textfiles/etext/MODERN/boh-10f8.txt

THE HACKER BIBLE

CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB

[Published by Der Gr<47>ne Zweig 98]

[Text facing title page:  This page was intentionally/unintentionally* left
blank.   *Underline where appropriate]

[p 8]

Imprint

The Hacker Bible
Der Gr<47>ne Zweig 98
Edited by Chaos Computer Club
DATENSCHLEUDER editorial board
Schwenckestr. 85
D-2000 Hamburg 13
Datex-P.:  IMCA-Chaos-Team
Btx:  *655321
Typesetting:  Buchmaschine, Hamburg
Layout:  Ronald Ripchen & Wau
Illustrations:  Unless otherwise indicated, Chaos Reality Service
Front cover design:  Mali & Werner, based on a design by Fredi Brodmann
(cartoonist), Munich
Rear cover design:  Michael Meyer
Printing:  Fuldaer Verlagsanstalt

Edited by Chaos Computer Club, Hamburg
Published by Gr<47>ne Kraft Medienexperimente
Werner Pieper, D-6941 L<>hrbach

ISBN 3-922708-98-6

The articles in this book are protected by copyright.  All rights, especially
those of translation into foreign languages, are reserved.  No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form--by photocopy, microfilm or any other
process--or transmitted in a language used by machines--especially data
processing systems--without the written consent of the publisher.
Rights to reproduction through reading, radio and television broadcast,
magnetic tape processes or similar methods are also reserved.

Single photocopies of individual articles or parts thereof may be made only for
personal or other private use.  Every copy produced or used by a commercial
enterprise is used for commercial purposes in accordance with 54 (2),
Copyright Act, which requires payment of a fee to VG WORT, Academic Department,
Goethestr. 49, D-8000 Munich 2, from which information on the individual
payment procedures can be requested.
For electronic information systems (mailboxes, etc.), our conditions for
distribution as published in IMCA generally apply.
With respect to the acquisition, setup and operation of receivers, radio sets,
wireless microphones and other radio devices, as well as telephones and data
transmission equipment and--last but not least--computers, especially for
intervention in the postal network of the Federal Republic of Germany, the
pertinent legal and postal provisions are applicable.

The authors or developers are responsible for structural directions, circuits
and programs in the Hacker Bible.  The editors have examined the manuscripts,
circuits and programs with great care (in legal terms as well), but are unable
to accept either legal responsibility or any liability for errors in the text,
in wiring diagrams, structural diagrams, parts lists, program listings, etc.
that may result in the inability to function of or even damage to structural
elements, users or living and dead material.

All material in the Hacker Bible is published without regard for any patents,
and brand names are used without any guarantee of free use.

[p 9]

Preface to the first edition

The Hacker Bible, Part 1, is intended not only as documentation on the use of
technology--in particular new media--but also as a work on the prospects,
opportunities and dangers of telecommunications; this was our basic premise in
compiling this book.  It is obvious that hackers are anything but typical. 
Much in this book will be considered by ... to be disturbing.  In
semiconductors, disruptive atoms play a critical role, but no technician would
think of cursing these disruptive atoms for getting in the way.

We are uncomfortable, and exhibit, as the Bundespost [FRG federal postal
service] says, atypical user behavior.  We feel that this is necessary.  The
more sterile our environment becomes, the more necessary it is to put life into
it.  This began with the founding of the Chaos Computer Club around 4 years
ago.  The next decisive step was the startup of publication of DATENSCHLEUDER
and the cultivation of electronic information services such as BTX
[Bildschirmtext, the Bundespost videotex system] and blackboards in mailboxes
and bulletin boards, culminating in the Chaos Communication Congress '84.  Via
the data networks, worldwide contacts were made, a loose conglomeration of
people from a wide range of areas, who started thinking about the prospects,
opportunities but also the dangers of a varied use of new technologies, as well
as its effects.

The Hacker Bible documents part of this development, and is intended to
disseminate the collective body of thought, in order to further advance what
has been begun and to create new ideas.

Many people made extraordinary contributions to the completion of this work,
and we would like to thank them here.  Of particular note is (besides the many
other publishers who courteously allowed us to reprint) TAZ, in whose offices
the CCC was founded.  At the time, there was no editor who understood it, but
somehow ever since the founding there was always a woman from TAZ technical
division there.

Our gratitude to our publisher is more than simple courtesy.  He was publishing
hacker pieces when no one else here knew anything about it.  The Bible was
assembled at his house.  His daughter had just turned eight days old.

We were approached by several publishers who wanted to back "any" CCC book. 
Most of them offered better initial printings, sales in department stores, more
money and so on.  However, the Hacker Bible would have been either half as long
or twice as expensive.

Our requests for advertising by computer companies were all rejected.  But
because of the assistance of many (whom we thank), we were at least able to
have an initial printing of 1,500.

We wanted to publish as much good material as possible as cheaply as possible. 
Our standard was a price of 10 pfennigs per A4 page for the subscription (and
club members).

We hope that not only the price is right.

With some of our information, we did wonder:  Should that really be published? 
We are grateful to a number of courteous lawyers for their assistance is
resolving this problem.

But enough thanks.

We will gladly accept any submissions (including anonymous) for the Hacker
Bible, Part II.  For data formats, see DATENSCHLEUDER 11/12.

Chaos Team, Fall of 1985[pp 10-11:  Article by Peter Glaser, 1985]

The BASIC Feeling of Life With a (Micro)Computer

"Give me new noise, give me new attractions, strange new toys from another
world."  (Tuxedo Moon)

The first time, there was only a monitor and a keyboard, which looked like a
flattened typewriter.  "But where's the computer?"  The computer, I learned,
consisted of a couple of tiny chips in the keyboard casing.  I had previously
imagined that computers were wall-sized, thinking furniture in climate-
controlled rooms.  I had just read that women who work with computers could not
wear nylon underwear.  The static electricity messed up the computer.

That was three years ago.  Since then, women can once again wear nylons,
computers are messing up men, and I have become what could be called a bitnik: 
a person who gladly roams through the jungle of data processing.  My friend
with the flattened typewriter, a fellow writer, opened the door to the new
intangible and gently flickering world of computer software for me.  A
distinction:  hardware is that which can fall on the floor, thus the machine. 
Software is that which can get on your nerves, thus that which happens in a
computer and on the screen.  There is another term that American information
engineers have coined:  wetware.  That means human beings.

I watched as the small machine read in programs from a cassette recorder, and
it was as if it was sucking it in with a strange force.  Quickly and elegantly,
it breathed lines of light onto the screen.  For someone like me, who for two
decades had been capable only of turning the television on and off, it was a
tremendous experience to be able to influence events on the screen.  I heard
music in the back of my head:  The Dawn of Data.

My friend ran lines of program on the screen.  QQ=PEEK(PP):IFQQ=86-THENFU=79;
ONSZR(QQ)GOTO50025,3348,HELL,50026, it said.  Parlez-vous BASIC?  I had the
feeling that I would soon be an illiterate of the new age if I didn't get
started learning it.

If during my first visits to my friend I first sat in the living room chatting
with my friend and his wife before sitting down at the computer, I eventually
headed straight from the door to the monitor.  My friend's wife became nothing
more than an arm that set sandwiches and coffee next to the monitor.  The
divorce went through two years ago, and a year and a half ago my friend bought
a faster computer.

A booklet by an American psychologist with tips to computer widows about how to
maintain the minimum level of contact with a computer-loving husband provides
an indication of the extent of interpersonal tension; the hints read like
communication between a dentist and his patient:  "When he is at the terminal,
address him if possible with clear statements that can be answered with YES or
NO."


I got a GENIE I, a cheap Taiwanese clone of the Tandy Trash-80 that my friend
had.  It felt like Christmas as a child.  I now had THE BIGGEST Lego set, a
Lego brain building set.

Among my first experiences was discovering that with the machine I could make
more mistakes in less time than ever before.  It was wonderful!  The initial
communication with the computer went like this:  I input something and the
computer responded with SYNTAX ERROR.  After only several days of practice,
eliciting extravagant error messages ("Bad Data" - "Extra Ignored" - "Cursor
lost") was simple.  BASIC, in which the input is formulated, is a type of
cybernetic pidgin English, with a vocabulary of around 50 words.  To the
computer novice, it is a table of magic words that repeatedly illuminate his
Panasonic crystal ball.

Summer of 1983.  I move to Hamburg, leave the GENIE, like the first lunar
module, in D<>sseldorf, and get a Commodore C64, the Fiat Panda of
microcomputers.  It is as ugly as a flattened out loaf of bread, but it
features a bunch of alluring extras, including an automatic fold-away
background.  I am entering the feverish phase experienced by every computer
newcomer.  It lasts at least as long as an infectious jaundice, and can be
chronic.  Doctors are already studying special computer-caused ailments, such
as the "game hand," a cramp-like deformation of the hand caused by excessive
use of the joystick in video games, or dizzyness when the world realigns into
three-dimensional space after hours of staring at the screen.

Amidst a 24-hour electrified atmosphere, I live in a group house in the heart
of the St. Pauli district:  outside, the noise and lights of the entertainment
complex; inside the hiss of the synthesizer and flicker of the computer.  Sven,
one of my housemates, a friendly punk, becomes my blood brother on the data
safaris of the coming weeks.  Kerstin, a sociologist and as the former owner of
the "Sleepless Nights" bar a tested veteran of reality, holds the fort for the
gray specter of everyday life.

We have a desolate black and white television as our monitor; the left edge of
the screen continually creeps upward like a caterpillar and the loudspeaker
takes longer every day to start making noise.  After a while, that no longer
plays a role, since we always leave the machine on and spend all day and all
night in programming shifts.

In one corner of the room, there is an unsealed coal stove that covers the
computer with a bright yellow coat of ash.  Whenever there is a shootout in the
street below, we open the window and join in with the synthesized din of
"Attack of the Mutant Camels."

Fall 1983.  We program, for hours on end, filled with a wild pioneering spirit,
as if our task were to draw a line on the edge of the universe.  "Data
processing," says Alan Key of the Apple Corporation, "does not yet have its
Galileo or Newton, its Bach, Beethoven, Shakespeare or Moliere."  Our eyes
burn, and we feel a nervous buzz that is a sign of a modern form of impatience: 
If it takes more than ten seconds to load a program from the diskette into the
computer, we become distracted.

The programs, which are the embodiment of our consuming passion, correspond to
that which an employee of ATARI said:  "The computer is the solution.  What we
need now is the problem."  After Sven and I, highly motivated, have spent 20
hours learning the basic features of the trigonometrical function and the
peculiarities of programming high-resolution graphics, the first sine curve
creeps across the screen, and we are jubilant.  Kerstin thinks that both the
time spent and the curve itself are ridiculous, instead insisting that one of
us wash the dishes.

Another entry in Key's list of masculine genius:  Women are the Third World of
the microelectronic age.  They are immune to computer-mania.  They don't like
the machines.  In 10 years, there will have to be a new women's liberation
movement in order to make up for men's larger number of users and greater
freedom of electronic movement.  Still, an aversion to "technical" flair does
not explain the all-encompassing lack of interest displayed by most women as
they yawn at the computer.  I have the impression that it has more to do with
the strange eroticism of the machines:  the slavish humility with which they
repeatedly do what they are told (which is not necessarily the same thing as
what the programmer means), the willingness to reveal even its innermost
secrets, and the feeling of omnipotence that the computer can elicit through a
wide range of simulation options, from night flight to psychological
counseling.

Winter 1984.  Kerstin is mad because Sven and I converse only in BASIC over
breakfast (IF HUNGER THEN GOTO ALDI:RETURN), and even the jokes are relevant
(Asterix and the Data, featuring Tullius Data Bus).  Sven is developing his
notion of what a Russian microcomputer might look like, from a coal-driven
steam processor in a crude bakelite case with outboard start lines, to a puppet
computer, which is operated via wires by a group of dissident scientists in the
basement.  And when I talk to others, I notice a missionary tone to my voice. 
I talk like a highly-paid computer representative, combined with a car
enthusiast ("from zero to one hundred in four nanoseconds"), with a touch of an
artist ("I will rationalize the lyrics away").

Sven is writing a mile-long game program from a magazine, and it is supposed to
be a PAC MAN who eats his way through a labyrinth of points and vitamin pills. 
When he runs the program after three nights of typing, it eats itself up, and
all that remains is a handful of garbled statements.  With our telephone data
base, it takes about 20 times as long to find an address as it does with an
address book, which can also be stuffed into a pocket.  And the dreams of 3-D
graphics, transformed in elegant sequences on the screen, fade during the four
hours of computing time needed by the computer to compose one of those
decorative 3-D functional sombreros.  Our jubilant mood is wearing off.

Spring 1984.  We find consolation in the world of fast games, and within two
months we destroy two joysticks.  My beard grows out four millimeters as
"Loderunner" makes his way through mazes.  Seven weeks later, I achieve the
30th level.  The game has around 900 levels.

Sven gets into the blue zone in "Fort Apocalypse."  It is also exciting when
the girl on the "Strip Poker" screen takes her blouse off for the first time. 
The adventure game "Hitchhiker" responds to the input HELP with "It's no time
for Beatles hits, boys."  "The Dallas Quest," where at the beginning you meet
Sue Ellen in the living room of the Southfork Ranch, responds to the action
command "Fuck Sue Ellen" with a "Watch your language."  Even Kerstin is finally
drawn in by an adventure game, and for four days we search 16 countries for the
"stone of wisdom," until shortly before our objective the entire game crashes
due to a programming bug.

I can't sleep at night, because the little "Loderunner" men keep swarming after
my eyes are closed, and because the CONTINUE will not stop, which is the allure
of the games, since there is nothing to win besides point totals that are
recorded in the "Hall of Fame."

Summer 1984.  Equipped with only a Walkman and a typewriter, I spend three
months in the country.  At first, big city withdrawal is difficult, and I dream
of a Care package with a small clod of asphalt, a piece of exposed concrete and
a humming neon tube.  After a while, the nervous shimmer of information
evaporates from the soul into the blue summer heat, and I am able to talk
calmly and plainly about computers, as if they were radios or apple trees.  In
CHIP magazine, I read something about robot stalls at large American farms and
"software for cow reconnaissance."

Fall 1984.  Back in Hamburg I once again succumb to the Lego itch.  There are
so many wonderful toys to hook up to the computer:  graphics tablet or light
pen, for drawing on the screen; voice output modules; digitizer, with which
real images from video tape can be processed by the computer; light and
moisture sensors; music keyboards and audiomixers; etc.

I get a printer with graphics capability and a non-flicker and anti-reflection
monitor, and move from the typewriter to a word processing program.  There is a
twinge of regret:  Writing, which was already only barely tangible, in the form
of black letter imprints on the paper, is now completely immaterial, traces of
light on the screen.  On the other hand, the composition and correcting
comforts of word processing are irresistible, and the mountains of paper on my
desk disappear, with hundreds of pages fitting on a diskette the size of a post
card.  This also significantly simplifies destroying aggravating drafts of my
novel; you just have to pour a drop of coffee on the storage medium.

Winter 1984.  As a place to live, St. Pauli is good for urban romanticism but
bad for the nerves.  I move to a area where it is quiet at night, install the
computer in a practical cockpit and design the rest of the apartment around the
central item of furniture.  It is as if a friend had sat in front of me for two
years with his guts hanging out, and now he is completely healed; finally an
end to the mishmash of peripherals and cables.

A couple of relapses in orgiastic programming, and reticent missionary work,
primarily among women; otherwise, pleasant work with the word processor and
with filing and mailbox systems.  Winter moods, the diskette drive (my data
sewing machine) clatters softly during a memory routine, and outside it is
snowing.

Early spring 1985.  I meet Sys, a data jaguar, a sympathetic predator.  Sys
looks as if you could knock him out cold with a piece of blotting paper, and he
strolls through international computer networks with his hands in his pockets
("Small brother is latching through").  He knows many back doors and software
bathroom windows through which you can climb into a computer system.  Thus, we
are back where we started, with nylon stockings:  Computer systems and security
mechanisms are becoming increasingly refined and close-meshed, but there are
also more holes in them.

Sys shows me how to travel through the Global Village, through computers and
computer systems around the world.  First you dial Patex-D, a sort of data
highway of the Bundespost, then you lay the telephone receiver in the sleeve of
an acoustic coupler and input an NUI (network user identity); and off we go.  I
try it myself, and for 15 minutes I paralyze access to Datex-P.  Sys points out
to me the political implications if we were able to reproduce my error chain.

Network node computers, comparable to big highway junctions, take us further
into international networks.  It is as exciting as a roller coaster ride.  In
the input lines of the computer with which we are presently connected is the
current local time, and using a world timetable and a small map of the world in
my calendar, we can gauge the civilized areas in which the other computer could
be located.  The meter on the telephone creeps ahead one unit every couple of
minutes; data telecommunication links are relatively cheap.

I have learned the computer alphabet, and now I want to use it:  mailboxing,
transmitting images and sounds, calling up large data bases, or consulting the
oracle, who answers every question, in the Delphi Network.  Sys leads me to a
computer for which I can guess at the access code, and goes into the kitchen to
make a cheese sandwich.

Every ten seconds, I am thrown out, until suddenly the machine responds to a
nonsense input.  I input another sarcastic sentence, the machine counters with
an equally sarcastic statement, and I am impressed.  I know of passable
conversation simulations, but this one here is splendid.  A couple more jokes,
and the computer jokes masterfully back.  This program must have been designed
by great people.  Then Sys comes back from the kitchen and explains to me that
I am not talking to the computer, but rather that I have encountered a hacker
and am now on-line.

There it is again:  the BASIC feeling.

[pp 13-15:  Interview with Chaos Computer Club members, from '64 MAGAZIN]

Creative Chaos

This interview was conducted by telephone, whereby the interviewees, two
members of the CCC were sitting in front of a telephone speaker.  Clearly the
most important conclusion from it:  The image of the hacker as someone who
infiltrates data bases just for the fun of it is no longer up-to-date.  The
"hackers" of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) see themselves as communications
experts, who are using the new medium of data telecommunications by modem for
worldwide communication purposes.  Ultimately, everyone should be able to
exchange information uncensored.  The long-term goal is to set up better,
objective opportunities for the free formation of opinions.  Thus, this type of
"hacker" sees a social responsibility in his activities.

[Question]  What exactly does the Chaos Computer Club do?

[Answer]  We disseminate information on new media and on our experiences, and
we exchange information on a wide range of things.  Computers are something of
a new medium for us, and these data connections are for us a new form of
streets and public squares where we can move around.  With the magazine
DATENSCHLEUDER we want to point out to others the existing possibilities as
well as the dangers.

[Question]  Isn't that putting it somewhat innocuously?

[Answer]  I don't know what you mean.  All the magazines and other reports are
always trying to force us into a slightly criminal corner.  That's definitely
not our goal or purpose or even our main issue.  We simply want to establish
and maintain contact with each other and also, of course--this is for me
personally--look around at what is going on in the computers.  You have to be a
little creative to get inside.

[Question]  How was the Chaos Computer Club founded?

[Answer]  Three years ago, a couple of people got together and decided that it
was possible to do other things with computers besides the things that were
normal at that time, at least here in Germany.  A small ad was then run in a
daily newspaper, and a meeting of two dozen people from all over West Germany
then took place in Berlin.  We then decided to keep in touch and exchange
experiences.  The idea was simply to put together a magazine, but at that point
it was all too vague, and it didn't come off.  Next, contacts with the United
States were established, with Cheshire Catalyst (the "king" of U.S. hackers,
Ed.) and with his magazine TAP, which a bunch of people here in West Germany
already knew about and subscribed to.  At the Telecom in the fall of 1983, I
met him personally and wrote a two-page article about him in a daily newspaper. 
And this two-page article elicited a great deal of response.  By the end of the
year, things had progressed far enough to set up a magazine.  Previously, the
idea was to exchange all information by floppy disk, but everything was
incompatible, and it had no purpose.  The magazine was announced around the
beginning of the year, and we received 100 replies within one week.  And so to
us in Hamburg, it was obvious:  If 100 people want it, then it has to be done. 
In March, the first issue was finally finished.  Once the first and second
issues were out, there was a veritable flood of letters.  The amount of mail
was equivalent to placing both my hands on end.

[Question]  How many subscriptions does the magazine have?

[Answer]  We took the course that whoever writes should get information,
regardless of whether they send money in.  The number of subscriptions
fluctuates somewhere over 200.

[Question]  How do your finances look right now?

[Answer]  Terrible!  The production costs are around 10 pfennigs per copy, for
both sides of a DIN A3 page.  On the other hand, the most expensive thing is
postage, 50 pfennigs a piece.  For each copy there are three copies that are
not paid for, that we simply send out, as a sample or in response to a request
with no money enclosed.  It is in fact financed by the skin of our teeth, but
we do hope that a number of people are willing to pay for it.  If money comes
in, then we can continue.

[Question]  And of the 200 subscriptions has each one paid around DM 30?

[Answer]  More or less.  They came in with the full amount, a couple sent more
than that, but unfortunately it was fewer than we had hoped.  It costs about DM
1000 to produce one issue of DATENSCHLEUDER.

[Question]  How long will people receive DATENSCHLEUDER for their DM 30?

[Answer]  One Chaos year.  That is effectively around one year, with around 10
issues.  You definitely have to give our address, or they'll come beating your
door down for that.

[Question]  How many regular members do you have now?

[Answer]  About the membership structure--it's rather open and free.  Everyone
who has information for us simply contributes it, whether he has a subscription
or simply receives DATENSCHLEUDER, or even if he knows nothing about
DATENSCHLEUDER.  There are people who are working on the modem layout, and we
are producing and marketing motherboards, for example.  And then we do
DATENSCHLEUDER, and also do communication via computer.  It is simply an open
structure, where anyone who feels like it can join in and leave at any time. 
But we are thinking about whether we should impose organizational structures on
the whole thing.  There are a couple of external areas where we are simply
encountering problems.  But on the other hand, we basically like this open
structure.  It's a dilemma.

[Question]  But surely you can provide an approximate number?

[Answer]  If we approach it in terms of subscriptions, we come up with more
than 200, of which around 30 are in Hamburg.  But that's very fluid.  Should I
count a graphic artist who does a couple of pictures for DATENSCHLEUDER as a
member?  We don't look at it that narrowly.  Somebody comes along, finds it
interesting, and joins in.  That's also how it is at our meetings, which we
hold once a week at a bar here in Hamburg.  We always get different people
there, it's just a regular meeting base.  On the other hand, we generally meet
once a month to exchange information.

[Question]  What kind of people are involved?

[Answer]  It ranges from pilots to a metalworker, people who run their own
shops to unemployed people and students.  They are between 16 and 35.  No one
is older than that.

[Question]  What is your assessment of the legal status of your activities?

[Answer]  We just don't like being forced into any corner.  Now people are
saying that it's all criminal, breaking into data bases and getting into
mischief.  In principle, we do not claim that we are complying with all laws
and rules, for example those pertaining to using non-FTZ [Central
Telecommunications Office] approved equipment.  We want to persuade the
Bundespost to handle things like in England, which means, roughly speaking,
that the use of non-FTZ-approved equipment should be permitted.  This is a
clear challenge for us.  We are the opposite of computer criminals who
penetrate computer systems for their own financial benefit and sell something
that they found there; just as we clearly distance ourselves from people who
copy software and then resell it.  On the other hand, it's like with patent
law:  If we use certain things exclusively for personal consumption, it is
quite possible that we will use equipment or do things that are in some sense
not permitted.

[Question]  What are the most important goals of the CCC?

[Answer]  One very important objective is the new human right to a worldwide,
free exchange of information.  Unhindered.  This is an opportunity offered by
the electronic media.  It happens in some extreme cases, say with telephone
calls to Israel, that the censor steps in and the connection is broken.  And in
the USSR there is no direct dialing whatsoever.  Otherwise, the telephone is a
means for making contact with people all over the world and talking to them
uncensored.  And that is a tremendous leap forward, if you think back 200
years.  And we want to push this development further along in the direction of
the new media; we are simply trying to promote international, free discussion,
to achieve something like the U.S. "Freedom of Information Act" on a worldwide
scale.

[Question]  Does free also mean free of charge in your view?

[Answer]  That would be nice.  But in view of my telephone bill, I would have
to say that it is far from free of charge.  That is a dream that cannot be
realized as such.  But it is still much cheaper than, say, having to
continually travel around; in this way, it is possible to hold international
conferences at a relatively low cost.  And on this point, of course, we are
also very much opposed to a restrictive rate policy by the Bundespost.  It is
four times cheaper to call here from the United States than from here to the
United States.  In the United States, for example, local calls are free.  The
Bundespost has its monopoly, and it is taking full advantage of that.  Thus, in
the United States it is possible for an amateur radio operator to link the
radio network with the telephone network, which is prohibited here in West
Germany.  On points like these, we have reformist ideas, to put it cautiously.

[Question]  Do you see any parallels to your activities in the book "Riders of
the Shock Wave"?

[Answer]  That's a book that impressed a number of people.  It's an update of
"Brave New World" or "1984" for electronic media.  It depicts a number of
dangers and opportunities that are too often left unaddressed.  So I simply
think that the book is right.

[Question]  How do you think the whole thing will develop over the next 10
years?

[Answer]  The establishment of more mailboxes.  Computers will have a great
effect on bringing people together, to a much greater degree than the
telephone.  A negative aspect:  Ten years ago, the first video groups were set
up, "a new medium, interesting things can be done, for example a neighborhood
video or one for specific persons."  Thus, a medium for ideas.  But what has
come of this after 10 years?  An absolute mass business, with horror and porno. 
And I see a similarly negative thing with computers.  It is leading to a new
form of orientation towards the machine, and speechlessness.  I'll simply say
"1926 Metropolis" as a buzzword.  We want to try to pull people away from their
games and motivate them to undertake more creative use of the medium.  It is
our hope that the computer, as a new medium, will make a positive contribution
to understanding.

[Question]  How do you regard the future of CCC in this regard?

[Answer]  It is important that the print medium be a crutch and a transitional
medium for reaching everyone who does not have a computer and modem.  Thus, for
those who are not yet on-line.  In the long run, printed matter will lose
significance.  The mailboxes, where there is new information, are much more up-
to-date and interesting.  The contents of DATENSCHLEUDER are often completely
outdated by the time it is published.  People who poke around in mailboxes are
plainly four weeks ahead in terms of information.  For this reason, there must
be a shift in the exchange of information towards electronic media.  For us as
well.

[Question]  What would you suggest to someone who is interested in
communication as such?

[Answer]  On-line!  Jump in!  Look around to see what he likes, whether he can
find something to get started on, something that has to do with his interests. 
And if he doesn't find anything, then he should see to it that he develops
something.  At any rate, always be active.

Anyone who goes into it with a serious intent will be dissatisfied with what he
finds relatively soon.  He'll say, Dammit, I'm setting up my own mailbox. 
That's the electronic equivalent of a newspaper.  Telecommunications media make
it possible for anyone who has something to say, something to pass along, to do
that.  Every mailbox has its own handwriting, its own information corners, even
if there is a lot of social noise, just as with CD radios.

[Question]  Are you perhaps planning a mailbox, or something similar?

[Answer]  We are in the process of programming an electronic carpooling
service.  The Schwarzmarkt here in Hamburg has had a carpooling service for
eight years.  We want to use telecommunications and computers to do this.

[Question]  Free of charge?

[Answer]  Yes.  If someone wants to pay, we'll be glad to take it, but in
principle it should not cost anything.

[Question]  How do you view the situation with modems?

[Answer]  The situation with modems looks like this.  The cheapest are
currently made by Tandy, but they are not available right now.  There are very
inexpensive self-assembly modems, but they do only 300 bauds.  If you use them
a lot, 300 bauds is simply too slow.  So then you get something like the 79
10/79 11; that is why we have developed the kit with a board, which we sell at
cost price.

[Question]  One more question:  Is BTX not a competitor to data
telecommunication?

[Answer]  In terms of charges, BTX is designed in such a way that it is simply
too expensive.  BTX was developed at a time when it was not even possible to
foresee micro- and minicomputers.  To put it more directly:  BTX and the CEPT
standard were designed on the drawing board, and most interactive videotext
systems are simply BTX systems, and not computers, which forces people who have
a BTX system to buy an additional computer.  So I simply think that a data
network that utilizes the graphic possibilities of a C 64 will find greater
distribution than the Bundespost's BTX, which is state-subsidized.

[Question]  So BTX will not survive in the long run?

[Answer]  Not as widespread end-user equipment.  For specialized purposes and
certain companies, it will survive, but only in a very narrow context.  Just
look at how many hundreds of thousands of C 64s there are and how many
thousands of BTX users.  Despite this, we will continue to develop and expand
our BTX service until the end of this year; but after the higher charges are
introduced, we will shut down our BTX.  I have a 100-page proposal for setting
up a relatively up-to-date information service.  We do want to put other ideas
in the heads of BTX users and point out other options to them.  But we will get
out of that area no later than once the charges go up.  We are on page 19058 in
the Berlin transitional computer, and on page 20305080 in the new one.

[Question]  OK, that's it!

The CCC can also be reached via Datex-P under the name Chaos-Computer-Club c/o
Schwarzmarkt, Bundesstrasse 9, 2000 Hamburg 13.

[p 16:  Article from TAZ Hamburg, 5 July 1985, p 15]

Subversive Broadcaster

Students' Radio

On Wednesday, 26 June, the scene at Oldenfelde High School in Rahlstedt was at
times tumultuous.  The underground student station "Radio Pelik-huhn" was once
again in full swing.  For more than 15 minutes, around 500 students enjoyed a
colorful mix of good music and information during class time.

Every room in the school has a loudspeaker mounted on the wall, whico<63><6F><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>2Br&%<25><02>
pJ0HS
L<08>ve learned its lesson long ago, before its pride and
joy, Bildschirmtext, was dealt a resounding blow last week by the Sparkasse
trick.  The piecemeal adjustments that they undertook in the past after every
announced BTX hack were apparently inadequate.  A program that needs so much
clearing up is hopelessly contaminated.

Naturally, the Bundespost knows this, and it grieves them in particular because
BTX had just overcome the last political hurdle on the path to being
universally introduced.  It also hurts since there is already a dearth of
interest in the new medium of communication.  According to predictions by the
Ministry, BTX should have around 150,000 subscribers by now.  In reality, that
figure is only a scant 19,000, of which 3,000 are suppliers.

It is questionable whether the Bundespost will be able to compensate for its
losses from IBM, who set up the system.  "Big Blue" will scarcely be able to
get out of supplying a new computer program.  And that could take two to three
years, which is the time that Reinhard Vossbein meant when he declared anyone
who subscribes to Bildschirmtext during that period guilty of stupidity.

[p 40:  Unattributed text]

MSG by GAST
20 November 1984, 5:10 a.m.

MICKI is thinking about the CCC's BTX gag (bravo, by the way...), and reaches
the following conclusion:

The more securely a system is protected against unauthorized access, the more
unauthorized the people who can uncover weaknesses must be.
Ultimately, you have a system to which only the unauthorized have access...

In this regard:  Keep on doing it!

[p 40:  Unattributed text of computer program]

10 REM bankrob.ba
20 REM Version 1.00
30 REM (c) 1984 by Wau
40 MOTOR OFF: 'Relay for money key
100 CLS:PRINT"Bankrob.ba -Restart procedure"
110 INPUT "Prior money received: ";MONEY
120 IN=52:'Time value key on
130 OUT=169:'Time value key off
150 CLS:PRINT0,"DM ";MONEY,"in: ";IN;" out: ";OUT;
160 PRINT90,"o<<<< out >>>> O"
170 PRINT130,"i<<<< in >>>> I"
180 PRINT170,"Stop with x      "
190 PRINT210,TIME$;:GOTO 1100
200 REM Rhomboid loop
210 MOTOR ON:PRINT40,"IN":PRINT40,TIME$:FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
220 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT":FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
230 MOTOR ON:PRINT40,"IN":FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
240 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT":FOR I=1 TO OUT:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
250 MONEY=MONEY+9.97:PRINT0,"DM ";MONEY,"In: ";IN;" Out: ";OUT;
260 GOTO200
1000 REM Speed
1010 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="" THEN RETURN
1020 IF X$="o"THEN OUT=OUT-1:RETURN
1030 IF X$="O"THEN OUT=OUT+1:RETURN
1040 IF X$="i"THEN IN=IN-1:RETURN
1050 IF X$="I"THEN IN=IN+1:RETURN
1060 IF X$<>"x" THEN RETURN
1100 PRINT170,"Continue with x   "
1110 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT"
1120 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="x" THEN 1150 ELSE 1120
1150 PRINT170,"Stop with x    ";GOTO 200

[pp 41-42:  Article by "Wau," from TAZ, 22 November 1984]

How the Hamburger Sparkasse BTX Code Was Cracked

Bildschirmtext Tested for Weaknesses

Ever since the coup by the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg, who used a bug in
the Bildschirmtext system to charge fees of DM 135,000 to Hamburger Sparkasse,
Bildschirmtext, or BTX, has been a topic of discussion, and the chaotics from
the Chaos Club have made headlines.

Bildschirmtext is a big joke being played on consumers.  For more than seven
years, "field tests" were run in Berlin and D<>sseldorf.  From the very
beginning, it was obvious that the system would be introduced following the
field tests, regardless of the results of the "tests."  The political objective
made immense investments possible, thus making it simply impossible to abandon
the system.  After the "test," the test subscribers could throw away their
equipment, since in the meantime it had become technically obsolete.  The
Bundespost paid for the technical conversion, giving all the subscribers a
1,000-mark credit, financed by the coins spent on pay telephone calls. 
Nevertheless, around one in six refused this attractive offer and terminated
BTX service.  The Bundespost predicted 150,000 subscribers by the end of 1984. 
It was actually a scant 20,000, which includes many who are not active
subscribers.  In the meantime, the Bundespost has stopped making its own
predictions, instead spending a couple of million on programs that are supposed
to provide better prognoses.

The Bundespost has invested more than DM 700 million in BTX.  If you compare
this to subsidies for opera houses, then the Bundespost has built a 35,000-mark
box for each subscriber.  The only problem is that the opera program is still
rather monotonous.

IBM is the supplier of the computer and of the programs for the current system. 
They had high hopes about their deal, and wanted to sell their system to a
number of countries.  After all, approximately 100 people worked on programming
for around two years.  If you spend DM 20,000 a month for one of these
specialists, that makes DM 50 million.  A succession of several executives was
in charge of the project.  There were only a few "minor details" to be improved
in the program, and with programs the smaller the correction, the more time
they take.

Chaos Team Becomes BTX Supplier

In the fall of 1984, after long debate, the Chaos Computer Club decided to
subscribe to BTX.  Naturally as a "supplier," since being a subscriber is not
interesting.  They started with the least expensive equipment, which was
technically refurbished.  Still, the first months were torturous.  The
prevailing mood with home computers is well-known:  "Turn it on--it doesn't
work."  But with the Bundespost, everyone expects that everything will work
fine.  It is only rarely that you get mail from the Bundespost saying, "Because
of work on the system, few telephone calls will be possible on the weekend." 
With Bildschirmtext, hardly anything worked.  Even an accent on a letter in a
person's name caused unexpected developments (and this in a "European" system). 
In terms of computerization, changing names with accepts is offered up as a
subversive strategy.  Moreover, the blocking and unblocking of pages did not
work.  Blocked pages were legible, unblocked ones were not.  The Bundespost
told people who complained that they were doing something wrong.  Blocked pages
are something like the closed doors in an Advent calendar.  On the first of
December, the first door is opened (in BTX:  unblocked), on the second the
second door, and so on.  The Bundespost has a Christmas calendar game of chance
in Bildschirmtext.  Every day, new letters behind a door can be seen, and on 24
December, there is a complete sentence (Season's Greetings from the
Bundespost).  But without any coercion, all the doors flew open on the first of
the month.  Either someone at the Bundespost typed something wrong, or the
system has yet another small bug.  The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) first got wind
of this on 12 December, and sent in the complete solution, the prize being
telephone credits.  It is interesting how many subscribers sent in the solution
before the CCC.  Does the Bundespost perhaps believe here as well that some
chaotics sneaked into the Bundespost to find the solution?

However, a major problem with BTX is composing pages.  The CCC does a type of
electronic newspaper, which is published irregularly.  Once a new article has
been written and is supposed to be loaded into the system, all eyes focus on
the lowest line, waiting for the message "ED007 EXECUTION NOT POSSIBLE AT
PRESENT" or otherwise "Won't work right now."

In order to penetrate the BTX system, all you need is the connection code. 
Every subscriber has a different 12-digit number.  This access authorization is
generally sent by pressing one key.  This is practical and reasonably safe. 
You can imagine it as a nine-digit padlock (the first three numbers are
generally zero) on your bicycle shed.  Secondly, there is a personal code word. 
This is comparable to a padlock on the bicycle itself.  And you can also put
your bicycle in a communal shed.  In BTX, this is called a "free-access
connection."  In that case, anyone can go into the communal shed and, if he
knows the number of a particular bicycle lock, he can move about in BTX and
take a look at things.  A lot of it is free of charge, but some information or
offerings cost money.  Springer-Verlag reports cost 1 pfennig, FRANKFURTER
ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG reports cost 2 pfennigs, and the owner of the bicycle pays
for this, not the cyclist.

Test of BTX Weaknesses

At some point, discussion at CCC came back to BTX and the policy of the
Bundespost to simply ignore or deny the risks of BTX.  The question arose of
whether this was intentional or just stupid.  A test was decided on.  Who would
be the guinea pig?  The Bundespost Ministry in Bonn?  A single quote suffices
here:  BTX is allegedly secure because it is difficult to tap into the
telephone lines in this country, since they are all underground.

The BTX control facility in Ulm is not that interesting as a test object.  It
tries to keep the system running.  And the Berlin office of BTX is responsible
for calming down postal customers when something goes wrong.  The Central
Telecommunications Office (FTZ) in Darmstadt is the site where technical plans
and standards are drawn up.  There one might expect to find the practical
technicians who worked out the security system.  Those are the right people for
a test of BTX weaknesses.  Without giving it much more thought, the BTX
connection of the FTZ was tested one day by the CCC:  Do they or do they not
have free access?  In order to find out, their subscriber number had to first
be entered:  06151 83.  That is the telephone number for the FTZ.  Then there
is the prompt for the code word.  At this point, you can type in anything and
tell from the subsequent error message whether the FTZ has a free-access
connection or not.  The CCC typed something in, the same telephone number
again.  The FTZ was careless:  There was free access.  But even worse, the FTZ
had chosen its own telephone number as its secret code word.  That is clearly
more careless than one would have expected, certainly from Bundespost
specialists.

A record is kept by the Hamburg data protection commissioner of who worked on
Bildschirmtext when.  Since the BTX reports when someone was last "on," an
"outside use" can often be detected in this way.  But scarcely anyone keeps a
record of it; it is too tedious.  At any rate, the FTZ did not notice the
"outside use" by the CCC.  This cleared up the question:  The Bundespost was
not withholding and/or providing false information about BTX out of stupidity.

The CCC considered what it should do now.  The most obvious thing was of course
to get money from the Bundespost.  In order to do so, a page for which a fee is
charged must be called in by another BTX subscriber.  And that can be repeated
any number of times.  The highest price per page is currently DM 9.99.  With 1-
pfennig pages from Axel Springer, the CCC tested, at its own expense, how fast
money can be collected using that method.  In non-automatic operation, it
worked out to around DM 10 an hour.  For the CCC page, at DM 9.97, this would
be DM 10,000 an hour.  So you could really get something over night.  These
fees are charged on the telephone bill--in this case, the FTZ's telephone bill
--and transferred to the suppliers a couple of weeks later.  Right now, it is
not working again, the Bundespost has another bug in the program, and it hopes
to be able to pay the fees in February.  In principle, however, the money is
being recorded.

Getting the money would be phase one.  What then?  Should we sell this breach
of security to the Bundespost?  We could, as is normal in industry, "hack" DM
100,000 or more and then sell the Bundespost consultation on this problem for a
certain percentage of the money.  Or get free, lifetime telephone service for
the CCC or something like that.  The Bundespost had to pay for its gross
negligence.

In both cases, however, the price would have been silence.  Otherwise, the
concentrated rage of the postal authorities would have been forthcoming. 
Consequently, perhaps half a dozen officials would have tried to do something
to the CCC.

But the CCC wanted enlightenment about the risks of this new system.  To this
end, the finance transaction had to be made public.  Fine, but who should push
the starting button for the money transfer?  After all, it is an infringement
like a parking ticket, although more expensive:  a DM 50,000 fine.  Will the
data protection commissioner do it?  He probably would have taken advantage of
the opportunity and attempted to achieve an improvement by official means.

A politician?  Perhaps.  But what if he leaks the story?  There remained only
one option:  Do it ourselves, and abrogate our criminal liability by going
public with it.  A week later, the attempt failed, since the FTZ had in the
meantime closed off free access to its connection.

Hackers as Data Protection Specialists

Several weeks later, Wau gave a presentation at a conference of data protection
specialists in Cologne:  BTX--El Dorado for Hackers.  Cologne was a sea of pin-
stripes, and Wau looked like a parrot in the midst of it all.  Despite their
initial distance, the audience was impressed by his presentation.  Only the
representative of the Bundespost felt that he was hitting below the belt, and
that he did not intend to address those issues.  That was dismissed with
laughter, since the presentation depicted a series of program bugs drastically
and in three dimensions.  There is a bug in the sending of electronic mail. 
The sender can still change the contents after the letter has arrived.  You can
send a business partner a bid for, say, DM 2,300 and then later change the
price, either raising it or lowering it.  Another bug means that under certain
circumstances the BTX system spits out internal system information.  With a
little luck, connection code words and secret passwords can be detected in this
way.  "Nonsense," said the Bundespost representative.  And to the offer of
cooperation came only the response, "First you have to get serious."  It is
unclear whether the CCC succeeded in doing so.  At the very least, the BTX
system finally spit out the connection code word and secret password of the
Hamburger Sparkasse after a number of tries with the well-known system bug. 
Thus, it became possible to carry out the presentation planned for the FTZ with
the Sparkasse instead.

Almost everything went as planned.  Over night, in 12 hours and 59 minutes, a
good DM 134,000 was raised.  With a portabf<10> <14><><EFBFBD>@%<25><>ѕȁѡ<C881><D1A1><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>en run in a
daily newspaper, and a meeting of two dozen people from all over West Germany
then took place in Berlin.  We then decided to keep in touch and exchange
experiences.  The idea was simply to put together a magazine, but at that point
it was all too vague, and it didn't come off.  Next, contacts with the United
States were established, with Cheshire Catalyst (the "king" of U.S. hackers,
Ed.) and with his magazine TAP, which a bunch of people here in West Germany
already knew about and subscribed to.  At the Telecom in the fall of 1983, I
met him personally and wrote a two-page article about him in a daily newspaper. 
And this two-page article elicited a great deal of response.  By the end of the
year, things had progressed far enough to set up a magazine.  Previously, the
idea was to exchange all information by floppy disk, but everything was
incompatible, and it had no purpose.  The magazine was announced around the
beginning of the year, and we received 100 replies within one week.  And so to
us in Hamburg, it was obvious:  If 100 people want it, then it has to be done. 
In March, the first issue was finally finished.  Once the first and second
issues were out, there was a veritable flood of letters.  The amount of mail
was equivalent to placing both my hands on end.

[Question]  How many subscriptions does the magazine have?

[Answer]  We took the course that whoever writes should get information,
regardless of whether they send money in.  The number of subscriptions
fluctuates somewhere over 200.

[Question]  How do your finances look right now?

[Answer]  Terrible!  The production costs are around 10 pfennigs per copy, for
both sides of a DIN A3 page.  On the other hand, the most expensive thing is
postage, 50 pfennigs a piece.  For each copy there are three copies that are
not paid for, that we simply send out, as a sample or in response to a request
with no money enclosed.  It is in fact financed by the skin of our teeth, but
we do hope that a number of people are willing to pay for it.  If money comes
in, then we can continue.

[Question]  And of the 200 subscriptions has each one paid around DM 30?

[Answer]  More or less.  They came in with the full amount, a couple sent more
than that, but unfortunately it was fewer than we had hoped.  It costs about DM
1000 to produce one issue of DATENSCHLEUDER.

[Question]  How long will people receive DATENSCHLEUDER for their DM 30?

[Answer]  One Chaos year.  That is effectively around one year, with around 10
issues.  You definitely have to give our address, or they'll come beating your
door down for that.

[Question]  How many regular members do you have now?

[Answer]  About the membership structure--it's rather open and free.  Everyone
who has information for us simply contributes it, whether he has a subscription
or simply receives DATENSCHLEUDER, or even if he knows nothing about
DATENSCHLEUDER.  There are people who are working on the modem layout, and we
are producing and marketing motherboards, for example.  And then we do
DATENSCHLEUDER, and also do communication via computer.  It is simply an open
structure, where anyone who feels like it can join in and leave at any time. 
But we are thinking about whether we should impose organizational structures on
the whole thing.  There are a couple of external areas where we are simply
encountering problems.  But on the other hand, we basically like this open
structure.  It's a dilemma.

[Question]  But surely you can provide an approximate number?

[Answer]  If we approach it in terms of subscriptions, we come up with more
than 200, of which around 30 are in Hamburg.  But that's very fluid.  Should I
count a graphic artist who does a couple of pictures for DATENSCHLEUDER as a
member?  We don't look at it that narrowly.  Somebody comes along, finds it
interesting, and joins in.  That's also how it is at our meetings, which we
hold once a week at a bar here in Hamburg.  We always get different people
there, it's just a regular meeting base.  On the other hand, we generally meet
once a month to exchange information.

[Question]  What kind of people are involved?

[Answer]  It ranges from pilots to a metalworker, people who run their own
shops to unemployed people and students.  They are between 16 and 35.  No one
is older than that.

[Question]  What is your assessment of the legal status of your activities?

[Answer]  We just don't like being forced into any corner.  Now people are
saying that it's all criminal, breaking into data bases and getting into
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;<3B>u;<3B>t<08>F<08>V<06><><EFBFBD>v&<26>D&<26>t
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD>&<26>\&<26>L
<EFBFBD>~&<26>]&<26>M
<EFBFBD>F<04>I<EFBFBD><49><EFBFBD>]<5D>U<EFBFBD><55><08>츒P<><50>B<1B><><EFBFBD>N<0E><>&<26>O3<>&<26>O3<>3<EFBFBD>&<26>O\&<26>WZ3<5A>&<26>O^3<>&<26>OX&<26>WV&<26>O&<26>W&<26>O$&<26>W"&<26>G&<26>O(&<26>W&&Ƈ<><00>F<06>^<04>N<0C><><03>v&<26>V<0E>.<2E><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>v<06>v<0E><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>v<06>v<0E><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>v<06>v<0E><14><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>o<03>v&<26>tation and the personal password for Haspa.

By the way, the CCC would have never gotten its hands on the Haspa and its
customers' money.

Fact:  BTX is safe!

[p 44:  letter]
<EFBFBD>
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u<1E><>P3<50>P<EFBFBD>B<1B><><EFBFBD>6@&<26>D
&<26>\<08>.@<10>F<0C>^
<0E><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>Fu<1A>6B<0C>6@<0C><>B<1B><><EFBFBD>.@<10>Ğ]<5D><>v<0E>z<EFBFBD><7A><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>&<26>w&<26>w<1A>F<06>^<04><>B<1B><><EFBFBD>v&<26>DL&<26>\e with 50 groups of participants from every continent, and
everyone displayed an admirable amount of discipline in talking, but it also
was not a political discussion, but rather a "Marry the world" conference, but
that's another (long) story (documented as TRANSMITTER cassette, DM 17.80 c/o
TRANSMITTER, 6941 L<>hrbach, Alte Schmiede).

Meanwhile, there has been enough cursing of the Bundespost, and a contact with
NAGMAN has been established (Nagman = North American Green Man).  "What do you
want to do?" asks the monitor.  A conference!  Robert looks for Delphi, but it
reports "Glum."  "Get rid of Glum!  Squelch him off.  Nagman, who is Glum? 
Glum is Delphi?  Oh, how embarrassing.  Glum, where are you when we need you?" 
We find Santa Claus on Cray 1.  Little by little, a true conference takes
place.  Boston reports snow.  We are dilly-dallying, even if it is worldwide. 
I don't think it's that exciting, even if I do accept the potential of the
system.  Another quick coffee before the closing presentation.

Wau:  "Hello, this is City Bank Frankfurt.  You are in our computer, please
leave immediately or we will call the police."  What?  Someone leaked to the
DPA or BILD that the City Bank had been "cracked" from the congress.  Wau: 
"Look, it's obvious that all the lines here are under surveillance, whoever
says otherwise is simply naive.  We called City Bank, and that message clearly
did not come from them.  It is not their style to do something like that.  Nor
is it our style to do something like that.  If someone at home does something
to his box to save on telephone charges, that is fraud, legally speaking.  If
someone connected unregistered equipment to his telephone, that is a violation
of the Telecommunications Act, legally speaking.  If someone runs a red light,
parks his car in the wrong place..."  Question:  What happens if someone
extends his telephone cable, or something like that?  Do you have experience
with that?  Holger:  "Their equipment is taken away from them."  Wau:  "The
Bundespost knows very well that they have a losing proposition with their
monopoly.  They have some sort of plans for 1987 to end their authority at the
phone jack.  But you have to consider something:  Infrared data transmission
within your own living room must be registered with the Bundespost.  A remote
control unit must have an FTZ inspection number.  In legal terms, it is very
difficult to argue against the Bundespost.

"A new law is being drawn up to close any loopholes in the existing
legislation.  For example, stealing time.  I'm not a lawyer, and can't give a
lecture here about criminal law.  However, this can be brought down to a common
denominator:  In communication, whenever you pretend to be someone who you
aren't, you are on a collision course with the law.  I think that this formula
is so simple that anyone can remember it..."

"If you use a password that you have learned from a job, you can only receive a
conventional sentence under civil law; there is nothing that can be done under
criminal law.  However, if your employment contract has been terminated, then
there is nothing that you can be prosecuted for, unless there is a special
clause in the contract.  Instead, all blame is placed on the employer/password
holder, since he could change it regularly.  Naturally, you can't be prosecuted
for accidentally getting into a system.  In order to be prosecuted under the
law, there must be evidence of intent, or at least negligence."

A legal specialist from the university is speaking.  Wau summarizes:  "The
current legal situation is as follows:  You can do what you want, nothing will
happen to you."  That's it.  The foundations of law date back to the previous
century, and at that time there was no such offense as "stealing time."  In the
hacker scene, there have yet to be any known cases of criminal prosecution.  In
the copier scene, Data Becker has struck with some degree of success.  Someone
says, "There were cases where people threatened Data Becker with slander
charges, and then withdrew their charges.  It's still not clear whether
something essential could be said there.  It is obvious that people who copy
software are inflicting damage in legal terms.  But what about software that I
loan a friend?  So in summary you can say that if you pass software or
passwords along to others, something can happen to you if you ask money for
it."

A Hamburg data protection official gives fatherly advice and counsel.  He has
seen enough to be able to state, irrefutably, "Everyone who was here has lost
his innocence!"

[photo caption, p 19:  "Guess what code I just broke!"

[p 20:  Article by Astrid Appel, age 13, published in MENSCHENSKINDER, The
Magazine for Children and Young People--Also Suitable for Adults; published by
Hartmut Witte, Spiekaer Weg 13, 2853 Cappel]

Girls and Computers

This Country Needs New Media; This Country Needs New Girls

To me, computers were always high-tech things, invented by and for people with
an IQ of at least 140.  That is, until our neighbor got his own metal box. 
Naturally, I rushed right over to get a closer look.  Somehow, I liked it!  And
once I managed to respond to a simple question program, I was totally enthused.

From then on, I spent every spare moment in front of the computer or watching
during programming.  After a few days, I was allowed to type a few things in
with the neighbor's son.  And that kept going further.  One day, I had my first
program, and I was so happy that I even toyed with the idea of getting a
computer for myself.

Suddenly, I was very into babysitting, running errands and stuff like that.  I
worked hard at saving money, and after my birthday it finally happened:  I had
the money.  Overjoyed, I rode into town and returned proudly with my "compi."

Naturally, I wanted to get going with the computer right away, but it was then
that the first problems arose.  I couldn't connect any of my recorders to the
machine in order to read in my programs.  Well, no wonder!  I hadn't thought
about the (stupid) accessories like recorder cables, special recorders, etc. 
So I needed more money and had to go back into town.  Once I had all of that,
there were new difficulties.  It took forever before I had by first program on
cassette.

What I do with my computer:

At first, I mostly input only the easy question and answer game.  Then I got a
simple English program from my neighbor, and I improved it, refined it and
reprogrammed it for Latin.  I often make music with the computer, or play with
the graphics.  I recently bought a nice vocabulary program and a few games.  I
am really into it, and I think that you can actually do anything with the
computer.

I think it's really too bad that so few girls are into computers!  I really
didn't have any idea why that was, so I asked a couple of my friends.

The first thing that came out was that computers cost soooo much money!  How
many girls have DM 500 sitting around to spend on a computer?

In addition, many of them had prejudices because of BASIC:  "Yes, and then
there's the computer language!  It's all English!?  I'm not good at English to
start with...  I just don't understand any of it.  It's something for boys!"

Most girls think it's totally dumb to sit in front of a box and type.  They
clearly don't know what kind of happiness I feel when I've been poking around
on a program for hours, and then it finally works!!!

But I do think that it's funny that once my friends have grasped the important
commands and been through the handbook, I have to drag them away from my
computer...  (With one of them I even had to pull the plug to point out to her
that she had been at my house for two and a half hours!)  Perhaps a lot of
girls really are interested in computers, but are too shy?

Perhaps your dads or moms will help you finance your computer if you let them
"play with it from time to time"...  Anyway, you are not too dumb for
computers, because there are even four-year-olds who are already "playing" with
computers, even if it is in the simpler "LOGO" language.  The c%%puter iC'
<0C>urg 13.

[p 16:  Article from TAZ Hamburg, 5 July 1985, p 15]

Subversive Broadcaster

Students' Radio

On Wednesday, 26 June, the scene at Oldenfelde High School in Rahlstedt was at
times tumultuous.  The underground student station "Radio Pelik-huhn" was once
again in full swing.  For more than 15 minutes, around 500 students enjoyed a
colorful mix of good music and information during class time.

Every room in the school has a loudspeaker mounted on the wall, whico<63><6F><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>2Br&%<25><02>
pJ0HS
L<08>ve learned its lesson long ago, before its pride and
joy, Bildschirmtext, was dealt a resounding blow last week by the Sparkasse
trick.  The piecemeal adjustments that they undertook in the past after every
announced BTX hack were apparently inadequate.  A program that needs so much
clearing up is hopelessly contaminated.

Naturally, the Bundespost knows this, and it grieves them in particular because
BTX had just overcome the last political hurdle on the path to being
universally introduced.  It also hurts since there is already a dearth of
interest in the new medium of communication.  According to predictions by the
Ministry, BTX should have around 150,000 subscribers by now.  In reality, that
figure is only a scant 19,000, of which 3,000 are suppliers.

It is questionable whether the Bundespost will be able to compensate for its
losses from IBM, who set up the system.  "Big Blue" will scarcely be able to
get out of supplying a new computer program.  And that could take two to three
years, which is the time that Reinhard Vossbein meant when he declared anyone
who subscribes to Bildschirmtext during that period guilty of stupidity.

[p 40:  Unattributed text]

MSG by GAST
20 November 1984, 5:10 a.m.

MICKI is thinking about the CCC's BTX gag (bravo, by the way...), and reaches
the following conclusion:

The more securely a system is protected against unauthorized access, the more
unauthorized the people who can uncover weaknesses must be.
Ultimately, you have a system to which only the unauthorized have access...

In this regard:  Keep on doing it!

[p 40:  Unattributed text of computer program]

10 REM bankrob.ba
20 REM Version 1.00
30 REM (c) 1984 by Wau
40 MOTOR OFF: 'Relay for money key
100 CLS:PRINT"Bankrob.ba -Restart procedure"
110 INPUT "Prior money received: ";MONEY
120 IN=52:'Time value key on
130 OUT=169:'Time value key off
150 CLS:PRINT0,"DM ";MONEY,"in: ";IN;" out: ";OUT;
160 PRINT90,"o<<<< out >>>> O"
170 PRINT130,"i<<<< in >>>> I"
180 PRINT170,"Stop with x      "
190 PRINT210,TIME$;:GOTO 1100
200 REM Rhomboid loop
210 MOTOR ON:PRINT40,"IN":PRINT40,TIME$:FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
220 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT":FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
230 MOTOR ON:PRINT40,"IN":FOR I=1 TO IN:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
240 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT":FOR I=1 TO OUT:GOSUB 1000:NEXT I
250 MONEY=MONEY+9.97:PRINT0,"DM ";MONEY,"In: ";IN;" Out: ";OUT;
260 GOTO200
1000 REM Speed
1010 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="" THEN RETURN
1020 IF X$="o"THEN OUT=OUT-1:RETURN
1030 IF X$="O"THEN OUT=OUT+1:RETURN
1040 IF X$="i"THEN IN=IN-1:RETURN
1050 IF X$="I"THEN IN=IN+1:RETURN
1060 IF X$<>"x" THEN RETURN
1100 PRINT170,"Continue with x   "
1110 MOTOR OFF:PRINT40,"OUT"
1120 X$=INKEY$:IF X$="x" THEN 1150 ELSE 1120
1150 PRINT170,"Stop with x    ";GOTO 200

[pp 41-42:  Article by "Wau," from TAZ, 22 November 1984]

How the Hamburger Sparkasse BTX Code Was Cracked

Bildschirmtext Tested for Weaknesses

Ever since the coup by the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg, who used a bug in
the Bildschirmtext system to charge fees of DM 135,000 to Hamburger Sparkasse,
Bildschirmtext, or BTX, has been a topic of discussion, and the chaotics from
the Chaos Club have made headlines.

Bildschirmtext is a big joke being played on consumers.  For more than seven
years, "field tests" were run in Berlin and D<>sseldorf.  From the very
beginning, it was obvious that the system would be introduced following the
field tests, regardless of the results of the "tests."  The political objective
made immense investments possible, thus making it simply impossible to abandon
the system.  After the "test," the test subscribers could throw away their
equipment, since in the meantime it had become technically obsolete.  The
Bundespost paid for the technical conversion, giving all the subscribers a
1,000-mark credit, financed by the coins spent on pay telephone calls. 
Nevertheless, around one in six refused this attractive offer and terminated
BTX service.  The Bundespost predicted 150,000 subscribers by the end of 1984. 
It was actually a scant 20,000, which includes many who are not active
subscribers.  In the meantime, the Bundespost has stopped making its own
predictions, instead spending a couple of million on programs that are supposed
to provide better prognoses.

The Bundespost has invested more than DM 700 million in BTX.  If you compare
this to subsidies for opera houses, then the Bundespost has built a 35,000-mark
box for each subscriber.  The only problem is that the opera program is still
rather monotonous.

IBM is the supplier of the computer and of the programs for the current system. 
They had high hopes about their deal, and wanted to sell their system to a
number of countries.  After all, approximately 100 people worked on programming
for around two years.  If you spend DM 20,000 a month for one of these
specialists, that makes DM 50 million.  A succession of several executives was
in charge of the project.  There were only a few "minor details" to be improved
in the program, and with programs the smaller the correction, the more time
they take.

Chaos Team Becomes BTX Supplier

In the fall of 1984, after long debate, the Chaos Computer Club decided to
subscribe to BTX.  Naturally as a "supplier," since being a subscriber is not
interesting.  They started with the least expensive equipment, which was
technically refurbished.  Still, the first months were torturous.  The
prevailing mood with home computers is well-known:  "Turn it on--it doesn't
work."  But with the Bundespost, everyone expects that everything will work
fine.  It is only rarely that you get mail from the Bundespost saying, "Because
of work on the system, few telephone calls will be possible on the weekend." 
With Bildschirmtext, hardly anything worked.  Even an accent on a letter in a
person's name caused unexpected developments (and this in a "European" system). 
In terms of computerization, changing names with accepts is offered up as a
subversive strategy.  Moreover, the blocking and unblocking of pages did not
work.  Blocked pages were legible, unblocked ones were not.  The Bundespost
told people who complained that they were doing something wrong.  Blocked pages
are something like the closed doors in an Advent calendar.  On the first of
December, the first door is opened (in BTX:  unblocked), on the second the
second door, and so on.  The Bundespost has a Christmas calendar game of chance
in Bildschirmtext.  Every day, new letters behind a door can be seen, and on 24
December, there is a complete sentence (Season's Greetings from the
Bundespost).  But without any coercion, all the doors flew open on the first of
the month.  Either someone at the Bundespost typed something wrong, or the
system has yet another small bug.  The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) first got wind
of this on 12 December, and sent in the complete solution, the prize being
telephone credits.  It is interesting how many subscribers sent in the solution
before the CCC.  Does the Bundespost perhaps believe here as well that some
chaotics sneaked into the Bundespost to find the solution?

However, a major problem with BTX is composing pages.  The CCC does a type of
electronic newspaper, which is published irregularly.  Once a new article has
been written and is supposed to be loaded into the system, all eyes focus on
the lowest line, waiting for the message "ED007 EXECUTION NOT POSSIBLE AT
PRESENT" or otherwise "Won't work right now."

In order to penetrate the BTX system, all you need is the connection code. 
Every subscriber has a different 12-digit number.  This access authorization is
generally sent by pressing one key.  This is practical and reasonably safe. 
You can imagine it as a nine-digit padlock (the first three numbers are
generally zero) on your bicycle shed.  Secondly, there is a personal code word. 
This is comparable to a padlock on the bicycle itself.  And you can also put
your bicycle in a communal shed.  In BTX, this is called a "free-access
connection."  In that case, anyone can go into the communal shed and, if he
knows the number of a particular bicycle lock, he can move about in BTX and
take a look at things.  A lot of it is free of charge, but some information or
offerings cost money.  Springer-Verlag reports cost 1 pfennig, FRANKFURTER
ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG reports cost 2 pfennigs, and the owner of the bicycle pays
for this, not the cyclist.

Test of BTX Weaknesses

At some point, discussion at CCC came back to BTX and the policy of the
Bundespost to simply ignore or deny the risks of BTX.  The question arose of
whether this was intentional or just stupid.  A test was decided on.  Who would
be the guinea pig?  The Bundespost Ministry in Bonn?  A single quote suffices
here:  BTX is allegedly secure because it is difficult to tap into the
telephone lines in this country, since they are all underground.

The BTX control facility in Ulm is not that interesting as a test object.  It
tries to keep the system running.  And the Berlin office of BTX is responsible
for calming down postal customers when something goes wrong.  The Central
Telecommunications Office (FTZ) in Darmstadt is the site where technical plans
and standards are drawn up.  There one might expect to find the practical
technicians who worked out the security system.  Those are the right people for
a test of BTX weaknesses.  Without giving it much more thought, the BTX
connection of the FTZ was tested one day by the CCC:  Do they or do they not
have free access?  In order to find out, their subscriber number had to first
be entered:  06151 83.  That is the telephone number for the FTZ.  Then there
is the prompt for the code word.  At this point, you can type in anything and
tell from the subsequent error message whether the FTZ has a free-access
connection or not.  The CCC typed something in, the same telephone number
again.  The FTZ was careless:  There was free access.  But even worse, the FTZ
had chosen its own telephone number as its secret code word.  That is clearly
more careless than one would have expected, certainly from Bundespost
specialists.

A record is kept by the Hamburg data protection commissioner of who worked on
Bildschirmtext when.  Since the BTX reports when someone was last "on," an
"outside use" can often be detected in this way.  But scarcely anyone keeps a
record of it; it is too tedious.  At any rate, the FTZ did not notice the
"outside use" by the CCC.  This cleared up the question:  The Bundespost was
not withholding and/or providing false information about BTX out of stupidity.

The CCC considered what it should do now.  The most obvious thing was of course
to get money from the Bundespost.  In order to do so, a page for which a fee is
charged must be called in by another BTX subscriber.  And that can be repeated
any number of times.  The highest price per page is currently DM 9.99.  With 1-
pfennig pages from Axel Springer, the CCC tested, at its own expense, how fast
money can be collected using that method.  In non-automatic operation, it
worked out to around DM 10 an hour.  For the CCC page, at DM 9.97, this would
be DM 10,000 an hour.  So you could really get something over night.  These
fees are charged on the telephone bill--in this case, the FTZ's telephone bill
--and transferred to the suppliers a couple of weeks later.  Right now, it is
not working again, the Bundespost has another bug in the program, and it hopes
to be able to pay the fees in February.  In principle, however, the money is
being recorded.

Getting the money would be phase one.  What then?  Should we sell this breach
of security to the Bundespost?  We could, as is normal in industry, "hack" DM
100,000 or more and then sell the Bundespost consultation on this problem for a
certain percentage of the money.  Or get free, lifetime telephone service for
the CCC or something like that.  The Bundespost had to pay for its gross
negligence.

In both cases, however, the price would have been silence.  Otherwise, the
concentrated rage of the postal authorities would have been forthcoming. 
Consequently, perhaps half a dozen officials would have tried to do something
to the CCC.

But the CCC wanted enlightenment about the risks of this new system.  To this
end, the finance transaction had to be made public.  Fine, but who should push
the starting button for the money transfer?  After all, it is an infringement
like a parking ticket, although more expensive:  a DM 50,000 fine.  Will the
data protection commissioner do it?  He probably would have taken advantage of
the opportunity and attempted to achieve an improvement by official means.

A politician?  Perhaps.  But what if he leaks the story?  There remained only
one option:  Do it ourselves, and abrogate our criminal liability by going
public with it.  A week later, the attempt failed, since the FTZ had in the
meantime closed off free access to its connection.

Hackers as Data Protection Specialists

Several weeks later, Wau gave a presentation at a conference of data protection
specialists in Cologne:  BTX--El Dorado for Hackers.  Cologne was a sea of pin-
stripes, and Wau looked like a parrot in the midst of it all.  Despite their
initial distance, the audience was impressed by his presentation.  Only the
representative of the Bundespost felt that he was hitting below the belt, and
that he did not intend to address those issues.  That was dismissed with
laughter, since the presentation depicted a series of program bugs drastically
and in three dimensions.  There is a bug in the sending of electronic mail. 
The sender can still change the contents after the letter has arrived.  You can
send a business partner a bid for, say, DM 2,300 and then later change the
price, either raising it or lowering it.  Another bug means that under certain
circumstances the BTX system spits out internal system information.  With a
little luck, connection code words and secret passwords can be detected in this
way.  "Nonsense," said the Bundespost representative.  And to the offer of
cooperation came only the response, "First you have to get serious."  It is
unclear whether the CCC succeeded in doing so.  At the very least, the BTX
system finally spit out the connection code word and secret password of the
Hamburger Sparkasse after a number of tries with the well-known system bug. 
Thus, it became possible to carry out the presentation planned for the FTZ with
the Sparkasse instead.

Almost everything went as planned.  Over night, in 12 hours and 59 minutes, a
good DM 134,000 was raised.  With a portabf<10> <14><><EFBFBD>@%<25><>ѕȁѡ<C881><D1A1><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>en run in a
daily newspaper, and a meeting of two dozen people from all over West Germany
then took place in Berlin.  We then decided to keep in touch and exchange
experiences.  The idea was simply to put together a magazine, but at that point
it was all too vague, and it didn't come off.  Next, contacts with the United
States were established, with Cheshire Catalyst (the "king" of U.S. hackers,
Ed.) and with his magazine TAP, which a bunch of people here in West Germany
already knew about and subscribed to.  At the Telecom in the fall of 1983, I
met him personally and wrote a two-page article about him in a daily newspaper. 
And this two-page article elicited a great deal of response.  By the end of the
year, things had progressed far enough to set up a magazine.  Previously, the
idea was to exchange all information by floppy disk, but everything was
incompatible, and it had no purpose.  The magazine was announced around the
beginning of the year, and we received 100 replies within one week.  And so to
us in Hamburg, it was obvious:  If 100 people want it, then it has to be done. 
In March, the first issue was finally finished.  Once the first and second
issues were out, there was a veritable flood of letters.  The amount of mail
was equivalent to placing both my hands on end.

[Question]  How many subscriptions does the magazine have?

[Answer]  We took the course that whoever writes should get information,
regardless of whether they send money in.  The number of subscriptions
fluctuates somewhere over 200.

[Question]  How do your finances look right now?

[Answer]  Terrible!  The production costs are around 10 pfennigs per copy, for
both sides of a DIN A3 page.  On the other hand, the most expensive thing is
postage, 50 pfennigs a piece.  For each copy there are three copies that are
not paid for, that we simply send out, as a sample or in response to a request
with no money enclosed.  It is in fact financed by the skin of our teeth, but
we do hope that a number of people are willing to pay for it.  If money comes
in, then we can continue.

[Question]  And of the 200 subscriptions has each one paid around DM 30?

[Answer]  More or less.  They came in with the full amount, a couple sent more
than that, but unfortunately it was fewer than we had hoped.  It costs about DM
1000 to produce one issue of DATENSCHLEUDER.

[Question]  How long will people receive DATENSCHLEUDER for their DM 30?

[Answer]  One Chaos year.  That is effectively around one year, with around 10
issues.  You definitely have to give our address, or they'll come beating your
door down for that.

[Question]  How many regular members do you have now?

[Answer]  About the membership structure--it's rather open and free.  Everyone
who has information for us simply contributes it, whether he has a subscription
or simply receives DATENSCHLEUDER, or even if he knows nothing about
DATENSCHLEUDER.  There are people who are working on the modem layout, and we
are producing and marketing motherboards, for example.  And then we do
DATENSCHLEUDER, and also do communication via computer.  It is simply an open
structure, where anyone who feels like it can join in and leave at any time. 
But we are thinking about whether we should impose organizational structures on
the whole thing.  There are a couple of external areas where we are simply
encountering problems.  But on the other hand, we basically like this open
structure.  It's a dilemma.

[Question]  But surely you can provide an approximate number?

[Answer]  If we approach it in terms of subscriptions, we come up with more
than 200, of which around 30 are in Hamburg.  But that's very fluid.  Should I
count a graphic artist who does a couple of pictures for DATENSCHLEUDER as a
member?  We don't look at it that narrowly.  Somebody comes along, finds it
interesting, and joins in.  That's also how it is at our meetings, which we
hold once a week at a bar here in Hamburg.  We always get different people
there, it's just a regular meeting base.  On the other hand, we generally meet
once a month to exchange information.

[Question]  What kind of people are involved?

[Answer]  It ranges from pilots to a metalworker, people who run their own
shops to unemployed people and students.  They are between 16 and 35.  No one
is older than that.

[Question]  What is your assessment of the legal status of your activities?

[Answer]  We just don't like being forced into any corner.  Now people are
saying that it's all criminal, breaking into data bases and getting into
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By the way, the CCC would have never gotten its hands on the Haspa and its
customers' money.

Fact:  BTX is safe!

[p 44:  letter]
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<00><><EFBFBD>^0<><30><EFBFBD>0<03>&<26>D-&<26>D$&<26>\"&<26>D0&<26>\.&<26>D&<26>D2&<26>D&<26>D4<44><34><EFBFBD>ރ<EFBFBD>63<36>Q<EFBFBD>QPS<50>b/<2F><>3<EFBFBD>P3<50>P3<50>S<EFBFBD>v&<26>t<02>`O.<2E><><EFBFBD>F<1C>^<1A><>*<2A> QPS<50><53><EFBFBD>v&<26>t<02>O.<2E><><EFBFBD>v&<26>D<00><>]<5D>U<EFBFBD><55>*<2A><><EFBFBD>v0&<26>DR&<26>\P&<26>LN<4C>F&<26>N(<28>^$<24>F(<28>N(<28><>u<03><><00>Ѝ^3<>Q<EFBFBD> QPS<50>b/<2F><><EFBFBD>v$&<26>t&<26>t<0E>puter is not connected to any terminal in Europe...  We feel
that it is necessary to isolate the computer from Europe, to prevent one person
from writing the new universal theory; this is not out of mistrust towards
intentions, but rather because we believe that a single person would allow too
many of his individual values to take root.

Culture does not depend on its external scale, but rather on the content of its
codex.  The scale may be very interesting, but it is clearly secondary, just as
secondary as the various areas and fields from which the members of Minus Delta
T come.  Our heterogeneous origins in music, art, philosophy, science and
ethnology, as well as from future studies, have led us to study issues that are
very global in scope.  The group's lack of specialization gives it a certain
perspective and in this sense a high degree of responsibility for its
activities, activities that need no compromise.

As far as philosophy is concerned, this text is in no sense a compromise.  This
text is the philosophy of Minus Delta T, a philosophy whose philosophy is to
consist of many philosophies...

Minus Delta T is a group of people who are in no sense uniform, who do not have
the same ideas, but who are nonetheless working together.  The group has
existed since 1979, and since then many people have come and gone, without
finding their home here (these people were for the most part "specialists").

One of the main premises of the group is nonspecialization; we want to be open
to everyone and everything.  Initially, we did a lot a work in the area of
music, gave performances, did exhibits, but also engaged in a great deal of
private work (half-and-half seemed to us to be a good balance between private
and public work).  Since 1980, we have worked on this project, which was
originally called the "Bangkok project" (cf. the catalogue of ARS ELECTRONICA,
1982, p 154).  This project comprised the transport of a stone weighing five
and a half tons, a dolmen, a European monument, to Asia, as a so-called
cultural catalyst.  We had a complete set of multimedia equipment, including
sound, film and photographic equipment, from computer technology to a washing
machine, on the truck.

The majority of the group is now in Asia, preparing for the further transport
of the monolith to China (whereby, of course, the monolith as such is of
absolutely no consequence), as well as on a trip through India as part of the
"Bangkok Project."

[photo captions, p 32]

Construction of the first philosophical data bank, Stuttgart, 1982

Dudesek and Hoffmann, India, 1984

[photo captions, p 33]

Stone, five and a half tons of granite

Stone in Persepolis

Disemboweling a wild pig, Turkey, 1983

[pp 32-33:  Related, unattributed article]

Databank Eloquencies

The PHILOSOPHICAL DATA BANK will be constructed in the Himalayas.  The
PHILOSOPHICAL DATA BANK was a creation that was filtered out during the course
of the PROJECT.  "The MINUS DELTA t group took a five-ton stone to Asia and
actually wanted to deposit it in the Himalayas--as a European monument."  We
then reached the point, during our STAY IN NEPAL, where we felt that we should
do something much more CONCRETE in the Himalayas--namely, the PHILOSOPHICAL
DATA BANK, which consists of a steel case that we got from a SPONSOR, with
several hundred keys, a COMPUTER (a BASIC program has been prepared for it),
and since we are not yet the GENERATION that is fluent with computers, a
handbook as well.

This SAFE is built into the rock at the first BASIC-CAMP on MOUNT EVEREST. 
Depending on financial resources, some of which we must still locate, there
will also be a DOME, so that people who are going to the PHILOSOPHICAL DATA
BANK can use it for shelter or lodging.

The COMPUTER will not be connected to others and with Europe, and is understood
to be a COLLECTION OF PHILOSOPHIES.

There are many REASONS that we have done this.  It is important to give GREATER
ATTENTION TO CONTENT in an Occidental society, in which content and TRADITION
have been lost.  What I mean is that because of TECHNICAL EVOLUTION, the
digital image and so on, we have advanced to the point where we need a NEW
SYSTEM, somehow a new UNIVERSAL THEORY.

And this is where the basic problem begins, since this new universal theory is
essentially not BOUND TO FORM, and should no longer be a SOCIAL SYSTEM, but
rather a fundamental attitude, a REDUCTION TO HUMAN VALUES, which then implies
a certain elimination of form, which is naturally a PROBLEM today.

I believe that in this sense many VALUES have not necessarily been lost, but
perhaps no longer have the PRECISION that they once had.  So I am talking here
concretely about values like SCIENTIFIC and ARTISTIC PRECISION and things like
that, and why things always go wrong there, and do not work.  It has to do with
values, which I call EMOTIONAL LOGIC, with SYMPATHY or ANTIPATHY...  Whether I
like this room or not will clearly influence how I speak and how the ELOQUENCE
of my talk even comes across as ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.

Thus, as an ATTEMPT at various FORMS OF ELOQUENCE, I can now present the
PHILOSOPHICAL DATA BANK and perhaps COMMUNICATE what is different about it.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DATA BANK------THE TEMPLE------KNOWLEDGE------THE TABERNACLE
OF THE EAST------THE STONE OF THE WISE------THE GRAIL------THE MONSTRANCE------
IN THE PURE MOUNTAIN AIR------IN THE ALPS------UP HIGH------FOR THE FUTURE-----
OF A WESTERN WORLD------LOVE------THE DRUG CHAMBER------THE GROTTO------THE
BIOLOGICAL MIRACLE------DIGITALLY DEFORMED.

[p 34:  Unattributed news item, Aug 1985]

With "other telecommunication services," such as wide-band cable connections
and Bildschirmtext (BTX), cost recovery continued to drop sharply.  Now, only
82 percent of expenditures are recovered by proceeds; that figure was 92.2
percent in 1983 and as much as 103.5 percent in 1982.  In this area, the
Bundespost is currently suffering an estimated loss of DM 269 million.

[p 35:  Article by Lothar Grust from BILD-ZEITUNG, 20 Nov 1984]

Computer Enthusiasts Tap DM 135,000 From Haspa Account

Several young members of a Hamburg computer club have cheated the Hamburger
Sparkasse (Haspa) out of DM 135,000--and they even announced their intention
beforehand.  They wanted to show that the current Bildschirmtext system (BTX)
is inadequate.

What is BTX?  Approximately 20,000 subscribers in Germany offer their services
via the television screen.  Each person who owns a television and the auxiliary
device can, for example, call up account statements from his bank, order goods
from mail-order houses and book vacations with travel agencies.  What he orders
is registered and by the Bundespost, and a fee is charged.

Haspa is one such BTX subscriber.

Another subscriber is the "Chaos Computer Club," an association of young
Hamburg computer enthusiasts.  They discovered the code and the secret password
for Haspa, and made the Sparkasse call in a "Chaos Club" text for which a fee
of DM 9.97 was charged.  Using an automatic repetition program, more than DM
135,000 was collected overnight.

Club spokesman Holland, 32:  "Three days ago I told the Bundespost that BTX can
be tampered with.  They didn't believe me."

Haspa CEO Benno Sch<63>lermann, 53:  "We are upset.  The Bundespost ensured us
that BTX is secure--and that was wrong."

Hamburg data protection commissioner Claus Henning Schapper, 47:  "BTX
subscribers must see to their own security."

By the way, the "Chaos" people do not even want the money.

[p 35:  Cartoon caption:  "Damn, someone has cracked our BTX computer again."]

[pp 36-37:  Article from DER SPIEGEL, No 48, 1984]

Bildschirmtext

Fun Little Games

Hamburg hackers have proven that the Bildschirmtext system can be tampered
with.  The Hamburger Sparkasse was charged DM 135,000 in fees via BTX.

If you look in the yellow Hamburg telephone book under "Werner," you will find
on page 1067 the strangely mutilated entry "Wern&1ry."  The real name of this
unpronounceable entry--the computer mangled an "<22>"--has surely been known since
last Monday to the publisher of the weighty tome, Bundespost Minister Christian
Schwarz-Schilling.

Saturday night and Sunday morning, Steffen Wern<72>ry, 23, dealt a serious setback
to the highly-praised "Bildschirmtext" (BTX) service of the Bundespost. 
Together with friends from Hamburg's "Chaos Computer Club" (CCC), computer
enthusiast Wern<72>ry unearthed from the BTX system sensitive data for another
user:  the specially protected password ("usd70000") for the BTX service of
Hamburger Sparkasse (Haspa).

Armed with the Haspa password, the hackers sneaked into the BTX computer under
the bank's electronic camouflage cover.  Having identified themselves to the
Bundespost computer as Haspa, they were able to move about freely within the
BTX system, and order the Haspa computer to call in a BTX page from the CCC
over and over again, each time incurring a charge of DM 9.97.

(In the BTX system, the "subscribers" provide information "pages" in the form
of fixed television images, such as mail-order offerings, travel options or
even merchandise testing information.  For each page called in by the user, the
subscriber can charge fees of up to DM 9.99 per page.)

The result was that from 10 o'clock on Saturday evening until 1:00 Sunday
afternoon, the Haspa computer called in a nonsense page every three seconds
("It requires a remarkable team to repel gilb...") from the Hamburg computer
club.  In this way, as the computer enthusiasts reported to the astonished
public on Monday, DM 135,000 in fees were incurred on behalf of the CCC.

Haspa CEO Benno Sch<63>lermann "didn't think it was possible."  The Bundespost had
repeatedly ensured its customers that an occurrence like the one in Hamburg was
"much more unlikely than a six-digit winner in the lottery."  Now, the board of
directors of the bank is considering "making the Bundespost legally liable for
any damage, including damage to confidence."

Last week, other commercial BTX customers were also shocked by the coup carried
out by Hamburg hackers, who wanted their BTX trick to demonstrate the
possibility of misuse of the system.

Erhard Buchholz, organizational head for the Rewe food wholesaler in Cologne,
intends to "study the Hamburg coup carefully."  Bernhard Zeller, lawyer and
general manager of BTX Travel Consultants GmbH in Frankfurt, saw in the BTX
setback further evidence of the view that in legal terms entry into the BTX
network is equivalent to a "jump into ice-cold water."

In the past, the "State Agreement on Bildschirmtext" has made the BTX
subscribers responsible for code and password misuse.  According to Article 9,
Section 8, the safety code must "offer a degree of protection against
unauthorized use that is in keeping with the state of the art."  Thus, in
Zeller's nightmare, if a "trickster" were to completely book a jumbo jet via
BTX, so that it taxied out onto the runway completely empty, then it is up to
the travel agent to prove that he is not responsible for the trick booking.

The Bundespost is attempting to calm down its commercial customers.  The
ministry says that it is working "together with specialists" on improving BTX
security "even further."  The Hamburg setback, says Postal Director Bodo Frahm
of the Bundespost Ministry, "hurt a great deal."

The post office is hurt by the fact that its new communication network was hit
precisely in its sensitive startup phase.  BTX has been offered nationwide
service since 18 June of this year.  With this system, the Bundespost hopes
that West German citizens will take the first step into the electronic
communications age.

Developed in England a good 10 years ago as "Viewdata," BTX connects the home
telephone to the Bundespost's universal telephone network.  An auxiliary unit,
called a modem (one-time connection fee:  DM 55) receives data signals coming
in through the telephone line, and an additional component ("decoder") in the
television (price:  more than DM 1,000) transforms them into print and graphic
images on the TV screen.

A central computer in Ulm, together with computers in urban centers such as
Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, controls the nationwide flow of data. 
Travel timetables and stock prices, news briefs and meeting notices, special
sale prices and weather information can all be called up on the TV screen in a
matter of seconds.  Banks allow their customers to make payments via BTX, mail-
order houses entice consumers with electronic merchandise orders, travel
agencies advise their customers at home via BTX.

The Bundespost hoped that medium-sized companies, doctors, pharmacists and
bookstores--as well as private BTX users--would "permit the system to continue
growing like an avalanche."  However, even the BTX test phase from June 1980 to
August 1983 in West Berlin and D<>sseldorf/Neuss dampened high expectations. 
Critics said that the Bundespost service was "disappointing," and they faulted
the BTX offerings for being "unsatisfactory, and largely boring."

The high costs--private BTX users are saddled with around DM 3,000 in equipment
costs, commercial customers with DM 70,000--and initial technical shortcomings
also provided for sluggish demand.  At present, approximately 19,000
subscribers are connected (of which 3,000 offer products or services), a number
that in economic circles is considered "equal to zero."  In order to lure BTX
users, the Bundespost had predicted 150,000 BTX customers by the end of 1984.

Added to skepticism about economic developments was concern about BTX
technology, whose degree of difficulty was compared by Minister Schwarz-
Schilling with a "moon landing."  "The technology," says Bernd Hentschel of the
Association for Data Protection and Date Security, "is the danger of the
thing."  Experts have warned that BTX represents a broad field for data pirates
in the FRG.

It is not data pirates, but rather "Robin Hoods in the data network," as Chaos
spokesman Herwart ("Wau") Holland puts it, that have now upset BTX users and
suppliers.  According to DIE WELT, BTX customers are wondering whether instead
of "a pair of skis from the mail-order house" it is possible that "ten or a
hundred pairs" will arrive.

The Chaos hackers proved that this and other BTX worries should be taken
seriously.  Repeatedly, the "postal enthusiasts" of the CCC have reported in
their newsletter DATENSCHLEUDER "how the mucking-up of BTX is going":

*  According to Bundespost information, the memory capacity of BTX equipment is
   "several million BTX pages."  A Berlin hacker was able to use a copying
   function--which makes it possible to input the same page any number of
   times--to prove that the memory holds only 750,000 pages.  Bundespost
   reaction:  The copying function was shut off.

*  BTX permits the suppliers of BTX services to block certain pages, such as
   those with price information that has not yet been released, for any period
   of time.  The hackers discovered that pages blocked in Hamburg can be made
   legible in Munich, while pages already released nationwide can be suddenly
   blocked.

*  In the BTX communication service ("electronic mailboxes"), letters or notes
   that have already been sent can be changed later by the sender.  In a BTX
   letter addressed to the "Dear Data Protectors" of every Bundesland, the
   Chaos hackers requested "1 copy of their latest activity report."  Through
   hacker manipulation, the data protectors were later turned into "data
   shitters," and instead of "1 copy," the order was suddenly for "1,000
   copies."

Two weeks ago, BTX hackers notified the Bundespost of another weakness in the
system:  If a BTX page is filled up by the supplier up to the last of the 1,626
possible characters, the result is an "overflow effect"--the supplier's screen
mysteriously displays information that is none of his business, including
sensitive data from other subscribers.

Playing with this "overflow effect" is what got the BTX hackers the code and
password for Haspa the weekend before last.  For "the pros," as the Bundespost
calls the unloved BTX gamesmen, it was simple to identify the appropriate BTX
subscriber, Haspa.  The rest, says BTX pro Wern<72>ry, was "child's play."

At the same time, the Bundespost learned about the other kinds of "fun little
games" that are possible with Bildschirmtext (hacker nickname:  "Bildschirm-
Trix"), this time free of charge.  BTX is actually designed only for stationary
images--pages of text or graphics.  However, the Chaos computer enthusiasts
were able to program a trick film, based on a video game.

On the ZDF television program "Heute-Journal" last Monday, even Bundespost
Minister Schwarz-Schilling had the opportunity to look at the small work of
art:  a Chaos mobile hovering on the screen firing shots at small yellow
Bundespost squirrels with "nuke" mushroom clouds.

The only non-American word that has been introduced into the new language thus
far is the German word "Gedanken."  In hackerese, however, it is only used as
an adjective.  Gedanken means impracticable, not well-thought-out, or even
untested, unchecked.

"A gedanken thing," explains the Hacker's Dictionary, "is generally
characterized by an obvious lack of intuition for what is programmable and what
is not."

[p 37:  Headline and photo caption for article not included, from DER SPIEGEL]

"Boom, And I'm Inside the System"

Cheshire (center) during DER SPIEGEL interview:  "We love the telephone
network, but we hate the bureaucracy behind it."