Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier (59 page)

These weren’t the only interesting people at the con. I met up with an older group of nonconformists in the computer industry, a sort of Austin intelligentsia. By older, I mean above the age of 26. They were interested in many of the same issues as the young group of hackers--privacy, encryption, the future of a digital world--and they all had technical backgrounds.

This loose group of blue-jean clad thinkers, people like Doug Barnes, Jeremy Porter and Jim McCoy, like to meet over enchiladas and margueritas at university-style cafes. They always seemed to have three or four projects on the run. Digital cash was the flavour of the month when I met them. They were unconventional, perhaps even a little weird, but they were also bright, very creative and highly innovative.

They were just the sort of people who might marry creative ideas with maturity and business sense, eventually making widespread digital cash a reality.

I began to wonder how many of the young men in Room 518 might follow the same path. And I asked myself: where are these people in Australia?

Largely invisible or perhaps even non-existent, it seems. Except maybe in the computer underground. The underground appears to be one of the few places in Australia where madness, creativity, obsession, addiction and rebellion collide like atoms in a cyclotron.

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After the raids, the arrests and the court cases on three continents, what became of the hackers described in this book?

Most of them went on to do interesting and constructive things with their lives. Those who were interviewed for this work say they have given up hacking for good. After what many of them had been through, I would be surprised if any of them continued hacking.

Most of them, however, are not sorry for their hacking activities.

Some are sorry they upset people. They feel badly that they caused system admins stress and unhappiness by hacking their systems. But most do not feel hacking is wrong--and few, if any, feel that

‘look-see hacking’, as prosecuting barrister Geoff Chettle termed non-malicious hacking, should be a crime.

For the most part, their punishments have only hardened their views on the subject. They know that in many cases the authorities have sought to make examples of them, for the benefit of rest of the computer underground. The state has largely failed in this objective. In the eyes of many in the computer underground, these prosecuted hackers are heroes.

PAR

When I met Par in Tucson, Arizona, he had travelled from a tiny, snow-laden Mid-Western town where he was living with his grandparents.

He was looking for work, but hadn’t been able to find anything.

As I drove around the outskirts of Tucson, a little jetlagged and disoriented, I was often distracted from the road by the beauty of the winter sun on the Sonoran desert cacti. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Par said calmly, ‘I always wondered what it would be like to drive on the wrong side of the road’.

I swerved back to the right side of the road.

Par is still like that. Easy-going, rolling with the punches, taking what life hands him. He is also on the road again.

He moved back to the west coast for a while, but will likely pack up and go somewhere else before long. He picks up temporary work where he can, often just basic, dull data-entry stuff. It isn’t easy. He can’t just explain away a four-year gap in his resumé with ‘Successfully completed a telecommuting course for fugitives. Trained by the US

Secret Service’. He thought he might like to work at a local college computer lab, helping out the students and generally keeping the equipment running. Without any professional qualifications, that seemed an unlikely option these days.

Although he is no longer a fugitive, Par’s life hasn’t changed that much. He speaks to his mother very occasionally, though they don’t have much in common. Escaping his computer crimes charges proved easier than overcoming the effects of being a fugitive for so long on his personality and lifestyle. Now and again, the paranoia sets in again. It seems to come in waves. There aren’t many support mechanisms in the US for an unemployed young man who doesn’t have health insurance.

PRIME SUSPECT

Prime Suspect has no regrets about his choices. He believed that he and Mendax were headed in different directions in life. The friendship would have ended anyway, so he decided that he was not willing to go to prison for Mendax.

He completed a TAFE course in computer programming and found a job in the burgeoning Internet industry. He likes his job. His employer, who knows about his hacking convictions, recently gave him a pay rise. In mid-1994, he gave up drugs for good. In 1995 he moved into a shared house with some friends, and in August 1996 he stopped smoking cigarettes.

Without hacking, there seems to be time in his life to do new things.

He took up sky-diving. A single jump gives him a high which lasts for days, sometimes up to a week. Girls have captured his interest. He’s had a few girlfriends and thinks he would like to settle into a serious relationship when he finds the right person.

Recently, Prime Suspect has been studying martial arts. He tries to attend at least four classes a week, sometimes more, and says he has a special interest in the spiritual and philosophical sides of martial arts. Most days, he rises at 5 a.m., either to jog or to meditate.

MENDAX

In 1992 Mendax and Trax teamed up with a wealthy Italian real-estate investor, purchased La Trobe University’s mainframe computer (ironically, a machine they had been accused of hacking) and started a computer security company. The company eventually dissolved when the investor disappeared following actions by his creditors.

After a public confrontation in 1993 with Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, Mendax and two others formed a civil rights organisation to fight corruption and lack of accountability in a Victorian government department. As part of this ongoing effort, Mendax acted as a conduit for leaked documents and became involved in a number of court cases against the department during 1993-94. Eventually, he gave evidence in camera to a state parliamentary committee examining the issues, and his organisation later facilitated the appearance of more than 40

witnesses at an investigation by the Auditor-General.

Mendax volunteers his time and computer expertise for several other non-profit community organisations. He believes strongly in the importance of the non-profit sector, and spends much of his free time as an activist on different community projects. Mendax has provided information or assistance to law-enforcement bodies, but not against hackers. He said, ‘I couldn’t ethically justify that. But as for others, such as people who prey on children or corporate spies, I am not concerned about using my skills there.’

Still passionate about coding, Mendax donates his time to various international programming efforts and releases some of his programs for free on the Internet. His philosophy is that most of the lasting social advances in the history of man have been a direct result of new technology.

NorTel and a number of other organisations he was accused of hacking use his cryptography software--a fact he finds rather ironic.

ANTHRAX

Anthrax moved to Melbourne, where he is completing a university course and working on freelance assignments in the computer networking area of a major corporation.

His father and mother are divorcing. Anthrax doesn’t talk to his father at all these days.

Anthrax’s mother’s health has stabilised somewhat since the completion of the court case, though her condition still gives her chronic pain.

Despite some skin discolouration caused by the disease, she looks well. As a result of her years of work in the local community, she has a loyal group of friends who support her through bad bouts of the illness. She tries to live without bitterness and continues to have a good relationship with both her sons.

Anthrax is no longer involved in the Nation of Islam, but he is still a devout Muslim. An acquaintance of his, an Albanian who ran a local fish and chips shop, introduced him to a different kind of Islam. Not long after, Anthrax became a Sunni Muslim. He doesn’t drink alcohol or gamble, and he attends a local mosque for Friday evening prayers. He tries to read from the Qu’raan every day and to practise the tenets of his religion faithfully.

With his computer and business skills now sought after by industry, he is exploring the possibility of moving to a Muslim country in Asia or the Middle East. He tries to promote the interests of Islam worldwide.

Most of his pranking needs are now met by commercial CDs--recordings of other people’s pranking sold through underground magazines and American mail order catalogues. Once in a long while, he still rings Mr McKenny in search of the missing shovel.

Anthrax felt aggrieved at the outcome of his written complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman. In the complaint, Anthrax gave an account of how he believed the AFP had behaved inappropriately throughout his case. Specifically, he alleged that the AFP had pressured his mother with threats and had harassed him, taken photographs of him without his permission, given information to his university about his case prior to the issue of a summons and the resolution of his case, and made racist comments toward him during the raid.

In 1995-96, a total of 1157 complaints were filed against the AFP, 683

of which were investigated by the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Of the complaint investigations completed and reviewed, only 6 per cent were substantiated. Another 9 per cent were deemed to be ‘incapable of determination’, about 34 per cent were ‘unsubstantiated’, and in more than a quarter of all cases the Ombudsman either chose not to investigate or not to continue to investigate a complaint.

The Office of the Ombudsman referred Anthrax’s matter to the AFP’s Internal Investigations office. Although Anthrax and his mother both gave statements to the investigating officers, there was no other proof of Anthrax’s allegations. In the end, it came down to Anthrax and his mother’s words against those of the police.

The AFP’s internal investigation concluded that Anthrax’s complaints could either not be substantiated or not be determined, in part due to the fact that almost two years had passed since the original raid. For the most part, the Ombudsman backed the AFP’s finding. No recommendation was made for the disciplining of any officers.

Anthrax’s only consolation was a concern voiced by the Ombudsman’s Office. Although the investigating officer agreed with the AFP

investigators that the complaint could not be substantiated, she wrote, ‘I am concerned that your mother felt she was compelled to pressure you into attending an interview based on a fear that she would be charged because her phone was used to perpetrate the offences’.

Anthrax remains angry and sceptical about his experience with the police. He believes a lot of things need to be changed about the way the police operate. Most of all, he believes that justice will never be assured in a system where the police are allowed to investigate themselves.

PAD AND GANDALF

After Pad and Gandalf were released from prison, they started up a free security advisory service on the Internet. One reason they began releasing 8lgm advisories, as they were known, was to help admins secure their own systems. The other reason was to thumb their noses at the conservatives in the security industry.

Many on the Internet considered the 8lgm advisories to be the best available at the time--far better than anything CERT had ever produced. Pad and Gandalf were sending their own message back to the establishment. The message, though never openly stated, was something like this: ‘You busted us. You sent us to prison. But it didn’t matter. You can’t keep information like this secret. Further, we are still better than you ever were and, to prove it, we are going to beat you at your own game.’

Believing that the best way to keep a hacker out of your system is to secure it properly in the first place, the two British hackers rejected security gurus who refused to tell the world about new security holes. Their 8lgm advisories began marginalising the traditional industry security reports, and helped to push the industry toward its current, more open attitude.

Pad and Gandalf now both work, doing computer programming jobs on contract, sometimes for financial institutions. Their clients like them and value their work. Both have steady girlfriends.

Pad doesn’t hack any more. The reason isn’t the risk of getting caught or the threat of prison. He has stopped hacking because he has realised what a headache it is for a system administrator to clean up his or her computer after an attack. Searching through logs. Looking for backdoors the hacker might have left behind. The hours, the hassle, the pressure--he thinks it is wrong to put anyone through that. Pad understands far better now how much strain a hacker intrusion can cause another human being.

There is another reason Pad has given up hacking: he has simply outgrown the desire. He says that he has better things to do with his time. Computers are a way for him to earn a living, not a way to spend his leisure time. After a trip overseas he decided that real travel--not its electronic cousin--was more interesting than hacking.

He has also learned to play the guitar, something he believes he would have done years ago if he hadn’t spent so much time hacking.

Gandalf shares Pad’s interest in travelling. One reason they like contract work is because it lets them work hard for six months, save some money, and then take a few months off. The aim of both ex-hackers for now is simply to sling backpacks over their shoulders and bounce around the globe.

Pad still thinks that Britain takes hacking far too seriously and he is considering moving overseas permanently. The 8lgm court case made him wonder about the people in power in Britain--the politicians, the judges, the law enforcement officers. He often thinks: what kind of people are running this show?

STUART GILL

In 1993, the Victorian Ombudsman1 and the Victoria Police2 both investigated the leaking of confidential police information in association with Operation Iceberg--a police investigation into allegations of corruption against Assistant Commissioner of Police Frank Green. Stuart Gill figured prominently in both reports.