Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (10 page)

Some of them operated only during certain hours, say between 10 p.m.

and 8 a.m. When the owner went to bed, he or she would plug the home phone line into the BBS and leave it there until morning. Others ran 24 hours a day, but the busiest times were always at night.

Of course it wasn’t just intellectual stimulation some users were after. Visitors often sought identity as much as ideas. On an electronic bulletin board, you could create a personality, mould it into shape and make it your own. Age and appearance did not matter.

Technical aptitude did. Any spotty, gawky teenage boy could instantly transform himself into a suave, graceful BBS character. The transformation began with the choice of name. In real life, you might be stuck with the name Elliot Dingle--an appellation chosen by your mother to honour a long-dead great uncle. But on a BBS, well, you could be Blade Runner, Ned Kelly or Mad Max. Small wonder that, given the choice, many teenage boys chose to spend their time in the world of the BBS.

Generally, once a user chose a handle, as the on-line names are known, he stuck with it. All his electronic mail came to an account with that name on it. Postings to bulletin boards were signed with it. Others dwelling in the system world knew him by that name and no other. A handle evolved into a name laden with innate meaning, though the personality reflected in it might well have been an alter ego. And so it was that characters like The Wizard, Conan and Iceman came to pass their time on BBSes like the Crystal Palace, Megaworks, The Real Connection and Electric Dreams.

What such visitors valued about the BBS varied greatly. Some wanted to participate in its social life. They wanted to meet people like themselves--bright but geeky or misanthropic people who shared an interest in the finer technical points of computers. Many lived as outcasts in real life, never quite making it into the ‘normal’ groups of friends at school or uni. Though some had started their first jobs, they hadn’t managed to shake the daggy awkwardness which pursued them throughout their teen years. On the surface, they were just not the sort of people one asked out to the pub for a cold one after the footy.

But that was all right. In general, they weren’t much interested in footy anyway.

Each BBS had its own style. Some were completely legitimate, with their wares--all legal goods--laid out in the open. Others, like The Real Connection, had once housed Australia’s earliest hackers but had gone straight. They closed up the hacking parts of the board before the first Commonwealth government hacking laws were enacted in June 1989. Perhaps ten or twelve of Melbourne’s BBSes at the time had the secret, smoky flavour of the computer underground. A handful of these were invitation-only boards, places like Greyhawk and The Realm. You couldn’t simply ring up the board, create a new account and login. You had to be invited by the board’s owner. Members of the general modeming public need not apply.

The two most important hubs in the Australian underground between 1987

and 1989 were named Pacific Island and Zen. A 23-year-old who called himself Craig Bowen ran both systems from his bedroom.

Also known as Thunderbird1, Bowen started up Pacific Island in 1987

because he wanted a hub for hackers. The fledgling hacking community was dispersed after AHUBBS, possibly Melbourne’s earliest hacking board, faded away. Bowen decided to create a home for it, a sort of dark, womb-like cafe bar amid the bustle of the BBS bazaar where Melbourne’s hackers could gather and share information.

His bedroom was a simple, boyish place. Built-in cupboards, a bed, a wallpaper design of vintage cars running across one side of the room.

A window overlooking the neighbours’ leafy suburban yard. A collection of PC magazines with titles like Nibble and Byte. A few volumes on computer programming. VAX/VMS manuals. Not many books, but a handful of science fiction works by Arthur C. Clarke. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A Chinese-language dictionary used during his high school Mandarin classes, and after, as he continued to study the language on his own while he held down his first job.

The Apple IIe, modem and telephone line rested on the drop-down drawing table and fold-up card table at the foot of his bed. Bowen put his TV next to the computer so he could sit in bed, watch TV and use Pacific Island all at the same time. Later, when he started Zen, it sat next to Pacific Island. It was the perfect set-up.

Pacific Island was hardly fancy by today’s standards of Unix Internet machines, but in 1987 it was an impressive computer. PI, pronounced

‘pie’ by the local users, had a 20 megabyte hard drive--gargantuan for a personal computer at the time. Bowen spent about $5000 setting up PI alone. He loved both systems and spent many hours each week nurturing them.

There was no charge for computer accounts on PI or ZEN, like most BBSes. This gentle-faced youth, a half-boy, half-man who would eventually play host on his humble BBS to many of Australia’s cleverest computer and telephone hackers, could afford to pay for his computers for two reasons: he lived at home with his mum and dad, and he had a full-time job at Telecom--then the only domestic telephone carrier in Australia.

PI had about 800 computer users, up to 200 of whom were ‘core’ users accessing the system regularly. PI had its own dedicated phone line, separate from the house phone so Bowen’s parents wouldn’t get upset the line was always tied up. Later, he put in four additional phone lines for Zen, which had about 2000 users. Using his Telecom training, he installed a number of non-standard, but legal, features to his house. Junction boxes, master switches. Bowen’s house was a telecommunications hot-rod.

Bowen had decided early on that if he wanted to keep his job, he had better not do anything illegal when it came to Telecom. However, the Australian national telecommunications carrier was a handy source of technical information. For example, he had an account on a Telecom computer system--for work--from which he could learn about Telecom’s exchanges. But he never used that account for hacking. Most respectable hackers followed a similar philosophy. Some had legitimate university computer accounts for their courses, but they kept those accounts clean. A basic rule of the underground, in the words of one hacker, was ‘Don’t foul your own nest’.

PI contained a public section and a private one. The public area was like an old-time pub. Anyone could wander in, plop down at the bar and start up a conversation with a group of locals. Just ring up the system with your modem and type in your details--real name, your chosen handle, phone number and other basic information.

Many BBS users gave false information in order to hide their true identities, and many operators didn’t really care. Bowen, however, did. Running a hacker’s board carried some risk, even before the federal computer crime laws came into force. Pirated software was illegal. Storing data copied from hacking adventures in foreign computers might also be considered illegal. In an effort to exclude police and media spies, Bowen tried to verify the personal details of every user on PI by ringing them at home or work. Often he was successful. Sometimes he wasn’t.

The public section of PI housed discussion groups on the major PC

brands--IBM, Commodore, Amiga, Apple and Atari--next to the popular Lonely Hearts group. Lonely Hearts had about twenty regulars, most of whom agonised under the weight of pubescent hormonal changes. A boy pining for the affections of the girl who dumped him or, worse, didn’t even know he existed. Teenagers who contemplated suicide. The messages were completely anonymous, readers didn’t even know the authors’

handles, and that anonymous setting allowed heart-felt messages and genuine responses.

Zen was PI’s sophisticated younger sister. Within two years of PI making its debut, Bowen opened up Zen, one of the first Australian BBSes with more than one telephone line. The main reason he set up Zen was to stop his computer users from bothering him all the time. When someone logged into PI, one of the first things he or she did was request an on-line chat with the system operator. PI’s Apple IIe was such a basic machine by today’s standards, Bowen couldn’t multi-task on it. He could not do anything with the machine, such as check his own mail, while a visitor was logged into PI.

Zen was a watershed in the Australian BBS community. Zen multi-tasked.

Up to four people could ring up and login to the machine at any one time, and Bowen could do his own thing while his users were on-line.

Better still, his users could talk request each other instead of hassling him all the time. Having users on a multi-tasking machine with multiple phone lines was like having a gaggle of children. For the most part, they amused each other.

Mainstream and respectful of authority on the surface, Bowen possessed the same streak of anti-establishment views harboured by many in the underground. His choice of name for Zen underlined this. Zen came from the futuristic British TV science fiction series ‘Blake 7’, in which a bunch of underfunded rebels attempted to overthrow an evil totalitarian government. Zen was the computer on the rebels’ ship. The rebels banded together after meeting on a prison ship; they were all being transported to a penal settlement on another planet. It was a story people in the Australian underground could relate to. One of the lead characters, a sort of heroic anti-hero, had been sentenced to prison for computer hacking. His big mistake, he told fellow rebels, was that he had relied on other people. He trusted them. He should have worked alone.

Craig Bowen had no idea of how true that sentiment would ring in a matter of months.

Bowen’s place was a hub of current and future lights in the computer underground. The Wizard. The Force. Powerspike. Phoenix. Electron.

Nom. Prime Suspect. Mendax. Train Trax. Some, such as Prime Suspect, merely passed through, occasionally stopping in to check out the

action and greet friends. Others, such as Nom, were part of the

close-knit PI family. Nom helped Bowen set up PI. Like many early members of the underground, they met through AUSOM, an Apple users’

society in Melbourne. Bowen wanted to run ASCII Express, a program which allowed people to transfer files between their own computers and PI. But, as usual, he and everyone he knew only had a pirated copy of the program. No manuals. So Nom and Bowen spent one weekend picking apart the program by themselves. They were each at home, on their own machines, with copies. They sat on the phone for hours working through how the program worked. They wrote their own manual for other people in the underground suffering under the same lack of documentation.

Then they got it up and running on PI.

Making your way into the various groups in a BBS such as PI or Zen had benefits besides hacking information. If you wanted to drop your mantle of anonymity, you could join a pre-packaged, close-knit circle of friends. For example, one clique of PI people were fanatical followers of the film The Blues Brothers. Every Friday night, this group dressed up in Blues Brothers costumes of a dark suit, white shirt, narrow tie, Rayban sunglasses and, of course, the snap-brimmed hat. One couple brought their child, dressed as a mini-Blues Brother.

The group of Friday night regulars made their way at 11.30 to Northcote’s Valhalla Theatre (now the Westgarth). Its grand but slightly tatty vintage atmosphere lent itself to this alternative culture flourishing in late-night revelries. Leaping up on stage mid-film, the PI groupies sent up the actors in key scenes. It was a fun and, as importantly, a cheap evening. The Valhalla staff admitted regulars who were dressed in appropriate costume for free. The only thing the groupies had to pay for was drinks at the intermission.

Occasionally, Bowen arranged gatherings of other young PI and Zen users. Usually, the group met in downtown Melbourne, sometimes at the City Square. The group was mostly boys, but sometimes a few girls would show up. Bowen’s sister, who used the handle Syn, hung around a bit. She went out with a few hackers from the BBS scene. And she wasn’t the only one. It was a tight group which interchanged boyfriends and girlfriends with considerable regularity. The group hung out in the City Square after watching a movie, usually a horror film. Nightmare 2. House 3. Titles tended to be a noun followed by a numeral. Once, for a bit of lively variation, they went bowling and drove the other people at the alley nuts. After the early entertainment, it was down to McDonald’s for a cheap burger. They joked and laughed and threw gherkins against the restaurant’s wall.

This was followed by more hanging around on the stone steps of the City Square before catching the last bus or train home.

The social sections of PI and Zen were more successful than the technical ones, but the private hacking section was even more successful than the others. The hacking section was hidden; would-be members of the Melbourne underground knew there was something going on, but they couldn’t find out what is was.

Getting an invite to the private area required hacking skill or information, and usually a recommendation to Bowen from someone who was already inside. Within the Inner Sanctum, as the private hacking area was called, people could comfortably share information such as opinions of new computer products, techniques for hacking, details of companies which had set up new sites to hack and the latest rumours on what the law enforcement agencies were up to.

The Inner Sanctum was not, however, the only private room. Two hacking groups, Elite and H.A.C.K., guarded entry to their yet more exclusive back rooms. Even if you managed to get entry to the Inner Sanctum, you might not even know that H.A.C.K. or Elite existed. You might know there was a place even more selective than your area, but exactly how many layers of the onion stood between you and the most exclusive section was anyone’s guess. Almost every hacker interviewed for this book described a vague sense of being somehow outside the innermost circle. They knew it was there, but wasn’t sure just what it was.

Bowen fielded occasional phone calls on his voice line from wanna-be hackers trying to pry open the door to the Inner Sanctum. ‘I want access to your pirate system,’ the voice would whine.