Underground by Suelette Dreyfus (books to get back into reading txt) 📖

of hackers. They thought it would be cool to hack Altos. It wasn’t that easy to get Altos shell access, which Theorem had, and most people had to settle for using one of the `guest’ accounts. But it was much easier to hack Altos from a shell account than from a `guest’ account. Theorem’s account would be the targeted jump-off point.

How did MOD get Theorem’s Altos password? Most probably they were watching one of the X.25 gateways she used as she passed through Tymnet on her way to Altos. Maybe the MOD boys sniffed her password en route. Or maybe they were watching the Tymnet security officials who were watching that gateway.

In the end it didn’t matter how MOD got Theorem’s password on Altos. What mattered was that they changed her password. When Theorem couldn’t get into Altos she was beside herself. She felt like a junkie going cold turkey. It was too much. And of course she couldn’t reach Par. Because he was on the run, she had to wait for him to call her. In fact she couldn’t reach any of her other friends on Altos to ask for help. How was she going to find them? They were all hackers. They chose handles so no-one would know their real names.

What Theorem didn’t know was that, not only had she lost access to Altos, but the MOD boys were using her account to hack the Altos system. To the outside world it appeared as though she was doing it.

Theorem finally managed to get a third-hand message to Gandalf, a well-known British hacker. She sought him out for two reasons. First, he was a good friend and was therefore likely to help her out. Second, Gandalf had root access on Altos, which meant he could give her a new password or account.

Gandalf had established quite a reputation for himself in the computer underground through the hacking group 8lgm—The Eight-Legged Groove Machine, named after a British band. He and his friend, fellow British hacker Pad, had the best four legs in the chorus line. They were a world-class act, and certainly some of the best talent to come out of the British hacking scene. But Gandalf and, to a lesser extent, Pad had also developed a reputation for being arrogant. They rubbed some of the American hackers the wrong way. Not that Pad and Gandalf seemed to care. Their attitude was: We’re good. We know it. Bugger off.

Gandalf disabled Theorem’s account on Altos. He couldn’t very well just change the password and then send the new one through the extended grapevine that Theorem had used to get a message through to him. Clearly, someone had targeted her account specifically. No way was he going to broadcast a new password for her account throughout the underground. But the trouble was that neither Par nor Theorem knew what Gandalf had done.

Meanwhile, Par called Theorem and got an earful. An angry Par vowed to find out just who the hell had been messing with her account.

When the MOD boys told Par they were the culprits, he was a bit surprised because he had always been on good terms with them. Par told them how upset Theorem had been, how she gave him an earful. Then an extraordinary thing happened. Corrupt, the toughest, baddest guy in MOD, the black kid from the roughest part of New York, the hacker who gave shit to everyone because he could, apologised to Par.

The MOD guys never apologised, even when they knew they were in the wrong. Apologies never got anyone very far on a New York City street. It was an attitude thing. `I’m sorry, man’ from Corrupt was the equivalent of a normal person licking the mud from the soles of your shoes.

The new password was: M0Dm0dM0D. That’s the kind of guys they were.

Par was just signing off to try out the new password when Corrupt jumped in.

`Yeah, and ah, Par, there’s something you should know.’

`Yeah?’ Par answered, anxious to go.

`I checked out her mail. There was some stuff in it.’

Theorem’s letters? Stuff? `What kind of stuff?’ he asked.

`Letters from Gandalf.’

`Yeah?’

`Friendly letters. Real friendly.’

Par wanted to know, but at the same time, he didn’t. He could have arranged root access on Altos long ago if he’d really wanted it. But he didn’t. He didn’t want it because it would mean he could access Theorem’s mail. And Par knew that if he could, he would. Theorem was popular on Altos and, being the suspicious type, Par knew he would probably take something perfectly innocent and read it the wrong way. Then he would get in a fight with Theorem, and their time together was too precious for that.

`Too friendly,’ Corrupt went on. It must have been hard for him to tell Par. Snagging a friend’s girlfriend’s password and breaking into her account was one thing. There wasn’t much wrong with that. But breaking that kind of news, well, that was harsh. Especially since Corrupt had worked with Gandalf in 8lgm.

`Thanks,’ Par said finally. Then he took off.

When Par tried out the MOD password, it didn’t work of course, because Gandalf had disabled the account. But Par didn’t know that. Finding out that Theorem’s account was disabled didn’t bother him, but discovering who disabled it for her didn’t make Par all that happy. Still, when he confronted Theorem, she denied that anything was going on between her and Gandalf.

What could Par do? He could believe Theorem or he could doubt her. Believing her was hard, but doubting her was painful. So he chose to believe her.

The incident made Theorem take a long look at Altos. It was doing bad things to her life. In the days that she was locked out of the German chat system, she had made the unpleasant discovery that she was completely addicted. And she didn’t like it at all. Staring at her life with fresh eyes, she realised she had been ignoring her friends and her life in Switzerland. What on earth was she doing, spending every night in front of a computer screen?

So Theorem made a tough decision.

She decided to stop using Altos forever.

Bad things seemed to happen to The Parmaster around Thanksgiving.

In late November 1991, Par flew up from Virginia Beach to New York. An acquaintance named Morty Rosenfeld, who hung out with the MOD hackers a bit, had invited him to come for a visit. Par thought a trip to the City would do him good.

Morty wasn’t exactly Par’s best friend, but he was all right. He had been charged by the Feds a few months earlier for selling a password to a credit record company which resulted in credit card fraud. Par didn’t go in for selling passwords, but to each his own. Morty wasn’t too bad in the right dose. He had a place on Coney Island, which was hardly the Village in Manhattan, but close enough, and he had a fold-out sofa bed. It beat sleeping on the floor somewhere else.

Par hung out with a Morty and a bunch of his friends, drinking and goofing around on Morty’s computer.

One morning, Par woke up with a vicious hangover. His stomach was growling and there was nothing edible in the fridge, so he rang up and ordered pork fried rice from a Chinese take-away. Then he threw on some clothes and sat on the end of the sofa-bed, smoking a cigarette while he waited. He didn’t start smoking until he was nineteen, some time late into his second year on the run. It calmed his nerves.

There was a knock at the front door. Par’s stomach grumbled in response. As he walked toward the front door, he thought Pork Fried Rice, here I come. But when Par opened the front door, there was something else waiting for him.

The Secret Service.

Two men. An older, distinguished gentleman standing on the left and a young guy on the right. The young guy’s eyes opened wide when he saw Par.

Suddenly, the young guy pushed Par, and kept pushing him. Small, hard, fast thrusts. Par couldn’t get his balance. Each time he almost got his footing, the agent shoved the hacker backward again until he landed against the wall. The agent spun Par around so his face pressed against the wall and pushed a gun into his kidney. Then he slammed handcuffs on Par and started frisking him for weapons.

Par looked at Morty, now sobbing in the corner, and thought, You narced on me.

Once Par was safely cuffed, the agents flashed their badges to him. Then they took him outside, escorted him into a waiting car and drove into Manhattan. They pulled up in front of the World Trade Center and when Par got out the young agent swapped the cuffs so Par’s hands were in front of him.

As the agents escorted the handcuffed fugitive up a large escalator, the corporate world stared at the trio. Business men and women in prim navy suits, secretaries and office boys all watched wide-eyed from the opposite escalator. And if the handcuffs weren’t bad enough, the younger Secret Service agent was wearing a nylon jacket with a noticeable gun-shaped lump in the front pouch.

Why are these guys bringing me in the front entrance? Par kept thinking. Surely there must be a backdoor, a car park back entrance. Something not quite so public.

The view from any reasonably high floor of the World Trade Center is breathtaking, but Par never got a chance to enjoy the vista. He was hustled into a windowless room and handcuffed to a chair. The agents moved in and out, sorting out paperwork details. They uncuffed him briefly while they inked his fingers and rolled them across sheets of paper. Then they made him give handwriting samples, first his right hand then his left.

Par didn’t mind being cuffed to the chair so much, but he found the giant metal cage in the middle of the fingerprinting room deeply disturbing. It reminded him of an animal cage, the kind used in old zoos.

The two agents who arrested him left the room, but another one came in. And the third agent was far from friendly. He began playing the bad cop, railing at Par, shouting at him, trying to unnerve him. But no amount of yelling from the agent could rile Par as much as the nature of the questions he asked.

The agent didn’t ask a single question about Citibank. Instead, he demanded to hear everything Par knew about TRW.

All Par’s worst nightmares about the killer spy satellite, about becoming the man who knew too much, rushed through his mind.

Par refused to answer. He just sat silently, staring at the agent.

Eventually, the older agent came back into the room, dragged the pitbull agent away and took him outside for a whispered chat. After that, the pitbull agent was all sweetness and light with Par. Not another word about TRW.

Par wondered why a senior guy from the Secret Service would tell his minion to clam up about the defence contractor? What was behind the sudden silence? The abrupt shift alarmed Par almost as much as the questions had in the first place.

The agent told Par he would be remanded in custody while awaiting extradition to California. After all the paperwork had been completed, they released him from the handcuffs and let him stand to stretch. Par asked for a cigarette and one of the agents gave him one. Then a couple of other agents—junior guys—came in.

The junior agents were very friendly. One of them even shook Par’s hand and introduced himself. They knew all about the hacker. They knew his voice from outgoing messages on voicemail boxes he had created for himself. They knew what he looked like from