917 lines
52 KiB
Plaintext
917 lines
52 KiB
Plaintext
From dfox@fc.net Sat Jan 21 03:03:03 1995
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Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 01:59:53 -0600
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From: Malik Al-Rashim <dfox@fc.net>
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Message-Id: <199501210759.BAA20399@freeside.fc.net>
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To: mikecap@wpi.edu
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Subject: JAUC-File8
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Status: OR
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INTERVIEW WITH ERIK BLOODAXE
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By Netta Gilboa
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Interview with Erik Bloodaxe (GRAY AREAS REPRINT)
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The following are portions of an interview with "Erik Bloodaxe" by Netta
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Gilboa of Gray Areas Magazine. Gray Areas is an eclectic arts and culture
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magazine that focuses on the fringes of society. It's one of the best
|
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sources for information on rock and alternative music, controversial
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social issues, computer culture, and other topics that aren't covered
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elsewhere. It's a steal $18 for four issues, or $50 for three years. For
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information, write:
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Gray Areas
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PO Box 808
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Broomall, PA 19008-0808
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Or, e-mail them at grayarea@well.sf.ca.us
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For those new to computer culture, "erik bloodaxe" was a member of
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the original "Legion of Doom," a modest media celebrity, and
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more recently, the editor of Phrack)).
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((Excerpts from interview with Chris Goggans at Pumpcon, 1993. From:
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GRAY AREAS, Fall, 1994 (Vol 3, #2): pp 27-50))
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By Netta Gilboa
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Netta Gilboa: What is Phrack magazine?
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Chris Goggans: Phrack is the longest running underground publication.
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I don't really know how to describe Phrack. Phrack just sort of is.
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Phrack is an electronic magazine that deals with topics of interest to
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the computer underground; different types of operating systems,
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weaknesses in system architectures; telephony; anything of any
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relevance to the community in which it was intended for, that being
|
||
the computer underground. It has always tried to paint a picture of
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the social aspects of the computer underground rather than focus
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entirely on technical issues. So in that way it adds a lot of color to
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what's going on.
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GA: How did you get involved with publishing Phrack?
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CG: Well, I got involved when the person who was editing it at the
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time, Dispater, got into a motorcycle accident and as a result of
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||
this, had a lot of other financial hardships, so he wasn't going to be
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||
able to do it any longer. Its original editors, Craig Neidorf (Knight
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Lightning) and Taran King, had no interest in doing it themselves any
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||
longer for, at least in Craig's case, obvious personal reasons, and
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there really was no one else who could take it over. I was of the
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||
mind set that Phrack had been around so long that it had almost become
|
||
something of an institution. I, being so ridiculously nostalgic and
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||
sentimental, didn't want to see it just stop, even though a lot of
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||
people always complain about the content and say, "Oh, Phrack is lame
|
||
and this issue didn't have enough info, or Phrack was great this
|
||
month, but it really sucked last month." You know, that type of thing.
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||
Even though some people didn't always agree with it and some people
|
||
had different viewpoints on it, I really thought someone needed to
|
||
continue it and so I kind of volunteered for it. And there was a
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||
little bit of discussion amongst some people.
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||
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First Craig was really hesitant to say, "Yeah, well maybe you should
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||
take it over." A lot of this was being held up by Taran King who said,
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||
"Well, we just don't want your politics getting involved." Because,
|
||
apparently, I have some hidden political agenda that differed with
|
||
what they thought the role of Phrack should play. Eventually they
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||
decided that there is really no one else who could do a job well
|
||
enough to continue it in the spirit in which it had been formed and I
|
||
started with issue 42. And I think that one went over very well. That
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issue was pretty hilarious because it had a lot of stuff about packet
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||
switching networks, and it was a big slap in the face to B.T. Tymnet.
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I had a whole lot of fun with that issue. Since then, it's gone over
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||
really well, at least from everyone I've talked to. Of course there'
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have always been a few dissenters that say, Oh, Phrack sucks, but
|
||
these are the same people who won't tell you why. They're just saying
|
||
it to try to get a rise out of me or something, but everybody seems to
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||
appreciate the time and effort that goes into putting this out and
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especially since I'm getting nothing out of it.
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There's kind of a funny side to that. After I took it over, I went
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ahead and I registered it with the Library of Congress and I filed a
|
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DBA as Phrack magazine and for the first issue I put out a license
|
||
agreement, sort of, at the beginning saying that any corporate,
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government or law enforcement use or possession of this magazine
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without prior registration with me was a violation of the Copyright
|
||
Law, blah, blah, blah, this and that and Phrack was free to qualified
|
||
subscribers; however, in order to qualify as a qualified subscriber,
|
||
one must be an amateur computer hobbyist with no ties to such a thing.
|
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And this really went over like a ton of bricks with some people. A
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lot of corporate people immediately sent back, "Please remove my name
|
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from the list." I had a few other people say, well, "We're going to
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pay, but don't tell anybody we're going to pay." Of course, they never
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did. There was only one person who actually did pay, so, you know, I
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used that as wonderful ammunition for the next issue saying that all
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of them are lying, cheating scums and they have no respect for our
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information so why should they think it odd that we have any respect
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for theirs.
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GA: And you actually named a few people.
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CG: Yeah, I named several people who were not only getting the
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magazine but in one case, they were spreading it around and, of
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course, none of them even contacted me for registration. It was all,
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I had a riot with it. It was a lot of fun. And, I'm still going to
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include that in every issue because I still expect them, if they're
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going to be reading my magazine, to please have some shred of decency
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and pay the registration fee, since it's a lot less than any other
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||
trade publication that they'd be buying regardless, and certainly a
|
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lot more voluminous and contains a lot more information than they're
|
||
going to find in any other magazine dealing with computer security.
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GA: Is the agenda for that decision to get publicity, to have grounds
|
||
to sue people who you don't like, or to gain financially?
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CG: Well, I never expected to gain anything financially. You know, a
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lot of the people who are still in the so-called "underground" are
|
||
also working in various fields which might put them in conflict with
|
||
the registration agreements, and we're very liberal about that. I
|
||
mean, if someone just because they're working at, let's say...
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GA: Gray Areas, Inc.
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CG: Yeah, Gray Areas, Inc. or the people who might be independent,
|
||
like LAN consultants, you know, just 'cause someone's working in the
|
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field, I'm real flexible about that. Then if someone sends me mail,
|
||
and I get a lot like that, which says, "Well, I'm assistant
|
||
administrator here at the university and there's no way they'll pay
|
||
for it." I'm like, "Don't worry about it." You know, "We'll make an
|
||
exemption in your case." But it's the people, the Gene Stafford's of
|
||
the world, the Ed DeHart's of the world. Those are the people who
|
||
have always pointed the finger at the people who this information is
|
||
intended for and called them bad. They're the ones who don t register
|
||
their subscriptions and the people of their mind set and the people of
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||
their ilk, I guess.
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As far as publicity, it didn't gain any publicity. It wasn't any kind
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||
of stunt. My biggest concern in doing this was to try to protect this
|
||
information and I didn't want to see it being resold. With the prior
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||
Phracks up 'til 41, there are companies out there, for example Onion
|
||
Press who sells hard copies of Phrack, and I don't want anything that
|
||
I'm putting time and effort into being resold. I don't want it in the
|
||
CD-ROMs. There's are several CD-ROMs out right now with a bunch of
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text files from the computer underground.
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||
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So, I wanted to copyright this information, put it out. It's a
|
||
magazine, I'm doing it, it's my magazine. The DBA is in my name, I
|
||
hold the copyright and no one's going to resell this. If it's going to
|
||
be presented in some other format, I want to be able to control that.
|
||
And, it's not necessarily a kind of power play. It's just I want to
|
||
protect it. I mean, I don't think you'd appreciate people all of a
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||
sudden saying, "Now I'm going to put up the electronic version of Gray
|
||
Areas."
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||
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=======================
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GA: Many years ago, Phrack had a problem with a telephone company
|
||
regarding a document that they printed, and a lot of people have said
|
||
that if it was a paper publication as opposed to an electronic
|
||
publication, that might never have happened.
|
||
|
||
CG: Yeah, well, I mean, that's obvious. You look at magazines like
|
||
2600 and just because they're black letters on a white page instead of
|
||
white letters on a black screen, they get away with a lot of stuff.
|
||
They get threatening letters from Bell Cores. They like to publish
|
||
them in their magazine, but they haven't been taken to task for any of
|
||
that. You don't see them in any sort of court for this and the mere
|
||
fact that the very document that they are saying was so proprietary
|
||
was available for $19.95 from the Bell Core order line. That sort of
|
||
stands to prove that they were just looking for a scapegoat, a
|
||
figurehead in the underground community to use as an example for the
|
||
rest of the people to say, "Well, we'll take down Phrack. That'll
|
||
show them. That'll scare them."
|
||
|
||
It's the same kind of thing that they tried to do with The Legion of
|
||
Doom. They said, "Well, we took down the Legion of Doom." I heard it
|
||
from one person, you know, you cut off the head, the body will die.
|
||
It's like, AT&T or somebody had somebody map out the computer
|
||
underground, they had Phrack magazine in the middle of a hub and the
|
||
Legion of Doom above that; arrows going and pointing out how the
|
||
computer underground networks together, and obviously, these people
|
||
think there's a little more structure to it than there is. They don't
|
||
realize that it's complete anarchy. I mean, no one's controlling
|
||
anybody else's actions. To set out one example and hope that everybody
|
||
else is going to learn from that one example is ludicrous.
|
||
|
||
GA: What sort of problems do you encounter publishing it?
|
||
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CG: It takes up a lot of my time, my spare time, which is growing
|
||
incredibly smaller and, I mean, I've overextended myself on a number
|
||
of projects and since I've definitely got a commitment to Phrack, it's
|
||
one that I can certainly shirk if I decided to since I'm not indebted
|
||
to anybody to do it really. I'm not going to pass it up because I
|
||
really want to make sure it continues to be published. That's the
|
||
biggest problem I face, time. Then there are people who say, "Oh, I'm
|
||
going to send you a file on this," and they don't. You know, thanks a
|
||
lot. And I always rag on those people. In fact, in the beginning of
|
||
Phrack 44, I said, "Yeah, and for the people who said they're going to
|
||
send me a file and didn't, you know who you are, and you always have
|
||
to live with your own guilt." I mean, it's typical hacker stuff. "I'm
|
||
going to do this." And they start it and they forget about it.
|
||
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||
GA: It's funny though because I've had incredible cooperation from
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||
those people; more than I've had from any other community that we deal
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||
with. Do you think it's because I'm a girl or because it's on paper?
|
||
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||
CG: Well, it might be a little of both. The kind of files that go in
|
||
Phrack, I don't think Gray Areas is going to publish. You know, how to
|
||
use the Role 9000 CBX, or here's how to hack system 75's, or secret
|
||
sectors and units, or publish C programs. You get a different type of
|
||
thing. Maybe there are people who feel a lot more comfortable writing
|
||
cultural type pieces or special interest pieces than they would
|
||
writing technical stuff. And to try to compensate for that. I've put
|
||
in a lot more stuff in the issues that I've been dealing with, to deal
|
||
with the culture. Like I started something last issue trying to get
|
||
people from different countries to write about what it's like in that
|
||
country. And I had a file in from Ireland; I had a file in from
|
||
Germany; I had a file in from Canada. This issue I've got another one
|
||
from a different part of Canada and I've got one from Sweden and I'm
|
||
waiting on a couple of others. Because, as the computer underground
|
||
goes, it's, people like to have this idea that it's this closely knit
|
||
thing of all these hackers working together, and see how they're
|
||
trading information. But it's not. I don't know anything that's going
|
||
on in other countries except for what the few, select people from
|
||
those countries who hang out in the same areas that I do tell me. But
|
||
there's so many people and so many countries doing things.
|
||
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||
They've got their own little pirate wares, trading scenes, they've got
|
||
their own little virus scenes, they've got their freaking things.
|
||
Stuff that works on their own system, only works in their country; and
|
||
they have their own secret ways of doing things, and their own
|
||
networks that they like to hack, and they all hang out on certain
|
||
deals and they have their own little lore about the busts, or super
|
||
hackers from their country, and that's the kind of stuff that's just
|
||
great to find out. Because, otherwise, you would never know. And it's
|
||
really, really interesting to read what these people are up to and no
|
||
one names names. They're just talking about what it's like to be a
|
||
hacker in their country, and that's the kind of cool stuff that I
|
||
want to continue to do.
|
||
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=======================
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GA: I suppose we should get into your background and how you became
|
||
qualified to run Phrack.
|
||
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CG: I don't know if it's a qualification to run Phrack...
|
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GA: Well, obviously, there are an awful lot of people who could have
|
||
been considered but weren't.
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CG: Yeah, well, I guess so.
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GA: What sort of stages did you go through? From the time that you
|
||
first discovered computers and so on until today?
|
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CG: I kind of went through an exponential learning curve from the very
|
||
beginning and it plateaued out for a while and it's just been a steady
|
||
growth since then. At least I tried to maintain that because there's
|
||
so many new developments that come out and I try to stay abreast of
|
||
everything that's going on. I started messing around with computers a
|
||
very long time ago. For any number of reasons, I always have problems
|
||
trying to place the exact date.
|
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GA: What sort of computers were there? That dates it a little.
|
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CG: Well, the very first computer I did anything on with a modem was
|
||
an Apple II, and a micro modem II. It was a friend of mine's dad's.
|
||
He was a lawyer. He got it so he could get on Dialogue, because it
|
||
was like the brand new service for lawyers. They could go on and look
|
||
up legal briefs and it was all exciting. So, this friend of mine was
|
||
showing it off, I guess maybe 5th grade, 6th grade, somewhere around
|
||
there? A long time ago. And, in order to get on Dialogue, you had to
|
||
dial this special number. Well, we got on, followed the instructions,
|
||
got on Dialogue, looked at it, said, "This is really cool." And we
|
||
noticed that, "Well, gee, in order to get on Dialogue, you have to
|
||
dial this number" which was 415 something. Well, what happens if you
|
||
type in a different number? So we typed a different number somewhere
|
||
else. And, that was sort of it.
|
||
|
||
We spent the vast majority of that night trying different addresses on
|
||
Telenet and actually got into a system. And, this was the first time I
|
||
had ever been on a modem and, I mean, it was just natural. We were
|
||
like, wow! We didn't have any concept of what a network was, we
|
||
couldn't imagine what this meant. The concept of being able to call
|
||
one little number and connect to computers around the entire country
|
||
was so mind boggling, so strange to us that we were sucked into it.
|
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As a little bit of background to this, I had already been messing
|
||
around with telephones before this and this is a ridiculous story that
|
||
a lot of people give me a lot of s--- about but, I mean, I don't
|
||
really care. A friend of mine and I had stolen a dirty magazine from a
|
||
convenience store and rifling through it, it was like a High Society
|
||
or something like that.
|
||
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||
GA: Probably not. There were no such things then. They didn't start
|
||
until 1975-76.
|
||
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CG: Well, this is back in 1980. I'm not that old. I turned 25 in May,
|
||
so it wasn't that long ago I guess in the grand scheme of things.
|
||
But, to me it was a hell of a long time ago. So anyway, we had stolen
|
||
a High Society from them and in it, it said, "Call this number right
|
||
now." It was 212-976-2626 or 212-976-2727, a brand new service. I
|
||
said, "We got to call that number. We can't call that number, that's a
|
||
long distance number, we'll get in trouble." It was like, "No, we
|
||
gotta call that." So, we went back over to his house, and his Mom
|
||
works. She was working, it's funny, she was actually working at
|
||
Datapoint. She was at work, it was the summer, so we got there and
|
||
dialed it up, listened to if for, like you know, some phone sex
|
||
recording. Wow! You're a little punk kid, of course, that's just great
|
||
to hear some crazy recording like that.
|
||
|
||
We hung up after it was over and were like, "Man, that's great. We're
|
||
going to have to call that other one. No we can't call the other
|
||
one. He says, "Well, actually maybe we can, but if we're going to
|
||
call it, we need to use this thing that my Mom's got." What thing? He
|
||
said, "Well, it's this thing that's supposed to make her phone bill
|
||
cheaper." And, it was a company that started up way back then called
|
||
LDS. It was a Watts re-seller and they had a local dial-up number, you
|
||
call up and you gave the operator who answered the phone a code, you
|
||
read it out to her and she connected the call. I think at that time it
|
||
was a four or five digit code. So we called up, gave it to her, gave
|
||
her the number, the call went through. So, next time you call her
|
||
back, give her someone else's number. Goes, "nah." So we called up,
|
||
added ten to the number we had and placed the call. It was like,
|
||
"Well, that's really cool." And it's funny that I've done that prior
|
||
to doing anything on the computer because shortly thereafter, after
|
||
being on the computer and discovering networks and after that,
|
||
discovering bulletin boards, it became readily apparent to me how the
|
||
marriage of the two was inevitable because there was no way in hell
|
||
I'd be able to call a bulletin board any place other than down the
|
||
street and not get beat to death by my parents for raking up very
|
||
large phone bills. And after that, it kind of just shot up
|
||
exponentially like I said before. From such humble beginnings.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
CG: Which connected, at the time, I think now they have limits as to
|
||
how many people. At the time, it was basically unlimited. You could
|
||
take as many people as you wanted on your conference. And they had a
|
||
lot of different features that they don't have now. Like, you could
|
||
transfer control. And we used to do all sorts of ridiculous stuff.
|
||
One of my favorite tricks was to call up Directory Assistance and, at
|
||
the time, I don't think they do this any more, I haven't really
|
||
bothered to check in about five years, but at the time, Western
|
||
Digital who made all the automatic call distribution systems for
|
||
Directory Assistance since they were still the Bell system; they had a
|
||
feature in there that would send it into a test mode. If you called
|
||
up and just as the ACD system kicked in, it started to cue a call for
|
||
the next available operator if you held down a D tone. A lot of your
|
||
readers might not know this, but on a standard touch tone phone, there
|
||
are really four rows and four columns and not three rows and four
|
||
columns. There's an extra column that's left out and that's A, B, C,
|
||
and D. Well, I had a phone that had A, B, C, and D on it. There's a
|
||
number of different ways to build a tone generator, they'll do that
|
||
and a lot of modems will make those tones or what have you. But,
|
||
anyway, there was a trick at one time by holding down the D tone, if
|
||
you called Directory Assistance, it'd throw the ACD into its
|
||
maintenance mode. And, one of the features on this was to do a test of
|
||
a circuit by establishing basically a loop so, if someone would call,
|
||
hold down a D, get thrown into the maintenance mode, get the 5 key,
|
||
they'd get onto one side of the mode. Someone else could call back
|
||
in, hold down the D key, hit 6, get on the other side of loop, and
|
||
then you could talk.
|
||
|
||
Well, I used to call Directory Assistance from the conference, hold
|
||
down the D key, hit 5, add that into the conference, the loop,
|
||
transfer control to Directory Assistance and then call back in on the
|
||
other side of the loop and then take control of the conference that
|
||
way. So, if any of the test people who were working on the software
|
||
for Alliance and working on getting the bugs worked out of everything,
|
||
if any of the engineers would go back to look and see why these
|
||
circuits were active and they'd look to see who was running control of
|
||
this conference, they'd see it was Directory Assistance and it really
|
||
used to confuse the hell out of them. We got a great deal of mileage
|
||
out of that because, you know, I don't really think they knew how, but
|
||
somehow it kept going. But anyway, on these conferences, I got hooked
|
||
up with a group of really, really, really, really smart people and by
|
||
sitting and talking with these people, and learning what they knew,
|
||
because like I said before, everyone was really open and everybody
|
||
wanted everybody to learn. If more people were working on a project,
|
||
everybody had a better chance of learning and succeeding then if just
|
||
one person decided to hoard it all to themselves.
|
||
|
||
>From being on these conferences and talking about to all of these
|
||
people and sharing information with all of these people, I was
|
||
eventually asked to join a group that was being formed at that time
|
||
and it ended up being called The Legion of Doom.
|
||
|
||
GA: How did it get called Legion of Doom? Who named it?
|
||
|
||
CG: I don't know. The person whose idea it was to start the group, his
|
||
handle was Lex Luther and from the DC Comics, Lex Luther's infamous
|
||
group of anti-heroes was The Legion of Doom, so it was pretty a
|
||
natural choice. A lot of stuff has been attributed to it lately, such
|
||
as it being a sinister type name. Well, Lex Luther couldn't possibly
|
||
have called his group anything other than the Legion of Doom. Anybody
|
||
who has every read a Super Friends comic knows that's exactly what it
|
||
was called.
|
||
|
||
As The Legion of Doom continued on in its growth and its endless quest
|
||
of knowledge about different operating systems and networking
|
||
technologies and phone systems and everything else, the reps of
|
||
everybody involved in the group sort of kind of sky rocketed because
|
||
everybody by us all working together, we had a better resource of
|
||
knowledge to provide the people and by continuing to do so, everybody,
|
||
I guess, built up a sort of respect for the group and some of it has
|
||
even lasted to today, even though the group is no longer around. A lot
|
||
of things that it affected still linger on in the community.
|
||
|
||
GA: There's been a lot of debate about who was in that group. Seems
|
||
like everybody in the world wanted to be. Ha, ha. So many of the
|
||
hackers I meet say they were.
|
||
|
||
CG: There are always going to be people who want to run around and
|
||
say, "Yeah, I was in the Legion of Doom." And I know everybody who
|
||
was in it. I've got a list of everybody who was in it and written
|
||
about everybody who was in it. We all know who was in it, so it really
|
||
does not make any difference. If some joker off the street is going
|
||
to come up and say, "I was in The Legion of Doom," who really cares,
|
||
you know, what's it going to get him today? It doesn't mean anything,
|
||
because the group is not around anymore. Um, if they know something,
|
||
well, their knowledge alone should speak for itself and should not
|
||
have to relay on the name of some group that does not exist to try to
|
||
perpetrate some sort of false image to other people, so it really
|
||
doesn't happen that often. We see people like Ian Murphy, for
|
||
instance. I've still got newspaper articles with him in it saying that
|
||
he was in Legion of Doom, and in fact, he has told some people, and
|
||
some business acquaintances of mine, I guess in some desperate attempt
|
||
to generate revenue, that not only was he in Legion of Doom, but he
|
||
founded it, ha, ha, so, that's nice and he can continue to delude
|
||
himself in a lot of things. If anybody wants to live in delusion,
|
||
well that's their right, I suppose. It doesn't mean anything to me.
|
||
|
||
GA: Isn't there a new Legion of Doom now?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, I really don't want to get into that too much. There was a
|
||
young Canadian fellow who decided that it might be a good idea to
|
||
start the new Legion of Doom and within like say an hour after that
|
||
got posted to the Net, we were on the phone with him, telling him what
|
||
a bad idea that was. It was myself and Scott Chasin who called him up
|
||
first and he said, "Well, I think The Legion of Doom was a real
|
||
important thing for the community and I just want to see it continue"
|
||
and this and that. I said, "Who are you to come out of nowhere and
|
||
think that not only do you have enough knowledge to say that you could
|
||
have been associated with The Legion of Doom, much less to usurp the
|
||
name? The name is dead, we put the group to rest and we want it to
|
||
stay that way. He said, Well I'm not going to change it and as soon as
|
||
you see the type of journal I put out, you will be really impressed."
|
||
I said, "If your magazine is good, it will stand on its own merit and
|
||
you don't need our name." He said, "Well you retired the name and that
|
||
means it's fair game for anybody else." Okay, well so there is no
|
||
talking to this guy, so I said, "Well I want to tell you this Cameron,
|
||
Scott and I are the first to call you, there will be many others. We
|
||
are the nicest. It's not going to be pretty for you and I just want
|
||
you to know that."
|
||
|
||
And let's just say there is no more New Legion of Doom. It was kind of
|
||
an interesting experience for everybody because it did get a lot of
|
||
the members back in contact with one another. A lot of us had gone our
|
||
separate ways. The members grew older. The group was founded in '84 and
|
||
here it is almost '94, I mean that's a long time for, you know, a
|
||
bunch of people to stay in contact, regardless of whether or not it
|
||
was for some silly little computer group to form a net. So it was
|
||
nice to catch back up with a lot of people. It's really refreshing to
|
||
see that damn near everybody who was ever involved in the group is
|
||
doing very well for themselves in their chosen careers or professions,
|
||
or graduating with high graduate degrees, Ph.D.s, Master Degrees, and
|
||
things; it's certainly not what one would expect from the world's most
|
||
infamous hacker group, but that certainly is what happened. But, you
|
||
know, the whole Cameron Smith New Legion of Doom thing, it didn't
|
||
accomplish anything for him, but it certainly did accomplish something
|
||
for us. It got a bunch of us back together again. I don't want to
|
||
sound grateful to him for it, but it worked out pretty well.
|
||
|
||
GA: How did The Legion of Doom originally break up?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, The Legion of Doom kind of went through three different
|
||
waves. You can kind of chart the history of the computer underground,
|
||
it sort of runs parallel to the history of The Legion of Doom, because
|
||
you can see as the new members came in, that's when all the busts
|
||
happened. People would either get nervous about the busts and move on
|
||
and go to college and try to get a life, or they would be involved in
|
||
some of the bust and some of them would leave that way. So it kind of
|
||
went through three different membership reorganizations. You can tell
|
||
who came in where because of what was going on. It finally kind of
|
||
folded. I had talked to a bunch of members somewhat recently, within
|
||
the past three or four years and I said, "Well maybe we ought to try
|
||
to do something, we need to get some more members in and try to work
|
||
towards a different end." At the time, there was still the infant of
|
||
an idea about going into consulting by building together this last
|
||
insurgence of Legion of Doom. I talked to several people and wanted
|
||
to try to track down newer people, so I talked to the members who were
|
||
still active and asked are you still interested in doing this again,
|
||
because we've got some other things that we want to try to focus on
|
||
and as stuff starts to progress, something might come out of it. I'm
|
||
doing something with some other people, and we got people who are
|
||
experts in different types of fields, and we were talking to people
|
||
who are experts in mainframes, in telephony, in Unix, and all sorts of
|
||
different stuff and as that started to progress, we got a bunch of
|
||
people in the last new membership drive for the group, did a few
|
||
things, and as that started to go on, most of my main focus started
|
||
dealing in with a few people from the last insurgence about trying to
|
||
form this consulting company, which ended up being Comsec.
|
||
|
||
We finally decided that's what we were going to do and we were serious
|
||
about it, we said okay well then maybe we should just dissolve the
|
||
group, because if we are going to have Comsec, we don't need Legion of
|
||
Doom, 'cause this is what we want to do. Instead of spreading the
|
||
knowledge around the net in the form of text files free, we were going
|
||
to spread the knowledge around the corporate world for money. It
|
||
really was a logical progression to us, because, you are not going to
|
||
be 35 years old and still trying to break into the systems somewhere;
|
||
the thrill doesn't last that long and if it does, well, you need to
|
||
get a life or a pet or something. There is no reason why someone who
|
||
even has an inkling of maturity, not to say that I do in the least,
|
||
should be wasting away their life gathering up how many university
|
||
systems they broke into.
|
||
|
||
So after we finally made the formal decision, we talked to some people
|
||
and said well, we were just going to say goodbye to the group.
|
||
Everybody who was still active or interested from the group was like
|
||
look, you know, when this thing takes off, we want all of you to be
|
||
there. When we need more consultants, you're the best, and everyone
|
||
was all up for it. That's what happened.
|
||
|
||
GA: Let's stick with The Legion of Doom for awhile. What was the
|
||
relationship between The Legion of Doom Technical Journals and Phrack
|
||
and Phun?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, it's kind of funny. Originally, I think this was something
|
||
that Craig and Lex had done. Originally, there was going to be a
|
||
Phrack issue that was going to be the Legion of Doom Phrack Issue. It
|
||
was going to be Phrackful, nothing would follow us but Legion of Doom
|
||
members and it went on and on and on. I guess Lex had collected
|
||
enough files, he was like, "I don't want to give these to Phrack."
|
||
So, he stuck them together in the Legion of Doom Technical Journals,
|
||
since it was all Legion of Doom stuff anyway, might as well go ahead
|
||
and put it out ourselves. And I don't know if that was something
|
||
personal against Craig, I really doubt it because Craig and Lex have
|
||
always been friendly enough. I just think that is something he decided
|
||
to do. From that there were three others published, so there was a
|
||
total of four Tech Journals. They didn't come out in any sort of
|
||
organized order, they just sort of came out when they wanted to come
|
||
out. It was like they were done when they were done and they appeared
|
||
when we were finished and that's why there were only four for a group
|
||
that was around for so long, but they were fairly timely when they
|
||
were all released and I guess everybody really appreciated the kind of
|
||
knowledge that was in them when they came out.
|
||
|
||
Looking back, I don't know how much interest someone is going to get
|
||
on how to hack Tops 20. I d like to find the Tops 20 right now. It
|
||
doesn't exist. So the knowledge that was in those things is fairly
|
||
dated, but at the time, it was very timely and people appreciated it.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: You were busted in 1990, right?
|
||
|
||
CG: Nope.
|
||
|
||
GA: How did that go down?
|
||
|
||
CG: On March 1 1990, I was raided by the Secret Service, but I wasn't
|
||
busted. There is a big distinction there. Just because they came in
|
||
my house and dug through my stuff, that doesn't mean anything
|
||
happened.
|
||
|
||
Let me give a little preface to that. Several months prior, I received
|
||
notification from the University of Texas that my school records
|
||
(specifically mentioning my computer accounts) were being subpoenaed
|
||
by a federal district court judge in Chicago. I knew very well that
|
||
was the district that William Cook was in, so I trotted on down to the
|
||
Dean's office at the University of Texas and said, "Hi, I understand
|
||
my records have been subpoenaed. I need a copy of that for my lawyer."
|
||
So they ran me off a copy of it and sure enough there's William Cook's
|
||
name. So, okay, I was right, and I went home and vacuumed the house
|
||
and cleaned everything up nice and neat for them, started placing
|
||
little notes in various places. I had little notes that said, "Nope,
|
||
nothing in here," put that in a drawer and a little note that said,
|
||
"Wrong, try again," put that in there and little things everyplace
|
||
that someone might look to try to find the secret hacker notes. I
|
||
printed out a copy of the 911 document, nice laser printed copy, laid
|
||
that out and fan folded it over my desk. I went down to the Federal
|
||
Building, picked up brochures on how to became an FBI agent and a
|
||
Secret Service Agent, set those out on my desk. I got a printout of
|
||
several different things, laid those out all nice and neat, had some
|
||
Phrack issues, I had some messages off of the Phoenix Project, I had
|
||
all this stuff laid out. It looked like a little alter, a shrine to
|
||
the FBI.
|
||
|
||
Well, sure enough a couple months later, there they were. And I also
|
||
put some notes on my computer account at UT. I made some really large
|
||
files, like cordons and named them dot master, dot password, dot zip,
|
||
just stupid names, you know that tack ID's, and left these sitting in
|
||
my account. All this noise. And then I made this one that said,
|
||
"Secret Info." If anybody would have bothered to read that, it was
|
||
like a 10K file of me saying, "Anybody who would take the time to
|
||
search through my files and try to find illegal information is a
|
||
complete scumbag." Sure enough when they came to visit my house that
|
||
morning, I woke up to the sound of people running up my stairs and
|
||
their screaming, "Federal Agents - warrant," then they came in my
|
||
room, "Out of the bed." Leading the pack is Special Agent Tim Foley,
|
||
and he's got his service revolver out, and he's got it pointed at me.
|
||
He's a pretty big guy and I'm me. I don't present a menacing figure to
|
||
most and especially at 6 in the morning in boxer shorts, ha, ha. It
|
||
just looked like I'm going to jump right out and start ripping
|
||
peoples' heads off, so he quickly put his gun away. Nonetheless, he
|
||
did have it drawn. I like to point that out. Hackers are a notoriously
|
||
violent group of people who are known for their physical prowess, so
|
||
guns are definitely always necessary. (said sarcastically)
|
||
|
||
So, they ordered me downstairs and held me in the kitchen. I
|
||
immediately said, "Let me call my lawyer," and they said, "You'll get
|
||
your chance." So, they started going through all my stuff. I heard
|
||
them up in my room, rifling all though my drawers and about an hour or
|
||
so later, one comes down and hands over one of the Secret Service
|
||
Brochures that I had. He says, "So, thinking about joining up?" I
|
||
said, "Well, I think I could probably do better than some people." He
|
||
didn't like that remark. He said, "Well, I think our requirements are
|
||
a little more stringent than to let in the likes of you." I said,
|
||
"Well, it shows." He didn't like that very much either. I said, "So,
|
||
what's your degree in?" He said, "Well, I'm not going to tell you."
|
||
I said "I'm just making conversation." So they continued on in the
|
||
search of my house and when they found absolutely nothing having
|
||
anything to do with computers, they started digging through other
|
||
stuff. The found a bag of cable and wire and they decided they better
|
||
take that, because I might be able to hook up my stereo, so they took
|
||
that. I have an arcade size PacMan machine, which of course, one of
|
||
the agents decided was stolen, because a lot of people slip those
|
||
into their backpacks on the way home from school. So they started
|
||
calling up all the arcade vendors around town trying to see if this
|
||
had indeed been stolen. The thought of me wheeling an arcade size
|
||
PacMan machine down the street, just didn't occur to them. So,
|
||
finally, I said "Look, I bought it, here's the guy, call him." So
|
||
they finally gave that up, so then they started harassing me about
|
||
some street signs I had in my house. I had a Stop sign. I had a No
|
||
Dumping sign over the toilet. "You need to get rid of those, it's
|
||
state property, if we come back here and you have those, we are taking
|
||
you downtown." I go like, "Okay." So then they started looking for
|
||
drugs, and one guy is digging through a big box of, like a jumbo
|
||
family size deal of Tide we bought at Sam's, it was about three feet
|
||
tall and it was one of the monster size things. This guy is just
|
||
digging through it, just scooping it out, his hands are all turning
|
||
blue and sudsy from digging through this detergent and Foley walks
|
||
over to him and says, "Well, I think we can safely assume that that's
|
||
laundry detergent."
|
||
|
||
So, Foley comes back in to where I'm sitting in the kitchen and I've
|
||
been freezing my ass off, so they had let me get a jacket, and put on
|
||
some jeans, and he says to me, "Well, I want to show you something."
|
||
He whips out some business cards that I had printed up for SummerCon a
|
||
few years ago, that said, "Erik Bloodaxe, Hacker." It had a little
|
||
treasury logo on it and he says, "Impersonating a Federal official?"
|
||
"Well, it doesn't say anywhere on there, 'Chris Goggans, Special
|
||
Agent.' It says, 'Erik Bloodaxe, Hacker.' Whoever this Erik Bloodaxe
|
||
character is. It might be me, it might not. I'm Chris Goggans and that
|
||
says, Erik Bloodaxe, Hacker. Just because the seals there, it doesn't
|
||
mean anything." He says, "Well, if you don't tell us everything that
|
||
there is to know about all your higher ups, we are going to be
|
||
pressing state, local and federal charges against you." I said, "On
|
||
what grounds?" He goes, "We want to know everything about your higher
|
||
ups." Which I'm thinking, gosh, I'm going to have to turn in the big
|
||
man, which is ludicrous, because there is no such thing as a higher
|
||
up, but apparently they thought we were a part of some big
|
||
organization. So, I said, "Well, I'm not saying anything to you, I'm
|
||
calling my lawyer." And I already had told my lawyer previously that I
|
||
would be raided shortly and that I would be needing to call him. So I
|
||
called him and said, "Hi, this is Chris and the Secret Service is here
|
||
and I'd like you to speak to the agent in charge." And he said that
|
||
my client declines any sort of interviews until such a time that I can
|
||
arrange to be there to represent him in an official capacity and I'll
|
||
need your name and I need all the information. The agent said, "We
|
||
will be in touch." And that was it. They gathered the bag of wire and
|
||
the printouts of the 911 document, how to be an FBI agent, the
|
||
printouts of the Phoenix Project messages, and they trotted on off. As
|
||
they were walking out the door, one of the guys kind of looks over at
|
||
my television set and he says, "Hey, why is that video game plugged
|
||
into the phone line?" And it was kind of like a Homer Simpson, cause
|
||
Foley trots over and I had a 300v terminal, which is what I had been
|
||
using to get on bulletin boards with. It was plugged into the phone.
|
||
It was a little membrane keyboard box. All it was was a modem. So they
|
||
bundled that up and stuck that in there, and they went on their merry
|
||
way, and I followed them out to the car, and wished them well, and
|
||
wrote down their license plate, and went back into the house, and got
|
||
into my car, and went driving around calling up everybody else around
|
||
town to see if anybody else had been raided.
|
||
|
||
GA: Had they?
|
||
|
||
CG: Yeah, at the same time as what was going on in my house, the house
|
||
of Lloyd Blankenship was being raided, The Mentor, as well as the
|
||
office place of Steve Jackson Games, where Lloyd worked, which ran
|
||
into a huge fiasco later on down the road for these hapless agents,
|
||
but that's an entirely different story.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: Did you ever do any malicious hacking?
|
||
|
||
CG: No. To be honest, there were a couple of times I actually
|
||
considered such a thing. At one point in time, we had access to South
|
||
African Government computers, like South African Treasury, things like
|
||
that and we were thinking, should we take it down? Nah, we better not
|
||
do that, can we just change the message of the day to something like
|
||
some anti-apartheid statement, some sort of politically correct thing.
|
||
It was all a big joke to us, we certainly weren't thinking about that,
|
||
we just figured it would really piss them off, but we never did it.
|
||
When the Russian x25 network went up, we were right there on it. They
|
||
can't bust us for hacking Russia, I mean, who would? What were they
|
||
going to say? It's like, "You should hack them, because they are our
|
||
enemies, well maybe you should hack them," so, we were just going
|
||
after the Russian network pretty hardcore.
|
||
|
||
Malicious hacking pretty much stands against everything that I adhere
|
||
to. You always hear people talking about this so called hacker ethic
|
||
and I really do believe that. I would never wipe anything out. I would
|
||
never take a system down and delete anything off of a system. Any time
|
||
I was ever in a system, I'd look around the system, I'd see how the
|
||
system was architectured, see how the directory structures differed
|
||
from different types of other operating systems, make notes about this
|
||
command being similar to that command on a different type of system,
|
||
so it made it easier for me to learn that operating system. Because
|
||
back then you couldn't just walk down the street to your University
|
||
and jump right on these different computer systems, because they
|
||
didn't have them and if they did have them only several classes would
|
||
allow you access to them. Given the fact that I was certainly not of
|
||
college age, it wasn't really an option. You didn't have public access
|
||
to systems. All you had to do was call up and ask for an account and
|
||
you'd get one. So, the whole idea of doing anything destructive or
|
||
malicious or anything even with malcontents using computer systems to
|
||
track information about people or harass people, that just goes
|
||
against the grain of anything that's me. I find it pretty repulsive
|
||
and disgusting. I am certainly not blind to the fact that there are
|
||
people out there that do it, but obviously these people have a s---ty
|
||
upbringing or they are just bad people.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: How about books that have come out about hackers?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, I'll take a stab at that. The Hacker Crackdown I found to be
|
||
a very schizophrenic piece of writing. I still to this day have not
|
||
read it completely. I found it very hard to follow and I was there. It
|
||
is very hard for me to read that book and follow the chronology.
|
||
Everything is on the money and he did a very good job of making sure
|
||
the facts were correct, but it's just hard for me to read. Maybe
|
||
that's just a criticism of his writing style.
|
||
|
||
Approaching Zero, I didn't really care for that too much, more
|
||
specifically because they just basically out and out called me a
|
||
traitor and said I was keen on selling secrets to the Soviet Union.
|
||
Maybe you ought to ask the IRS about all that money I got from the
|
||
Soviet Union, because I haven't seen it, but I'm sure I'll be taxed on
|
||
that too. But I found that rather disgusting and after that book, I
|
||
actually had a conversation with one of the people who was writing the
|
||
book. A guy named Brian, actually called us up at Comsec and I talked
|
||
to him for about 30-45 minutes about things and next thing I know,
|
||
nothing we really said ended up in the book. A bunch of people were
|
||
misquoted, left and right. All the stuff about the American hacking
|
||
scenes, off the mark. People were quoted as saying stuff that they
|
||
never said, things supposedly from bulletin boards that were not on
|
||
bulletin boards. I don't know where this information came from, but
|
||
it's really just off the money. I guess if you know something so
|
||
intimately, you are always going to be critical of anything someone
|
||
says about it because they don't know it as well as you do, so you are
|
||
always going to find fault in something. So maybe I'm just being
|
||
overly critical.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: While on the subject of Comsec, you have said that you have gotten
|
||
bad press. From where?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, I think an article saying that I have been arrested in the
|
||
past for breaking into Bell South, or books being published saying
|
||
myself of The Legion of Doom destroyed the 911 Network in nine states
|
||
just to see if we could do it. Things like that which are just out and
|
||
out lies. I'd say that was pretty bad press.
|
||
|
||
GA: Did Comsec fold because of personality problems, or a lack of
|
||
business?
|
||
|
||
CG: Comsec folded for a number of reasons. The press aspect weighed
|
||
heavy. We were basically blacklisted by the security community. They
|
||
wouldn't allow me a forum to publish any of my articles. It
|
||
essentially boiled down to, with the trade magazines, at least, they
|
||
were told by certain members of large accounting firms that they would
|
||
pull their advertising if they associated with us, and when you are a
|
||
trade magazine that is where all of your revenue comes from, because
|
||
no one is paying for subscriptions and they can't afford that loss.
|
||
They were more interested in making money then they were in spreading
|
||
the gospel of truth in security. But hey, it's a business, I guess you
|
||
have to take that. I had speaking engagements pulled. A head of a very
|
||
large security association promised me a speaking engagement and then
|
||
decided to cancel it and didn't bother to tell me until a month before
|
||
the conference. I talked to him and he said, "Oh, well I should have
|
||
called you." This is like one of the largest security associations in
|
||
the country and the second largest. So we had that kind of treatment.
|
||
|
||
Some of these conferences, since we were not speaking at them, we
|
||
could not really justify spending thousand of dollars to fly out there
|
||
and attend. We were cut off from a lot of things and since we did not
|
||
have a presence at these conferences, a lot of our competitors used
|
||
this to target the companies that we were marketing. You would have
|
||
these MIS directors from large oil companies out there, and you would
|
||
have other people going up to them and saying, "You're from Houston.
|
||
You are not dealing with those Comsec folks, are you? Well, you know
|
||
that they are nothing but a bunch of crooks out there." So, one very
|
||
large oil company, we had already had all of our paperwork passed
|
||
though all of their legal departments and it was just waiting to be
|
||
signed; it had already been approved and money was allocated in the
|
||
budget and we were ready to rock. This would have meant a large amount
|
||
of money over a period of several years. Well from going though all
|
||
of these friendly happy negotiations and papers ready to be signed, to
|
||
XYZ oil company does not do business with criminals, Click! Who talked
|
||
to this guy? Who feed him this nonsense?
|
||
|
||
Well, we got a lot of that, certainly that weighed heavy. The fear
|
||
that came from companies like DeLloyd Touche.I will single them out
|
||
especially because some of their larger consultants were very vocal in
|
||
speaking out against us, in the very forums they denied us. They used
|
||
the magazines as a place where one particular consultant said
|
||
something like, "Can we lie down with dogs and be surprised when we
|
||
get up with fleas?" I mean, I don't deserve that type of commentary. I
|
||
don't think anybody does. It is certainly not a mature attitude for
|
||
somebody who is supposed to be an upstanding ethical consultant to use
|
||
a trade publication to vent his frustration against his competition.
|
||
But, hey, it's a free market and if he has a forum and they gave him a
|
||
column, well I think he can write whatever the hell he wants.
|
||
|
||
Sure, I was in The Legion of Doom. I have been in everybody's system.
|
||
But I have never been arrested. I have never broken anything, I have
|
||
never done anything really, really, criminally bad. There is a
|
||
difference in doing something illegal, you like walk across the street
|
||
at the wrong place and you are committing a crime, but that does not
|
||
make you a criminal, and there is a big difference between different
|
||
types of behavior. By all these different forces saying so many
|
||
negative things about us, we had our work cut out for us.
|
||
|
||
To be honest, they had us beat. They had the deep pockets. They could
|
||
wait us out. They could keep saying bad things about us forever. They
|
||
had hundreds of millions of dollars so that even if they weren't
|
||
making money they could sit on it. We didn't. Eventually we could not
|
||
do it any more. I had overextended myself. I sold off all my stock,
|
||
all my personal stock. I had a bunch of stock in energy companies and
|
||
things like that, that was in the past supposed to be paying for my
|
||
college education, and I gambled it away on Comsec and I ran out of
|
||
money. I needed to eat, I needed to get a job, I had to move, I
|
||
couldn't afford it anymore. And everybody was basically saying the
|
||
same thing. Scott didn't have any money, Rob didn't have any money,
|
||
our sales guys were getting really antsy because they were having a
|
||
real hard time closing sales, so we just had to shut down.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: Any thoughts on where technology is going and how hacking might
|
||
change in the next couple of years?
|
||
|
||
CG: Well, like I said earlier, the Internet is a very scary place with
|
||
a very, very limited set of knowledge. One person could take down a
|
||
majority of the network and for so much trust and need to be placed in
|
||
a network that is so inherently unstable because of the protocol that
|
||
drives it. I mean you don't plan a trip across country in a 1957
|
||
jalopy! You go out and get a new car, or you rent a good car, you
|
||
don't put all your trust in something that ain't gonna work. And it
|
||
works well enough for a lot of things, but for people to trust their
|
||
entire enterprise network to stuff over the Internet, they are asking
|
||
for trouble. And as people become more familiar with the entire
|
||
protocol sweep, they are going to find out that there is a world of
|
||
hurt about to happen, and in the next few years, people are going to
|
||
be real surprised when stuff starts going down like crazy. That's
|
||
going to be the biggest thing to happen.
|
||
|
||
I would imagine that all the cellular problems are going to disappear
|
||
because the advent of digital caller is going to remove all this
|
||
problem. A lot of things are going to change. I imagine people,
|
||
hopefully, will once again get more and more into writing software and
|
||
doing more productive stuff. With all the wealth of knowledge that is
|
||
coming out of every community, even in the underground, because people
|
||
are exposing bugs and people are changing things, so eventually people
|
||
are going to be able to make all types of systems, robust enough to
|
||
survive different things. So out of all this turmoil, some good is
|
||
going to come. And from that, once all the problems have been
|
||
corrected, people will be able to direct their energies into a more
|
||
positive thing, like developing applications, writing software and
|
||
focusing their attention on doing neat, nifty tricks, rather than
|
||
doing neat nifty stupid tricks, ha, ha.
|
||
|
||
You are going to see some really, really cool stuff that is going to
|
||
blow your mind and you are going to be able to carry it around in your
|
||
hand. You are never going to be out of touch anywhere in the world,
|
||
so, I think that will be very cool.
|
||
|
||
=======================
|
||
|
||
GA: We should certainly tell people how to subscribe to Phrack, and
|
||
the prices on the LOD disks.
|
||
|
||
CG: Yeah, people who want information about Phrack can mail me at:
|
||
Phrack@well.sf.ca.us and for information about the BBS Archive Project
|
||
mail: LODCOM@Mindvox.Phantom.com
|
||
|
||
GA: Thanks Chris!
|
||
|
||
G: Thank you.
|
||
|