| ==Phrack Inc.== | |
| Volume Three, Issue 25, File 9 of 11 | |
| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN P h r a c k W o r l d N e w s PWN | |
| PWN ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ PWN | |
| PWN Issue XXV/Part 1 PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN March 29, 1989 PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN Created, Written, and Edited PWN | |
| PWN by Knight Lightning PWN | |
| PWN PWN | |
| PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN PWN | |
| Standing On The Edge Of The Network | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Greetings once again and welcome to Phrack World News Issue 25, our 25th | |
| Anniversary Special. | |
| This issue features articles about the New TAP Magazine, a battle between | |
| Southwestern Bell and bulletin board operators in Oklahoma City, a whole file's | |
| worth of information about the KGB hackers, Matthias Speer, Klaus Brunnstein, | |
| an interview with Pengo, and much more. | |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | |
| Suiting Up For SummerCon '89 March 22, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Once again, for those who may have missed last issue... | |
| SummerCon '89 | |
| Saint Louis, Missouri | |
| June 23-25, 1989 | |
| Brought To You By | |
| Forest Ranger / Knight Lightning / Taran King | |
| The agenda for this year's SummerCon is going to be a sort of mixture of the | |
| first two. We do intend to hold an actual conference on Saturday, June 24, | |
| 1989. This conference will last as long as necessary and anyone who wishes to | |
| speak should prepare a presentation ahead of time and notify us as soon as | |
| possible. | |
| The location of SummerCon '89 has been decided upon, but reservations are still | |
| in the progress of being made. For this reason, we have declined to print the | |
| name of the hotel for the convention at this time. Anyone who is seriously | |
| interested in going to SummerCon '89 and thinks that they will be able to | |
| attend should contact Taran King or myself as soon as possible. | |
| :Knight Lightning | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Mitnick Plea Bargains March 16, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Kim Murphy (Los Angeles Times [Excerpts Only]) | |
| Kevin Mitnick pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of | |
| possessing unauthorized long-distance telephone codes. He admitted penetrating | |
| a DEC computer in Mass., secretly obtaining a copy of a sophisticated computer | |
| security program which the company had spent $1 million to develop. | |
| The program, said Mitnick's attorney, was designed to alert companies when | |
| their computers had been penetrated by hackers like Mitnick. Mitnick never | |
| attempted to sell or distribute the program, he said. Mitnick also admitted | |
| possessing 16 unauthorized MCI long-distance codes that enabled him to make | |
| long-distance telephone calls without charge. A prosecutor said Mitnick used | |
| the codes to make connections to computers. | |
| Mitnick faces one year in prison. Under a plea agreement with the government, | |
| he must also submit to three years' supervision by probation officers after his | |
| release from prison. Prosecutors said they agreed to a 12-month sentence | |
| because the amount of financial damage was relatively low. DEC lost about | |
| $100,000 to $200,000 in computer "down time" investigating the security program | |
| theft. | |
| As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to dismiss two additional | |
| counts charging Mitnick with illegally accessing the Leeds University computer | |
| in England and separate charge related to the DEC computer program. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| The NEW Technological Advancement Party (TAP) March 11, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By Aristotle and the TAP Magazine Staff | |
| How TAP Will Be Printed | |
| TAP will be created, edited, and printed on various machines that the staff | |
| either owns or has full access to. The computers range from personal computers | |
| to mainframes. | |
| The printing devices range from dot-matrix printers to industrial laser | |
| printers. Again, the staff has full access to all of these devices. In order | |
| to upgrade the quality of print and to take some of the load off of the staff, | |
| the staff is looking into getting TAP printed by a professional printer. | |
| Funding Of TAP | |
| Hopefully TAP will be funded majorly by the subscribers. Unlike TAP in it's | |
| early years, we cannot afford to just give TAP away. Except for issue 92, we | |
| will not GIVE TAP away for free. We feel the policy of the old TAP towards | |
| this issue was the major cause of their cronic shortage of money. As far as | |
| startup costs, the staff can support all costs except for Printing, Paper, and | |
| Postage. For 1.00 an issue, we feel we should be able to sufficiently support | |
| TAP from the subscribers fees. All money received will be put into an account | |
| that will be used for TAP purposes ONLY. There will be no distributing of | |
| wealth between the staff. The three expenses above will be the major areas of | |
| spending with an occasional expense of advertising and such. | |
| How TAP Will Be Getting Articles | |
| As of right now, the staff has enough articles ready to be printed to support | |
| TAP for at least 4 issues. We hope TAP will become dependant on articles | |
| submitted by subscribers. If people do not submit articles to TAP, we will be | |
| forced to fill up space with lesser articles (thus lessening the quality of | |
| TAP.) We figure that at the worst, TAP can sustain itself for one year with NO | |
| submitted articles. That way we will not be ripping anyone off and we can fade | |
| away in peace. (Hopefully we won't have to do that!) | |
| Who is involved with TAP | |
| As of 03/07/89, the TAP staff consists of five people. These 'staffers' are: | |
| Aristotle, Olorin The White, Predat0r, and two others that wish to remain | |
| anonymous. The last two have elected to remain anonymous for various reasons, | |
| one being to maintain their freedom. The staff does not feel that we need to | |
| list names in TAP (yet) to give the newsletter a good reputation. We feel that | |
| readers should subscribe to TAP because of the quality of the newsletter and | |
| not because of the staff members. Of course, if you submit an article, you | |
| will be given credit where it is due. Credit to the author of any article we | |
| print will be given unless the author expresses wishes that he/she does not | |
| want to be recognized. Of course if TAP cannot find the name of the author of | |
| a specific article, we cannot print the credits. | |
| Why We Decided To Print A Newsletter | |
| After gathering information from bulletin boards and other sources, various | |
| members of the staff decided that they would like to print hard to obtain | |
| information in hardcopy form and an easy to understand format. We feel that | |
| certain information cannot be successfully represented and distributed with | |
| computers only. One excellent example is a schematic of any device. We all | |
| know how bad ASCII schematics suck. And with practically everyone in the | |
| community owning a different computer, how can we communicate efficiently? | |
| Well, printed material (on paper) is our answer. | |
| In addition to the advantage print has over text files, there are various other | |
| reasons for our wanting to print a newsletter. Due to the lack of experts | |
| wanting to teach newcomers to the community (excluding certain individuals), we | |
| have decided to do something about it. TAP will attempt to explain information | |
| so that EVERYONE can understand it. We will not hesitate to help any | |
| beginners, nor hesitate to give information to the more experienced members of | |
| the community. All members of the community will be supported by TAP. TAP is | |
| an equal opportunity informer. | |
| Why We Decided To Print TAP | |
| When we first received our collection of TAP issues (along with some 2600's), | |
| we were astounded. After learning from bbs's and voice calls, the value of TAP | |
| and 2600 were obvious. We liked 2600 a lot, but we LOVED TAP. TAP fit our | |
| personalities perfectly. It has something for everyone. Around that time, we | |
| promptly looked into subscribing to the two magazines. As you know, TAP died | |
| in 1984 and 2600 is still in print. Well, we subscribed to 2600 and kept on | |
| studying our old TAP issues. When the suggestion came to put out a magazine, | |
| the first idea that was suggested was TAP. It was decided after a LONG | |
| discussion that TAP would be perfect for our newsletter. Since we are | |
| interested in hacking, phreaking, AND other topics, we felt TAP better | |
| expressed our opinions and ideas than any other newsletter idea. Hell, we just | |
| straight up loved that old TAP and we cannot pass up the opportunity to bring | |
| it back into existence and (hopefully) it's original glory. | |
| Where To Find TAP | |
| If you have any other questions regarding TAP, you can contact the staff via | |
| snail mail (US postal service) or via staff accounts on the bulletin boards | |
| listed below. | |
| US Mailing Address: TAP | |
| P.O. Box 20264 | |
| Louisville, KY 40220 | |
| Beehive BBS - 703-823-6591 | |
| Hackers Den - 718-358-9209 | |
| Ripco - 312-528-5020 | |
| Thank you, Tap Staff | |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | |
| Editor's Comments | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Upon first hearing about the newly formed TAP Magazine, I scoffed and thought | |
| it would be another pipe dream like many other countless previous attempts. To | |
| my surprise, the magazine was delivered just like they promised. | |
| Issue 92 contained the following: | |
| TAP RAP - Basically the staff's remarks about the new magazine and the | |
| subscription information. | |
| A BIT on BITNET (An Introduction to BITNET) - This was a reprint of Aristotle's | |
| Bitnet file that appeared in P/HUN Newsletter Issue 3. | |
| BELL PAYS for Evil deeds - News article about Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. | |
| TMC PIN - Information about PIN codes of TeleMarketing Company. | |
| Pyro-How To - How to make Nitrogen Tri-Iodide. | |
| Miscellaneous catalog information for Loompanics Unlimited and Specialized | |
| Products Company. | |
| Big Brother section - An article about revenge tactics and social engineering | |
| taken from Flagship News (employee publication of | |
| American Airlines). The article was also previously seen | |
| in RISKS Digest. | |
| TELEPHONE CONTROLLED TAPE STARTER + Schematics | |
| The infamous "Ma Bell Is A Cheap Mother" logo and a few other surprises are | |
| also included in this issue. The last part of the newsletter lists | |
| information that the TAP Staff is looking for. | |
| My reaction to the issue was positive over all. The print quality was very | |
| good and extremely readable. The issue itself was a bit crumpled up by the US | |
| Postal Service, but that is to be expected. The first issue was a test | |
| product and that is the reason for a little bit of un-original material, says | |
| Aristotle. | |
| It is my understanding that the future holds all sorts of neat articles and | |
| overall it would appear that at $12.00 a year, the new TAP is a good | |
| investment. | |
| :Knight Lightning | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Two Men Seized As Phone Looters March 13, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Two phony repairmen wearing stolen Illinois Bell hardhats and carrying around | |
| stolen repairman tools have demonstrated that ripping off payphones is not | |
| small change. | |
| Arrested in Chicago, Illinois last week were George W. Parratt, age 47, of Sauk | |
| Village, IL and Arthur P. Hopkinson, age 40, of Hickory Hills, IL; two south | |
| suburbs of Chicago. | |
| The two men, posing as Illinois Bell repairmen and driving a white and blue van | |
| disguised to look like an Illinois Bell truck, have stolen thousands of dollars | |
| from pay telephones all over Chicago. Their average take was about $200 per | |
| phone -- and they have hit some phones two or three times. | |
| Just the cost of repairing the phones damaged in the past year cost more than | |
| $50,000 said Illinois Bell Telephone spokesman Tony Abel. | |
| These two fellows were making a full time living looting pay phones, although | |
| Mr. Abel did not have the final total of the amount looted immediately | |
| available when we discussed the case. | |
| Abel said Illinois Bell employees spotted the phony van on two separate days | |
| and notified the security department of Bell. Security representatives were | |
| able to trace the license plate on the van, and they found it parked in | |
| Parratt's driveway. The investigators secretly followed the van and watched | |
| Parratt and Hopkinson loot two pay phones in Calumet City, Illinois, and two in | |
| Hammond, Indiana; a community on the stateline served by Illinois Bell. | |
| When the two men drove back across the stateline into Calumet City, and started | |
| breaking into another payphone, the investigators arrested them. Cook County | |
| sheriff's Lt. Thomas Oulette, called to the scene, said the two had $120 in | |
| change and $650 in stolen tools from Illinois Bell at the time of their arrest. | |
| He said they were able to break into a coin box, dump it and get away in less | |
| than three minutes. | |
| "It was a pretty good scam," said Oulette, who noted that the investigators | |
| from Illinois Bell told him they believed the company had been hit by the pair | |
| for about $35,000 in the nine months the company was specifically aware of them | |
| without knowing who they were. | |
| Parratt and Hopkinson were released on bond, and are scheduled to appear in | |
| Circuit Court (Markham, Illinois branch) on April 17, 1989. | |
| Information Provided by Patrick Townson | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Bank Fraud Was "Easy" February 24, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| >From The Independent (London) | |
| "A 17-year-old junior cashier cheated the National Westminster Bank out of 1 | |
| million pounds in a computer fraud," a court heard yesterday. | |
| Judge Helen Palin criticized the bank for lax security and refused to make a | |
| compensation order for 15,000 pounds which the bank has not been able to | |
| recover. | |
| After being given access to the bank's computer system he began by paying 10 | |
| pounds into his own account. He then paid himself 12,000 in imaginary cheques. | |
| Later, he transferred a credit for 984,252 pounds into the account of a friend | |
| and celebrated by buying 50 bottles of champagne. | |
| The judge said, "One of the worrying features of this case is that a young man | |
| who hasn't long left school is able to work the system in the NatWest bank on a | |
| number of occasions without being found out. Indeed, the general chat within | |
| the bank seems to be how easy it is to defraud that bank." | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |
| Two Men Accused Of "Hacker" Crime February 24, 1989 | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| By James Gribble (Milwaukee Journal) | |
| Vowing to step up efforts to stop computer crime, a Milwaukee County prosecutor | |
| has charged two Milwaukee men with fraudulently obtaining free long-distance | |
| telephone service. | |
| The felony charges filed Thursday against Alan Carr, age 35 and David Kelsey, | |
| age 26 are the first so-called hacker crimes to be prosecuted by the district | |
| attorney's office. | |
| Working independently, using home computers and similar software programs, the | |
| men are alleged to have obtained calling card codes for customers of an | |
| independent long-distance telephone company, Schneider Communications. | |
| They then used the codes to bill their personal calls to Schneider's customers, | |
| according to a criminal complaint prepared by Assistant District Attorney Jon | |
| N. Reddin, head of the district attorney's White Collar Crime Unit. | |
| Reddin said the total theft probably was less than $1,000, but he said the case | |
| reflected a growing problem. | |
| "I have the feeling, from our investigation, that there's a lot of people out | |
| there doing this," he said. "The only way to stop it is to prosecute them, | |
| because this is theft. It's almost like some one stealing your credit card and | |
| using it to make purchases." | |
| Schneider Communications was the victim in this case, Reddin said, because the | |
| company had to write off the customer billings for which Carr and Kelsey turned | |
| out to be responsible. | |
| According to court records and Reddin, the investigation was prompted by a | |
| complaint from Schneider Communications. | |
| The company's computer keeps track of all calls that are rejected because of an | |
| improper access code. Clients dialing incorrectly would cause 10 to 30 | |
| rejected calls a month, but sometime last year the number jumped to 1,000 or | |
| 2,000 per month. | |
| Computer printouts showed the unknown parties were repeatedly dialing the | |
| computer and changing the access code sequentially, Reddin said. Hundreds of | |
| calls at a time were being made in this fashion, and each time the code was | |
| changed one digit at a time until a working code was encountered. | |
| Because the company had no way of knowing where the calls were coming from, | |
| Wisconsin Bell placed a tracing device on the line, through which the calls | |
| were traced to the phone numbers of Carr and Kelsey. | |
| The men were apparently unaware of each other and simply happened to be | |
| involved in similar schemes, Reddin said. | |
| Carr is alleged to have used a bootleg computer program called "Hacking | |
| Construction Set Documentation." Kelsey is alleged to have used a similar | |
| bootleg program called "Mickey-Dialer." The programs were seized in raids at | |
| the defendant's houses, according to court records. | |
| Reddin acknowledged that technological safeguards can detect such thefts after | |
| the fact but not prevent them. What Carr and Kelsey are alleged to have done | |
| can be done by any computer buff with the right software and know-how, Reddin | |
| said. | |
| The key to deterring computer crime, in Reddin's view, lies in it's prompt | |
| reporting to authorities. | |
| "The best way I can think of to do that is by filing a complaint with our | |
| office," Reddin said. | |
| _______________________________________________________________________________ | |