Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 65

'I went to the trouble of extracting those records from it.' s.e.xton looked pleased with himself for hacking Anthrax's speed-dial numbers from the mobile. 'Number 22 is of some interest to myself. It comes up as Aaron. Could that be the person you referred to before as Aaron in South Australia?'

'Yes, but he is always moving house. He is a hard person to track down.'

s.e.xton went through a few more numbers, most of which Anthrax hedged.

He asked Anthrax questions about his manipulation of the phone system, particularly about the way he made free calls overseas using Australian companies' 008 numbers.

When Anthrax had patiently explained how it all worked, s.e.xton went through some more speed-dial numbers.

'Number 43. Do you recognise that one?'

'That's the Swedish Party Line.'

'What about these other numbers? Such as 78? And 30?'

'I'm not sure. I couldn't say what any of these are. It's been so long,' Anthrax paused, sensing the pressure from the other side of the table. 'These ones here, they are numbers in my town. But I don't know who. Very often, 'cause I don't have any pen and paper with me, I just plug a number into the phone.'

s.e.xton looked unhappy. He decided to go in a little harder. 'I'm going to be pretty blunt. So far you have admitted to the 008s but I think you are understating your knowledge and your experience when it comes to these sort of offences.' He caught himself. 'Not offences. But your involvement in all of this ... I think you have got a little bit more ... I'm not saying you are lying, don't get me wrong, but you tend to be pulling yourself away from how far you were really into this. And how far everyone looked up to you.'

There was the gauntlet, thrown down on the table. Anthrax picked it up.

'They looked up to me? That was just a perception. To be honest, I don't know that much. I couldn't tell you anything about telephone exchanges or anything like that. In the past, I guess the reason they might look up to me in the sense of a leader is because I was doing this, as you are probably aware, quite a bit in the past, and subsequently built up a reputation. Since then I decided I wouldn't do it again.'

'Since this?' s.e.xton was quick off the mark.

'No. Before. I just said, "I don't want anything to do with this any more. It's just stupid". When I broke up with my girlfriend ... I just got dragged into it again. I'm not trying to say that I am any less responsible for any of this but I will say I didn't originate any of these 008s. They were all scanned by other people. But I made calls and admittedly I did a lot of stupid things.'

But s.e.xton was like a dog with a bone.

'I just felt that you were tending to ... I don't know if it's because your dad's here or ... I have read stuff that "Anthrax was a legend when it came to this, and he was a scanner, and he was the man to talk to about X.25, Tymnet, hacking, Unix. The whole kit and kaboodle".'

Anthrax didn't take the bait. Cops always try that line. Play on a hacker's ego, get them to brag. It was so transparent.

'It's not true,' he answered. 'I know nothing about ... I can't program. I have an Amiga with one meg of memory. I have no formal background in computers whatsoever.'

That part was definitely true. Everything was self-taught. Well, almost everything. He did take one programming cla.s.s at uni, but he failed it. He went to the library to do extra research, used in his final project for the course. Most of his cla.s.smates wrote simple 200-line programs with few functions; his ran to 500 lines and had lots of special functions. But the lecturer flunked him. She told him, 'The functions in your program were not taught in this course'.

s.e.xton asked Anthrax if he was into carding, which he denied emphatically. Then s.e.xton headed back into scanning. How much had Anthrax done? Had he given scanned numbers to other hackers? Anthrax was evasive, and both cops were getting impatient.

'What I am trying to get at is that I believe that, through your scanning, you are helping other people break the law by promoting this sort of thing.' s.e.xton had shown his hand.

'No more than a telephone directory would be a.s.sisting someone, because it's really just a list. I didn't actually break anything. I just looked at it.'

'These voice mailbox systems obviously belong to people. What would you do when you found a VMB?'

'Just play with it. Give it to someone and say, "Have a look at this.

It is interesting," or whatever.'

'When you say play with it you would break the code out to the VMB?'

'No. Just have a look around. I'm not very good at breaking VMBs.'

s.e.xton tried a different tack. 'What are 1-900 numbers? On the back of that doc.u.ment there is a 1-900 number. What are they generally for?'

Easy question. 'In America they like cost $10 a minute. You can ring them up, I think, and get all sorts of information, party lines, etc.'

'It's a conference type of call?'

'Yes.'

'Here is another doc.u.ment, contained in a clear plastic sleeve labelled AS/AB/S/1. Is this a scan? Do you recognise your handwriting?'

'Yes, it's in my handwriting. Once again it's the same sort of scan.

It's just dialling some commercial numbers and noting them.'

'And once you found something, what would you do with it?'

Anthrax had no intention of being painted as some sort of ringleader of a scanning gang. He was a sociable loner, not a part of a team.

'I'd just look at it, like in the case of this one here--630. I just punched in a few numbers and it said that 113 diverts somewhere, 115 says goodbye, etc. I'd just do that and I probably never came back to it again.'

'And you believe that if I pick up the telephone book, I would get all this information?'

'No. It's just a list of numbers in the same sense that a telephone book is.'

'What about a 1-800 number?'

'That is the same as a 0014.'

'If you rang a 1-800 number, where would you go?'

Anthrax wondered if the Computer Crimes Unit gained most of its technical knowledge from interviews with hackers.

'You can either do 0014 or you can do 1-800. It's just the same.'

'Is it Canada--0014?'

'It's everywhere.' Oops. Don't sound too c.o.c.ky. 'Isn't it?'

'No, I'm not familiar.' Which is just what Anthrax was thinking.

s.e.xton moved on. 'On the back of that doc.u.ment there is more type scans ...'

'It's all just the same thing. Just take a note of what is there. In this case, box 544 belongs to this woman ...'

'So, once again, you just release this type of information on the bridge?'

'Not all of it. Most of it I would probably keep to myself and never look at it again. I was bored. Is it illegal to scan?'

'I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm just trying to show that you were really into this. I'm building a picture and I am gradually getting to a point and I'm going to build a picture to show that for a while there ...' s.e.xton then interrupted himself and veered down a less confrontational course. 'I'm not saying you are doing it now, but back then, when all these offences occurred, you were really into scanning telephone systems, be it voice mailboxes ... I'm not saying you found the 008s but you ... anything to b.u.g.g.e.r up Telecom. You were really getting into it and you were helping other people.'