Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 24

From the time he walked free from the County Jail in Salinas, California, he continued to move around the country, picking up temporary work here and there. But he found it hard to settle in one place. Worst of all, strange things began happening to him. Well, they had always happened to him, but they were getting stranger by the month. His perception of reality was changing.

There was the incident in the motel room. As Par sat in the Las Vegas Travelodge on one if his cross-country treks, he perceived someone moving around in the room below his. Par strained to hear. It seemed like the man was talking to him. What was the man trying to tell him?

Par couldn't quite catch the words, but the more he listened, the more Par was sure he had a message for him which he didn't want anyone else to hear. It was very frustrating. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how he put his ear down to the floor or against the wall, Par couldn't make it out.

The surreal experiences continued. As Par described it, on a trip down to Mexico, he began feeling quite strange, so he went to the US consulate late one afternoon to get some help. But everyone in the consulate behaved bizarrely.

They asked him for some identification, and he gave them his wallet.

They took his Social Security card and his California identification card and told him to wait. Par believed they were going to pull up information about him on a computer out the back. While waiting, his legs began to tremble and a continuous shiver rolled up and down his spine. It wasn't a smooth, fluid shiver, it was jerky. He felt like he was sitting at the epicentre of an earthquake and it frightened him.

The consulate staff just stared at him.

Finally Par stopped shaking. The other staff member returned and asked him to leave.

'No-one can help you here,' he told Par.

Why was the consular official talking to him like that? What did he mean--Par had to leave? What was he really trying to say? Par couldn't understand him. Another consular officer came around to Par, carrying handcuffs. Why was everyone behaving in such a weird way? That computer. Maybe they had found some special message next to his name on that computer.

Par tried to explain the situation, but the consulate staff didn't seem to understand. He told them about how he had been on the run from the Secret Service for two and a half years, but that just got him queer looks. Blank faces. No comprehende. The more he explained, the blanker the faces became.

The consular officials told him that the office was closing for the day. He would have to leave the building. But Par suspected that was just an excuse. A few minutes later, a Mexican policeman showed up. He talked with one of the consular officials, who subsequently handed him what Par perceived to be a slip of paper wrapped around a wad of peso notes.

Two more policemen came into the consulate. One of them turned to Par and said, 'Leave!' but Par didn't answer. So the Mexican police grabbed Par by the arms and legs and carried him out of the consulate.

Par felt agitated and confused and, as they crossed the threshold out of the consulate, he screamed.

They put him in a police car and took him to a jail, where they kept him overnight.

The next day, they released Par and he wandered the city aimlessly before ending up back at the US consulate. The same consular officer came up to him and asked how he was feeling.

Par said, 'OK.'

Then Par asked if the official could help him get back to the border, and he said he could. A few minutes later a white van picked up Par and took him to the border crossing. When they arrived, Par asked the driver if he could have $2 so he could buy a ticket for the train. The driver gave it to him.

Par boarded the train with no idea of where he was headed.

Theorem visited Par in California twice in 1992 and the relationship continued to blossom. Par tried to find work so he could pay her back the $20000 she had lent him during his years on the run and during his court case, but it was hard going. People didn't seem to want to hire him.

'You don't have any computer skills,' they told him. He calmly explained that, yes, he did indeed have computer skills.

'Well, which university did you get your degree from?' they asked.

No, he hadn't got his skills at any university.

'Well, which companies did you get your work experience from?'

No, he hadn't learned his skills while working for a company.

'Well, what did you do from 1989 to 1992?' the temp agency staffer inevitably asked in an exasperated voice.

'I ... ah ... travelled around the country.' What else was Par going to say? How could he possibly answer that question?

If he was lucky, the agency might land him a data-entry job at $8 per hour. If he was less fortunate, he might end up doing clerical work for less than that.

By 1993, things had become a little rocky with Theorem. After four and a half years together, they broke up. The distance was too great, in every sense. Theorem wanted a more stable life--maybe not a traditional Swiss family with three children and a pretty chalet in the Alps, but something more than Par's transient life on the road.

The separation was excruciatingly painful for both of them.

Conversation was strained for weeks after the decision. Theorem kept thinking she had made a mistake. She kept wanting to ask Par to come back. But she didn't.

Par drowned himself in alcohol. Shots of tequila, one after the other.

Scull it. Slam the gla.s.s down. Fill it to the top. Throw back another.

After a while, he pa.s.sed out. Then he was violently ill for days, but somehow he didn't mind. It was cleansing to be so ill.

Somewhere along the way, Rosen managed to get Par's things returned from the Secret Service raids. He pa.s.sed the outdated computer and other equipment back to Par, along with disks, print-outs and notes.

Par gathered up every shred of evidence from his case, along with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and made a bonfire. He shredded print-outs, doused them in lighter fluid and set them alight. He fed the disks into the fire and watched them melt in the flames. He flipped through the pages and pages of notes and official reports and let them pull out particular memories. Then he crumpled up each one and tossed it in the fire. He even sprinkled a little Jack Daniels across the top for good measure.

As he pulled the pages from a Secret Service report, making them into tight paper b.a.l.l.s, something caught his eye and made him wonder. Many hackers around the world had been busted in a series of raids following the first Thanksgiving raid at Par's house back in 1988.

Erik Bloodaxe, the MOD boys, the LOD boys, The Atlanta Three, Pad and Gandalf, the Australians--they had all been either busted or raided during 1989, 1990 and 1991.

How were the raids connected? Were the law-enforcement agencies on three different continents really organised enough to coordinate worldwide attacks on hackers?

The Secret Service report gave him a clue. It said that in December 1988, two informants had called Secret Service special agents in separate divisions with information about Par. The informants--both hackers--told the Secret Service that Par was not the 'Citibank hacker' the agency was looking for. They said the real 'Citibank hacker' was named Phoenix.

Phoenix from Australia.

Chapter 5 -- The Holy Grail.

So we came and conquered and found; riches of Commons and Kings.

-- from 'River Runs Red', Blue Sky Mining.

There it was, in black and white. Two articles by Helen Meredith in The Australian in January 1989.2 The whole Australian computer underground was buzzing with the news.

The first article appeared on 14 January:

Citibank hackers score $500,000

An elite group of Australian hackers has lifted more than $US500,000 ($580,000) out of America's Citibank in one of the more daring hacking crimes in Australia's history.

Australian federal authorities were reported late yesterday to be working with American authorities to pin down the Australian connection involving hackers in Melbourne and Sydney.

These are the elite 'freekers' of white collar crime ...

The Australian connection is reported to have used a telephone in the foyer of Telecom's headquarters at 199 William Street in Melbourne to send a 2600-hertz signal giving them access to a trunk line and ultimately to a managerial access code for Citibank.

Sources said last night the hackers had lifted $US563,000 from the US bank and transferred it into several accounts. The money has now been withdrawn ...

Meanwhile, Victorian police were reported yesterday to be systematically searching the homes of dozens of suspects in a crackdown on computer hackers ...