agents in some states may
NOT be protected from personal civil liability if they violate this statute.

In addition, there is e-mail which has been in storage on this system for less than 180 days. Such stored electronic communications, as de-fined by the Electronic Communication Pri-vacy Act (ECPA), are protected by the ECPA from unauthorized accesses - such as seizure by government officials - without warrants specific to each person's e-mail. Seizing the computer where this BBS resides would represent
such an unauthorized access. There are civil actions which may be taken against law enforcement agents under provisions of the Act. You can find them in USC 18, Section 2707. On this system you can expect up to X people to have stored e-mail. Each of them is entitled to collect a minimum of $1000 plus all legal
expenses for violations of Section 2700 and 2703. Note that all users of this system have already agreed in writing that their pri-vacy is well worth the hassles of court. We will sue YOU.

Perhaps the agency you work for might pay your legal fees and judgments against you, but why take chances? If you feel the need to go af-ter our private and legally protected e-mail, or take actions which would deny e-mail access to our users (such as seizing our hardware), get appropriate warrants.

It is the policy of the sysop of this system to cooperate with law enforcement agents -though we will not be involved in entrap-ments, and will not respond to idle threats. Please bring it to my attention if you discover illegal activities on this board, because as cura-tor of this museum I will not tolerate it.

"Hacking the hacker is the ultimate hack," John Maxfield has said. Maxfield is a computer security consultant well known as a hacker tracker, and the one who helped organize The Board sting de-scribed above. John scans BBSs looking for hacker activity, and when he finds it, he informs the com-pany that is being hacked
about the problem. You know how insecure computers can be, and when you post messages or send e-mail on a BBS you are in effect opening yourself up for the world to see. Don't let some hacker tracker see something about you that you'd rather keep private. When you roam around cyberspace, do so discreetly.