Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Part 8

All the while, the astronomers, physicists and engineers who worked in this NASA office wouldn't be able to work on their computers.

At least the SPAN team was better prepared for the worm this time.

They had braced themselves psychologically for a possible return attack. Contact information for the network had been updated. And the general DECNET internet community was aware of the worm and was lending a hand wherever possible.

Help came from a system manager in France, a country which seemed to be of special interest to the worm's author. The manager, Bernard Perrot of Inst.i.tut de Physique Nucleaire in Orsay, had obtained a copy of the worm, inspected it and took special notice of the creature's poor error checking ability. This was the worm's true Achilles' heel.

The worm was trained to go after the RIGHTSLIST database, the list of all the people who have accounts on the computer. What if someone moved the database by renaming it and put a dummy database in its place? The worm would, in theory, go after the dummy, which could be designed with a hidden bomb. When the worm sniffed out the dummy, and latched onto it, the creature would explode and die. If it worked, the SPAN team would not have to depend on the worm killing itself, as they had during the first invasion. They would have the satisfaction of destroying the thing themselves.

Ron Tencati procured a copy of the French manager's worm-killing program and gave it to McMahon, who set up a sort of mini-laboratory experiment. He cut the worm into pieces and extracted the relevant bits. This allowed him to test the French worm-killing program with little risk of the worm escaping and doing damage. The French program worked wonderfully. Out it went. The second version of the worm was so much more virulent, getting it out of SPAN was going to take considerably longer than the first time around. Finally, almost two weeks after the second onslaught, the w.a.n.k worm had been eradicated from SPAN.

By McMahon's estimate, the w.a.n.k worm had incurred up to half a million dollars in costs. Most of these were through people wasting time and resources chasing the worm instead of doing their normal jobs. The worm was, in his view, a crime of theft. 'People's time and resources had been wasted,' he said. 'The theft was not the result of the accident. This was someone who deliberately went out to make a mess.

'In general, I support prosecuting people who think breaking into machines is fun. People like that don't seem to understand what kind of side effects that kind of fooling around has. They think that breaking into a machine and not touching anything doesn't do anything.

That is not true. You end up wasting people's time. People are dragged into the office at strange hours. Reports have to be written. A lot of yelling and screaming occurs. You have to deal with law enforcement.

These are all side effects of someone going for a joy ride in someone else's system, even if they don't do any damage. Someone has to pay the price.'

McMahon never found out who created the w.a.n.k worm. Nor did he ever discover what he intended to prove by releasing it. The creator's motives were never clear and, if it had been politically inspired, no-one took credit.

The w.a.n.k worm left a number of unanswered questions in its wake, a number of loose ends which still puzzle John McMahon. Was the hacker behind the worm really protesting against NASA's launch of the plutonium-powered Galileo s.p.a.ce probe? Did the use of the word 'w.a.n.k'--a most un-American word--mean the hacker wasn't American? Why had the creator recreated the worm and released it a second time? Why had no-one, no political or other group, claimed responsibility for the w.a.n.k worm?

One of the many details which remained an enigma was contained in the version of the worm used in the second attack. The worm's creator had replaced the original process name, NETW_, with a new one, presumably to thwart the anti-w.a.n.k program. McMahon figured the original process name stood for 'netw.a.n.k'--a reasonable guess at the hacker's intended meaning. The new process name, however, left everyone on the SPAN team scratching their heads: it didn't seem to stand for anything. The letters formed an unlikely set of initials for someone's name. No-one recognised it as an acronym for a saying or an organisation. And it certainly wasn't a proper word in the English language. It was a complete mystery why the creator of the w.a.n.k worm, the hacker who launched an invasion into hundreds of NASA and DOE computers, should choose this weird word.

The word was 'OILZ'.

Chapter 2 -- The Corner Pub.

You talk of times of peace for all; and then prepare for war.

-- from 'Blossom of Blood', Species Deceases.

It is not surprising the SPAN security team would miss the mark. It is not surprising, for example, that these officials should to this day be p.r.o.nouncing the 'Oilz' version of the w.a.n.k worm as 'oil zee'. It is also not surprising that they hypothesised the worm's creator chose the word 'Oilz' because the modifications made to the last version made it slippery, perhaps even oily.

Likely as not, only an Australian would see the worm's link to the lyrics of Midnight Oil.

This was the world's first worm with a political message, and the second major worm in the history of the worldwide computer networks.

It was also the trigger for the creation of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams.2 FIRST was an international security alliance allowing governments, universities and commercial organisations to share information about computer network security incidents. Yet, NASA and the US Department of Energy were half a world away from finding the creator of the w.a.n.k worm. Even as investigators sniffed around electronic trails leading to France, it appears the perpetrator was hiding behind his computer and modem in Australia.

Geographically, Australia is a long way from anywhere. To Americans, it conjures up images of fuzzy marsupials, not computer hackers.

American computer security officials, like those at NASA and the US Department of Energy, had other barriers as well. They function in a world of concretes, of appointments made and kept, of real names, business cards and official t.i.tles. The computer underground, by contrast, is a veiled world populated by characters slipping in and out of the half-darkness. It is not a place where people use their real names. It is not a place where people give out real personal details.

It is, in fact, not so much a place as a s.p.a.ce. It is ephemeral, intangible--a foggy labyrinth of unmapped, winding streets through which one occasionally ascertains the contours of a fellow traveller.

When Ron Tencati, the manager in charge of NASA SPAN security, realised that NASA's computers were being attacked by an intruder, he rang the FBI. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Computer Crime Unit fired off a stream of questions. How many computers had been attacked? Where were they? Who was behind the attack? The FBI told Tencati, 'keep us informed of the situation'. Like the CIAC team in the Department of Energy, it appears the FBI didn't have much knowledge of VMS, the primary computer operating system used in SPAN.

But the FBI knew enough to realise the worm attack was potentially very serious. The winding electronic trail pointed vaguely to a foreign computer system and, before long, the US Secret Service was involved. Then the French secret service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, or DST, jumped into the fray.

DST and the FBI began working together on the case. A casual observer with the benefit of hindsight might see different motivations driving the two government agencies. The FBI wanted to catch the perpetrator.

The DST wanted to make it clear that the infamous w.a.n.k worm attack on the world's most prestigious s.p.a.ce agency did not originate in France.

In the best tradition of cloak-and-dagger government agencies, the FBI and DST people established two communication channels--an official channel and an unofficial one. The official channel involved emba.s.sies, attaches, formal communiques and interminable delays in getting answers to the simplest questions. The unofficial channel involved a few phone calls and some fast answers.

Ron Tencati had a colleague named Chris on the SPAN network in France, which was the largest user of SPAN in Europe. Chris was involved in more than just science computer networks. He had certain contacts in the French government and seemed to be involved in their computer networks. So, when the FBI needed technical information for its investigation--the kind of information likely to be sanitised by some emba.s.sy bureaucrat--one of its agents rang up Ron Tencati. 'Ron, ask your friend this,' the FBI would say. And Ron would.

'Chris, the FBI wants to know this,' Tencati would tell his colleague on SPAN France. Then Chris would get the necessary information. He would call Tencati back, saying, 'Ron, here is the answer. Now, the DST wants to know that'. And off Ron would go in search of information requested by the DST.

The investigation proceeded in this way, with each helping the other through backdoor channels. But the Americans' investigation was headed toward the inescapable conclusion that the attack on NASA had originated from a French computer. The worm may have simply travelled through the French computer from yet another system, but the French machine appeared to be the sole point of infection for NASA.

The French did not like this outcome. Not one bit. There was no way that the worm had come from France. Ce n'est pas vrai.

Word came back from the French that they were sure the worm had come from the US. Why else would it have been programmed to mail details of all computer accounts it penetrated around the world back to a US machine, the computer known as GEMPAK? Because the author of the worm was an American, of course! Therefore it is not our problem, the French told the Americans. It is your problem.

Most computer security experts know it is standard practice among hackers to create the most tangled trail possible between the hacker and the hacked. It makes it very difficult for people like the FBI to trace who did it. So it would be difficult to draw definite conclusions about the nationality of the hacker from the location of a hacker's information drop-off point--a location the hacker no doubt figured would be investigated by the authorities almost immediately after the worm's release.

Tencati had established the French connection from some computer logs showing NASA under attack very early on Monday, 16 October. The logs were important because they were relatively clear. As the worm had procreated during that day, it had forced computers all over the network to attack each other in ever greater numbers. By 11 a.m. it was almost impossible to tell where any one attack began and the other ended.

Some time after the first attack, DST sent word that certain agents were going to be in Washington DC regarding other matters. They wanted a meeting with the FBI. A representative from the NASA Inspector General's Office would attend the meeting, as would someone from NASA SPAN security.

Tencati was sure he could show the w.a.n.k worm attack on NASA originated in France. But he also knew he had to doc.u.ment everything, to have exact answers to every question and counter-argument put forward by the French secret service agents at the FBI meeting. When he developed a timeline of attacks, he found that the GEMPAK machine showed X.25 network connection, via another system, from a French computer around the same time as the w.a.n.k worm attack. He followed the scent and contacted the manager of that system. Would he help Tencati? Mais oui.

The machine is at your disposal, Monsieur Tencati.

Tencati had never used an X.25 network before; it had a unique set of commands unlike any other type of computer communications network. He wanted to retrace the steps of the worm, but he needed help. So he called his friend Bob Lyons at DEC to walk him through the process.

What Tencati found startled him. There were traces of the worm on the machine all right, the familiar pattern of login failures as the worm attempted to break into different accounts. But these remnants of the w.a.n.k worm were not dated 16 October or any time immediately around then. The logs showed worm-related activity up to two weeks before the attack on NASA. This computer was not just a pa.s.s-through machine the worm had used to launch its first attack on NASA. This was the development machine.

Ground zero.

Tencati went into the meeting with DST at the FBI offices prepared. He knew the accusations the French were going to put forward. When he presented the results of his sleuthwork, the French secret service couldn't refute it, but they dropped their own bombsh.e.l.l. Yes they told him, you might be able to point to a French system as ground zero for the attack, but our investigations reveal incoming X.25 connections from elsewhere which coincided with the timing of the development of the w.a.n.k worm.

The connections came from Australia.

The French had satisfied themselves that it wasn't a French hacker who had created the w.a.n.k worm. Ce n'est pas notre problem. At least, it's not our problem any more.

It is here that the trail begins to go cold. Law enforcement and computer security people in the US and Australia had ideas about just who had created the w.a.n.k worm. Fingers were pointed, accusations were made, but none stuck. At the end of the day, there was coincidence and innuendo, but not enough evidence to launch a case. Like many Australian hackers, the creator of the w.a.n.k worm had emerged from the shadows of the computer underground, stood momentarily in hazy silhouette, and then disappeared again.

The Australian computer underground in the late 1980s was an environment which sp.a.w.ned and shaped the author of the w.a.n.k worm.

Affordable home computers, such as the Apple IIe and the Commodore 64, made their way into ordinary suburban families. While these computers were not widespread, they were at least in a price range which made them attainable by dedicated computer enthusiasts.

In 1988, the year before the w.a.n.k worm attack on NASA, Australia was on an upswing. The country was celebrating its bicentennial. The economy was booming. Trade barriers and old regulatory structures were coming down. Crocodile Dundee had already burst on the world movie scene and was making Australians the flavour of the month in cities like LA and New York. The mood was optimistic. People had a sense they were going places. Australia, a peaceful country of seventeen or so million people, poised on the edge of Asia but with the order of a Western European democracy, was on its way up. Perhaps for the first time, Australians had lost their cultural cringe, a unique type of insecurity alien to can-do cultures such as that found in the US.

Exploration and experimentation require confidence and, in 1988, confidence was something Australia had finally attained.

Yet this new-found confidence and optimism did not subdue Australia's tradition of cynicism toward large inst.i.tutions. The two coexisted, suspended in a strange paradox. Australian humour, deeply rooted in a scepticism of all things serious and sacred, continued to poke fun at upright inst.i.tutions with a depth of irreverence surprising to many foreigners. This cynicism of large, respected inst.i.tutions coursed through the newly formed Australian computer underground without dampening its excitement or optimism for the brave new world of computers in the least.

In 1988, the Australian computer underground thrived like a vibrant Asian street bazaar. In that year it was still a realm of place not s.p.a.ce. Customers visited their regular stalls, haggled over goods with vendors, b.u.mped into friends and waved across crowded paths to acquaintances. The market was as much a place to socialise as it was to shop. People ducked into tiny coffee houses or corner bars for intimate chats. The latest imported goods, laid out on tables like reams of bright Chinese silks, served as conversation starters. And, like every street market, many of the best items were tucked away, hidden in antic.i.p.ation of the appearance of that one customer or friend most favoured by the trader. The currency of the underground was not money; it was information. People didn't share and exchange information to acc.u.mulate monetary wealth; they did it to win respect--and to buy a thrill.

The members of the Australian computer underground met on bulletin board systems, known as BBSes. Simple things by today's standards, BBSes were often composed of a souped-up Apple II computer, a single modem and a lone telephone line. But they drew people from all walks of life. Teenagers from working-cla.s.s neighbourhoods and those from the exclusive private schools. University students. People in their twenties groping their way through first jobs. Even some professional people in their thirties and forties who spent weekends poring over computer manuals and building primitive computers in spare rooms. Most regular BBS users were male. Sometimes a user's sister would find her way into the BBS world, often in search of a boyfriend. Mission accomplished, she might disappear from the scene for weeks, perhaps months, presumably until she required another visit.

The BBS users had a few things in common. They were generally of above average intelligence--usually with a strong technical slant--and they were obsessed with their chosen hobby. They had to be. It often took 45 minutes of attack dialling a busy BBS's lone phone line just to visit the computer system for perhaps half an hour. Most serious BBS hobbyists went through this routine several times each day.