Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 36

Eventually, Electron responded to Pad's warning by typing a comment directed at Phoenix: 'I told you talking to security guys is nothing but trouble.'

It irritated Electron more and more that Phoenix felt compelled to talk to white hats in the security industry. In Electron's view, drawing attention to yourself was just a bad idea all around and he was increasingly annoyed at watching Phoenix feed his ego. He had made veiled references to Phoenix's bragging on Altos many times, saying things like 'I wish people wouldn't talk to security guys'.

Phoenix responded to Electron on-line somewhat piously. 'Well, I will never talk to security guys seriously again.'

Electron had heard it all before. It was like listening to an alcoholic swear he would never touch another drink. Bidding the others goodbye, Electron logged off. He didn't care to listen to Phoenix any more.

Others did, however. Hundreds of kilometres away, in a special room secreted away inside a bland building in Canberra, Sergeant Michael Costello and Constable William Apro had been methodically capturing each and every electronic boast as it poured from Phoenix's phone. The two officers recorded the data transmissions pa.s.sing in and out of his computer. They then played this recording into their own modem and computer and created a text file they could save and use as evidence in court.

Both police officers had travelled north from Melbourne, where they worked with the AFP's Computer Crime Unit. Settling into their temporary desks with their PC and laptop, the officers began their secret eavesdropping work on 1 February 1990.

It was the first time the AFP had done a datatap. They were happy to bide their time, to methodically record Phoenix hacking into Berkeley, into Texas, into NASA, into a dozen computers around the world. The phone tap warrant was good for 60 days, which was more than enough time to secrete away a mountain of d.a.m.ning evidence against the egotistical Realm hacker. Time was on their side.

The officers worked the Operation Dabble job in shifts. Constable Apro arrived at the Telecommunications Intelligence Branch of the AFP at 8 p.m. Precisely ten hours later, at 6 the next morning, Sergeant Costello relieved Apro, who knocked off for a good sleep. Apro returned again at 8 p.m. to begin the night shift.

They were there all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Waiting and listening.

It was too funny. Erik Bloodaxe in Austin, Texas, couldn't stop laughing. In Melbourne, Phoenix's side hurt from laughing so much.

Phoenix loved to talk on the phone. He often called Erik, sometimes every day, and they spoke for ages. Phoenix didn't worry about cost; he wasn't paying for it. The call would appear on some poor sod's bill and he could sort it out with the phone company.

Sometimes Erik worried a little about whether Phoenix wasn't going to get himself in a jam making all these international calls. Not that he didn't like talking to the Australian; it was a hoot. Still, the concern sat there, unsettled, in the back of his mind. A few times he asked Phoenix about it.

'No prob. Hey, AT&T isn't an Australian company,' Phoenix would say.

'They can't do anything to me.' And Erik had let it rest at that.

For his part, Erik didn't dare call Phoenix, especially not since his little visit from the US Secret Service. On 1 March 1990, they burst into his home, with guns drawn, in a dawn raid. The agents searched everywhere, tearing the student house apart, but they didn't find anything incriminating. They did take Erik's $59 keyboard terminal with its chintzy little 300 baud modem, but they didn't get his main computer, because Erik knew they were coming.

The Secret Service had subpoenaed his academic records, and Erik had heard about it before the raid. So when the Secret Service arrived, Erik's stuff just wasn't there. It hadn't been there for a few weeks, but for Erik, they had been hard weeks. The hacker found himself suffering withdrawal symptoms, so he bought the cheapest home computer and modem he could find to tide him over.

That equipment was the only computer gear the Secret Service discovered, and they were not happy special agents. But without evidence, their hands were tied. No charges were laid.

Still, Erik thought he was probably being watched. The last thing he wanted was for Phoenix's number to appear on his home phone bill. So he let Phoenix call him, which the Australian did all the time. They often talked for hours when Erik was working nights. It was a slack job, just changing the back-up tapes on various computers and making sure they didn't jam. Perfect for a student. It left Erik hours of free time.

Erik frequently reminded Phoenix that his phone was probably tapped, but Phoenix just laughed. 'Yeah, well don't worry about it, mate. What are they going to do? Come and get me?'

After Erik put a hold on his own hacking activities, he lived vicariously, listening to Phoenix's exploits. The Australian called him with a technical problem or an interesting system, and then they discussed various strategies for getting into the machine. However, unlike Electron's talks with Phoenix, conversations with Erik weren't only about hacking. They chatted about life, about what Australia was like, about girls, about what was in the newspaper that day. It was easy to talk to Erik. He had a big ego, like most hackers, but it was inoffensive, largely couched in his self-effacing humour.

Phoenix often made Erik laugh. Like the time he got Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, who wrote The Cuckoo's Egg. The book described his pursuit of a German hacker who had broken into the computer system Stoll managed at Lawrence Berkeley Labs near San Francisco. The hacker had been part of the same hacking ring as Pengo. Stoll took a hard line on hacking, a position which did not win him popularity in the underground. Both Phoenix and Erik had read Stoll's book, and one day they were sitting around chatting about it.

'You know, it's really stupid that Cliffy put his email address in his book,' Phoenix said. 'Hmm, why don't I go check?'

Sure enough, Phoenix called Erik back about a day later. 'Well, I got root on Cliffy's machine,' he began slowly, then he burst out laughing. 'And I changed the message of the day. Now it reads, "It looks like the Cuckoo's got egg on his face"!'

It was uproariously funny. Stoll, the most famous hacker-catcher in the world, had been j.a.ped! It was the funniest thing Erik had heard in weeks.

But it was not nearly so amusing as what Erik told Phoenix later about the New York Times. The paper had published an article on 19 March suggesting a hacker had written some sort of virus or worm which was breaking into dozens of computers.

'Listen to this,' Erik had said, reading Phoenix the lead paragraph, '"A computer intruder has written a program that has entered dozens of computers in a nationwide network in recent weeks, automatically stealing electronic doc.u.ments containing users' pa.s.swords and erasing files to help conceal itself."'

Phoenix was falling off his chair he was laughing so hard. A program?

Which was automatically doing this? No. It wasn't an automated program, it was the Australians! It was the Realm hackers! G.o.d, this was funny.

'Wait--there's more! It says, "Another rogue program shows a widespread vulnerability". I laughed my a.s.s off,' Erik said, struggling to get the words out.

'A rogue program! Who wrote the article?'

'A John Markoff,' Erik answered, wiping his eyes. 'I called him up.'

'You did? What did you say?' Phoenix tried to gather himself together.

'"John," I said, "You know that article you wrote on page 12 of the Times? It's wrong! There's no rogue program attacking the Internet."

He goes, "What is it then?" "It's not a virus or a worm," I said.

"It's PEOPLE."'

Erik started laughing uncontrollably again.

'Then Markoff sounds really stunned, and he goes, "People?" And I said, "Yeah, people." Then he said, "How do you know?" And I said, "Because, John, I KNOW."'

Phoenix erupted in laughter again. The Times reporter obviously had worms on his mind, since the author of the famous Internet worm, Robert T. Morris Jr, had just been tried and convicted in the US. He was due to be sentenced in May.

US investigators had tracked the hacker's connections, looping through site after site in a burrowing manner which they a.s.sumed belonged to a worm. The idea of penetrating so many sites all in such a short time clearly baffled the investigators, who concluded it must be a program rather than human beings launching the attacks.

'Yeah,' Erik continued, 'And then Markoff said, "Can you get me to talk to them?" And I said I'd see what I could do.'

'Yeah,' Phoenix said. 'Go tell him, yes. Yeah, I gotta talk to this idiot. I'll set him straight.'

Page one, the New York Times, 21 March 1990: 'Caller Says he Broke Computers' Barriers to Taunt the Experts', by John Markoff.

True, the article was below the crease--on the bottom half of the page--but at least it was in column 1, the place a reader turns to first.

Phoenix was chuffed. He'd made the front page of the New York Times.

'The man identified himself only as an Australian named Dave,' the article said. Phoenix chuckled softly. Dave Lissek was the pseudonym he'd used. Of course, he wasn't the only one using the name Dave. When Erik first met the Australians on Altos, he marvelled at how they all called themselves Dave. I'm Dave, he's Dave, we're all Dave, they told him. It was just easier that way, they said.

The article revealed that 'Dave' had attacked Spaf's and Stoll's machines, and that the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory at Harvard University--where Stoll now worked--had pulled its computers off the Internet as a result of the break in. Markoff had even included the 'egg on his face' story Phoenix had described to him.

Phoenix laughed at how well he had thumbed his nose at Cliffy Stoll.

This article would show him up all right. It felt so good, seeing himself in print that way. He did that. That was him there in black in white, for all the world to see. He had outsmarted the world's best known hacker-catcher, and he had smeared the insult across the front page of the most prestigious newspaper in America.

And Markoff reported that he had been in Spaf's system too! Phoenix glowed happily. Better still, Markoff had quoted 'Dave' on the subject: 'The caller said ... "It used to be the security guys chasing the hackers. Now it's the hackers chasing the security people."'

The article went on: 'Among the inst.i.tutions believed to have been penetrated by the intruder are the Los Alamos National Laboratories, Harvard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Boston University and the University of Texas.' Yes, that list sounded about right. Well, for the Australians as a group anyway. Even if Phoenix hadn't masterminded or even penetrated some of those himself, he was happy to take the credit in the Times.

This was a red-letter day for Phoenix.

Electron, however, was furious. How could Phoenix be so stupid? He knew that Phoenix had an ego, that he talked too much, and that his tendency to brag had grown worse over time, fed by the skyrocketing success of the Australian hackers. Electron knew all of that, but he still couldn't quite believe that Phoenix had gone so far as to strut and preen like a show pony for the New York Times.

To think that he had a.s.sociated with Phoenix. Electron was disgusted.