hacking

	==Phrack Magazine==

	Volume Five, Issue Forty-Six, File 20 of 28

	****************************************************************************

	(Cyber Christ Meets Lady Luck Continued)


	I don't agree with everything that Gail says, but she is a com
	pelling speaker; she believes in what she says. But I do agree
	with her on the difficulty of forensic evidence in computer
	cases.

	"I got really mad," she said. "I was reading a magazine and
	there was an ad for United, you know, the employee owned airline.
	And it was a beautiful ad, hundred of employees standing in front
	of a brand new great big jet. All smiling and happy." Gail then
	frowned deeply. "Some stockholder ought to sue them for mislead
	ing advertising." This was more like it! Go, Gail! "I started
	to look at the picture carefully and I noticed this unmistakably
	fat lady in a pink dress. And then over a few persons. . .guess
	what? The same fat lady in pink." Roars of laughter and ap
	plause.

	Her point? What seems real may not be real at all, and with a few
	hundred dollars in software and a little practice, most anyone
	can build a false reality digitally.

	Her time was up but the audience wanted more. She was mobbed for
	eternity by hackers who fight her tooth and nail but respect her
	comportment enough to make the disagreements lively, partisan,
	entertaining, but with respect. Respectful hackers. No HoHoCon
	orgies; merely verbal barbs with no solution. Everyone knew that,
	but it's the battle that counts.

	More security conference should be this open, this honest and
	informative, with all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions.
	That is how we, and I, learn. Listen and learn. And all for
	$5000 no less, plus a paltry $15 entrance fee.

	* * * * *

	The afternoon sessions were filled with a mixture of anti-govern
	ment, pro-privacy advocacy, virus workshops and such by both
	under and above ground folks. Padgett Peterson's knowledge of
	viruses is deep and he spread the same wisdom as his does in so
	called legitimate circles. Knowledge is knowledge, and better
	accurate than wrong.

	It's often surprising to see how people will voice the same
	opinion in varying degree of intensity depending upon their
	audience. Mark Aldrich of General Research Corp. in the Washing
	ton area made a statement that I doubt I would hear at a ConCon.
	"Fear your government that fears your crypto. Use crypto as
	a weapon." Sara Gordon's panel discussion on crypto and privacy
	and related topics fueled the audience's general anti-fed atti
	tude.

	"I was bugged by the Feds." "So was I?" "What can we do about
	it." "Yeah, they listen in on my phones, too. I can hear the
	clicks." Right.

	As Mark so succinctly put it, "if the government wants to bug
	you, you'll never know. They're that good.". That kind of shut
	up the dilettante paranoids in the group, albeit mumbling that
	they just knew that they were the victim of one of the 900 or so
	court approved wire taps last year. Right. I think Gail was
	right: some of you guys are too boring to be believed.

	The afternoon edition of the Spot A Fed contest took us on the
	run. I actually succombed to their enthusiasm and a general lack
	of better judgement and followed a group of 8 or 10 to unmask an
	unmarked white van in the parking lot.

	"It's the Feds." "How do you know?" "Oh, it's the Feds alright."
	"How do you know." "It's a white van and the intelligence serv
	ices use white vans." "What are you going to do?" "Bust 'em."
	"Bust 'em for what?" "For being Feds."

	This motley crew traipsed through the mile long casino, trodding
	upon the ugly tartan/paisley carpets so obnoxiously loud a blind
	man could cry "Uncle!", into the Hall of Overpriced Shoppes
	through the lobby and over to the parking garage. We had to have
	$100,000 of surveillance gear in tow:(enough to detect the planet
	Pluto fart in b-flat). Radio receivers and eavesdropping equip
	ment were courtesy of my pal Mike Peros. The goal was, if this
	was a Fed van, we could hear it. I don't think so, but I go for
	the ride and a few minutes of reprieve away from the conference
	hall.

	As we near, the excitement grows among the more paranoid who are
	trying to instill their own mental foibles into their companions
	and sheer terror in normal old Vegas visitors who have no idea
	what they've walked into.

	Feds? Not. Surrepticious radio transmissions? Just hotel securi
	ty tracking the movements of 8 or 10 paranoids (and one writer
	with nothing else to do for a half hour) into a parking garage
	which has more cameras than NBC. Feds? Of course not. Don't be
	ridiculous.

	* * * * *

	To say nothing worthwhile occurred until 11PM that evening would
	be lying, but this thing, this DefCon II thing, was turning into
	what I would have called 25 years ago, a Love-In. The partici
	pants were giddy from the event, the camaraderie, the $1 Heinek
	ens and the hacking. The Sahara was actually pretty good about
	it. Jeff got the conference space for free because he guaranteed
	that at least 100 hotel rooms would be booked by "computer en
	thusiasts coming to a small computer conference." Little did the
	hotel know that half the crowd was too young to drink, too broke
	to gamble, and conspicuous enough to ward off legitimate clients.
	But a deal's a deal.

	The hotel operators went out of their way and allegedly gave the
	hackers permission to hack through the PBX in order to provide a
	SLPP connection.

	"Just put it back the way you found it when you're done," was the
	hotel's only and quite reasonable request.

	In my day an equivalent event producing an equivalent social non-
	drug induced high would have been achieved by tossing a Frisbee
	to Grace Slick (Lead singer Jefferson Airplane) and have her
	throw it back. We didn't have the kind of technology that today's
	rebellious age has. We had the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, safe
	sex (kinda), safe drugs (well, maybe a little safer) and a cause.
	But no technology to speak of.

	When I was on the publishing staff of the New York City Free
	Press in 1968/9 we wrote our anti-establishment diatribes by
	hand. By hand! And then we went down to a dark office late at
	night to use their typesetting gear when it was idle. It took no
	more than a blushing glance around the room to realize that we
	impressionable teens were publishing our political extremisms on
	equipment courtesy of Al Goldstein and Screw magazine. Now that
	was an education.

	DefCon II was a Love-In, technology and all.

	Come 11PM yet another speaker canceled so I offered to chat to
	the crowd for a half hour or so on Van Eck radiation; the emis
	sions from CRT's that make video screens readable from a dis
	tance. Now this wasn't a fill in at 2PM or anything. Sessions
	reconvened at 11PM and I spoke to a full audience who were there
	to get a midnight lesson in cellular hacking.

	Most above ground types still believe that hacking is an acne-
	faced teenager, chigging Jolt Cola, wolfing down pepperoni
	pizza and causing Corporate America no end of grief. To a cer
	tain extent some of this is true. But hacking is so much more.

	As Rop Gongrijjp, editor of Hacktic once told me, "hacking is
	disrespect of technology." It's going the extra mile to find out
	how things work. Many of the older hackers, those in their early
	20's and older, are migrating from the conventional dial-em-up
	and break-in hacking image to the fine art of cellular hacking.
	How do these things work? What are the frequencies? How can I
	customize my phone? How many channels can I scan? The possibil
	ities are endless as I soon learned.

	Jim and Bill (fake names) asked if I wanted to see a great demo.
	Sure! No names, they said. OK. No problem. In one of the
	several thousand hotel rooms at the Sahara was a pile of equip
	ment to make an under budgeted FBI surveillance team insanely
	jealous. There in the middle of the ridiculously filthy room that
	no doubt caused the maid to shudder, sat a log periodic antenna
	poised atop a strong and highly adjustable photographic-style
	tripod. Feeding the antenna was a hunk of coax attached to a
	cell phone's antenna jack.

	OK, so what's that? Free cell calls? No, much more.

	A second cell phone/scanner, an Oki 900 was modified and connect
	ed to a laptop computer. (This was the exact modification being
	discussed downstairs) Custom software that was freely distrib
	uted around DefCon scanned the data from the Oki and displayed
	the scanning activity. A pair of speakers then audibly broadcast
	the specific conversation. And in Vegas, you can imagine what
	was going over the open airwaves!

	A half dozen 'kids' sat around enthralled, each begging for his
	turn to, as Jim put it, "harass cellular users. Pure and simple.
	Harassment. Stomp on the son of a bitch," he laughed, joined in
	by the others.

	When a 'good' conversation was detected, they entered the channel
	into the broadcasting cell phone and spoke. And talk they did.
	Essentially they turned 'private' conversations into wide-band
	free-for-alls. If they spoke for only a few seconds one or both
	of the parties could hear what was being said. If they talked
	for too long, the overpowering signal from the antenna would
	literally wipe out the chat: the cell switch reacted with an
	internal belch and shut down. Stomping, they called it.

	For those on the receiving end of the harassment, it must have
	sounded like the overbearing voice of God telling Noah how to
	build the Ark.

	"Noah?"

	"Who dat?

	"Noah?"

	"Who is that?"

	What terror lurks in the minds of boys . . .

	For those old enough to remember, stomping is no more a stunt
	than putting a 500 watt linear power amplifier on a CB radio and
	blasting nearby CB's to kingdom come. The truckers used to do it
	to 4-wheelers. When the police began monitoring CB channels "to
	protect and serve" they became the target of CB stomping. So
	what else is new?

	I gotta give it to them: these characters designed and built the
	software, modified the phones and put it all together and it
	works! Not bad on a $3 allowance and a 10th grade education.
	Now, I guess what they did may have been sort of illegal, or at
	least highly unethical and definitely not nice. But I have to
	admit, some of what I witnessed was very, very, funny. I'm not
	advocating this kind of activity, but much like Candid Camera
	broke into people's lives to capture their reactions, cellular
	hacking is similarly amusing. The hacker/phreaks particularly
	enjoyed breaking in on fighting couples. (I counted six impend
	ing divorces.) Almost without exception the man was in a car and
	the lady was at a fixed location; presumably, home.

	Him: "Where the hell have you been."
	Her: "Nowhere."
	Him: "Bullshit.
	Her: "Really honey . . ." Defensively.
	Him: "Who's with you?" Intense anger.
	Hacker: "Don't believe her. She's a whore."
	Him: "What was that?"
	Her: "What?"
	"That voice."
	"What voice?"
	Hacker: "Me you asshole. Can't you see she's playing you for a
	fool."
	"I know she is." He agrees.
	"What's that honey?"
	"I know he's there with you."
	"Who?" Incredulous.
	"Him . . . whoever you're fucking when I'm at work."
	Hacker: "Yeah, it's me."
	"Shit! Who the fuck is there?"
	"No one!"
	"I can hear him, he's there. You're both making fun of me . . ."
	Hacker: "She's laughing at you, man."
	"No shit. Who the fuck are you?"
	Hacker: "The guy who takes care of her when you can't, asshole."
	"That's it." Click.

	Drug dealers aren't immune to these antics.

	"Where's the meet?"
	"By the 7/11 on Tropicana."
	"You got it?"
	"You got the cash?"
	"Yeah, dude."
	"Be sure you do."
	Hacker: "He doesn't have the cash my man. He's gonna rip you
	off."
	"What?" "What?" Both sides heard the intruder's voice. "Who is
	that?"
	"What's that about a rip-off?"
	"This ain't no rip-off man."
	Hacker: "Yes it is. Tell 'em the truth. You gonna take his drugs
	and shoot his ass. Right? Tell 'em."
	"You gonna rip me off?"
	"No, man!"
	"Your homeboy says you gonna try and rip me off?"
	"What home boy?"
	Hacker: "Me, you bozo drug freak. Don't you know that shit can
	kill you?"
	Click.

	Good samaritanism pays off upon occasion.

	"Honey, hurry up."
	"I'm on the freeway. I'm coming."
	Hacker: "He's late. Let's save her ass."
	"What was that?" "What did you say honey?"
	"He said he was going to save your ass."
	"Who did?"
	"The guy on the radio." (Technical ignorance abounds.)
	Hacker: "Me. You're late and she's scared so we're gonna beat
	you there and make her safe."
	"Who the hell is that?" "Who?" "The guy with you?" "There's no
	one here." "He says he's gonna beat me there and pick you up."
	Hacker: "Damn right we are."
	"Hey, this is cool. Who's there?"
	Hacker: "Cyber Christ talking to you from Silicon Heaven."
	"No shit. Really?"
	Hacker: "Yeah, (choke, choke,) really."
	"What's happening, honey."
	"I don't know, for sure. He says it's God."
	"God!?!?"
	Hacker: "Close enough. Listen, you sound alright. Go get your
	woman, man Keep her safe."
	"No problem. Uh, thanks."
	Click.

	Around 4AM, I guess it was, the hacker/phreaks definitely helped
	out law enforcement. One end of the conversation was coming from
	inside a hotel, maybe even the Sahara. The other from another
	cell phone, most likely in the lobby.

	"What do you look like?"
	"I'm five foot nine, thinning brown hair and 180 pounds I wear
	round glasses and . ."
	"I get the idea. Where are you now?"
	"I'm coming down the elevator now. What do you look like?"
	"I'm six foot one in my heels, have long blond spiked hair and
	black fishnet stockings."
	Hacker: "Don't go man. It's a bust."
	"What?" he said.
	Hacker: "Don't go, it's a bust. You don't want your name in the
	papers, do ya?"
	"What the fuck?" she yelled.
	"There's a guy who says this is a bust?"
	"Bust? What bust?"
	Hacker: "That's the clue, man. She's denying it. Of course it's
	a bust. Is it worth a night in jail to not get laid?"
	"Shit." He whispers not too quietly to another male companion.
	"There's some guy on the phone who says it's bust. What should we
	do."
	Hacker: "I'm telling you man, don't go,"
	"This ain't worth it. I'm going back upstairs."
	Click.

	A couple of hours later the same hooker was overheard talking to
	one of her work mates.

	"Then this asshole says it's a bust. Cost me $300 in lost busi
	ness, shit."
	"You, too? Same shit been going on all night long. What the
	fuck?"

	Wow. And it seems like only this morning that my toilet explod
	ed.

	* * * * *

	So what's a perfectly groomed and slightly rotund 50-something
	convicted methamphetamine dealer doing at DefCon II with hundreds
	of impressionable teenagers? You might well ask.

	So I'll tell you.

	Sitting in yet another Saharan hell-hole of a room they unabash
	edly market for $55 per night I encountered hackers #1 through #4
	and this . . . I immediately thought, elderly gent. He said
	nothing and neither did I, thinking that he might have been an
	over aged chaperone for delinquent teens or perhaps even an
	understanding Fed. But the gallon jugs of whiskey was depleting
	itself right before my eyes, as if a straw from Heaven sucked the
	manna from its innards. Actually, it was Bootleg.

	Not bootleg liquor, mind you, but Bootleg the felonious con from
	Oregon. Apparently he got busted 'cause speed is and was against
	the law, and crank is not exactly the drug choice of maiden aunts
	nor school marms. "I've been a hacker longer than some of these
	kids have been alive. It all started back in . . ." and Mike
	"Bootleg" Beketic commenced on the first of hundreds of war-story
	jail house tales to entertain him and us. Bootleg loves a good
	story.

	"Jail ain't so bad," he bragged with a huge whiskey smile. "No
	one fucked with me. You gotta make friends early on. Then it's
	OK." Good advice, I guess. "On parole I got slammed with a year
	for piss that didn't pass." Gotta be clean, my man. Stay away
	from that shit. It'll kill you and your teeth will rot.

	Bootleg handed me form PROB-37, (Rev. 1/94) from the United
	States District Court, Federal Probation System. Grins from ear
	to ear. A badge of honor for villains, thieves, and scoundrels.
	Sounds like they need their own union.

	This was the official "Permission To Travel" form dated June 16,
	1994 which gave Bootleg the legal right to travel from Oregon to
	Las Vegas in the dead of the summer to attend a "computer conven
	tion." The flight times were specific as were the conditions of
	his freedom. He had to inform the local cops that he was in
	town. In case any crimes occurred throughout the city of Las
	Vegas during his sojourn, he was an easily identifiable suspect.

	While he downed another Jack and coke I found out what Bootleg
	was really doing. Despite the fact that the "Federal Keep Track
	of a Crook Travel Form" said, "you are prohibited from advertis
	ing or selling your DMV CD," the paranoia that runs rampant
	through the minds of prison bureaucracy was actually in this case
	quite correctly concerned.

	"What's a DMV CD?"

	"I'm glad you asked." I was set up. The edict said he couldn't
	sell or advertise, but there was no provision stating that he
	couldn't answer questions from an inquiring mind.

	Bootleg handed me a CD ROM:

	Bootleg Presents:
	DMV

	- Over 2 Million Oregon Drivers License Records
	- Over 3 Million Oregon License Plate Records

	The inside jacket clearly stated that this information was not to
	be used by any creatively nefarious types for any sort of person
	al Information Warfare tactics. It warns,

	Do not use this CD to:

	- Make phony Licenses
	- Make phony Titles
	- Obtain phony I.D.
	- Harass Politicians, Cops or Journalists
	- Stalk Celebrities
	- Get ME in trouble <G>

	I can come up with at least 1001 other uses for this collection
	of information that the Oregon authorities are none too happy
	about. The ones Bootleg outlined never came into my mind.
	(Heh!) Bootleg acquired the information legally. State officials
	were kind enough to violate the electronic souls of its citizens
	by sending Bootleg their driver's information magnetically embla
	zoned on a 3600 foot long piece of 9 track acetate. Now they
	want to change the law to reflect "heart felt concern for the
	privacy of their citizens." Get a clue, or if none's available,
	buy one from Vanna.

	Bootleg is moving onto the next 47 states (California and New
	York don't permit this kind of shenanigans) shortly to make sure
	that everyone has equal access. Hacking? Of course. Bootleg
	effectively hacked the Oregon DMV with their blessing and tax
	payer paid-for assistance.

	Time to go back to my room while Bootleg and friends spent an
	evening of apparently unsuccessful whoring around the Strip and
	Glitter Gulch.

	A good time was had by all.

	* * * * *

	Jeff Moss opened the Sunday morning session with an ominous
	sermon.

	"You'll notice that the wet bar is missing from the rear?" It
	had been there yesterday. Everyone turns around to look. "I
	gotta pay for the damage . . . " Jeff was not a happy camper.
	"They have my credit card number and it's almost full. So cool
	it!" But the show must go on and we had more to learn.

	Next. Anonymous mailers on the net? Forget about it. No such
	thing. Anonymous remailers, even if they are in Norway or Finland
	or some such other country where American information contraband
	such as child pornography is legal, are only as safe and secure
	as the people who run it

	"The FBI can go over any time they want and look up who you are
	and what kinds of stuff you swallow down your digital throat,"
	one speaker announced. Of course that's ridiculous. The FBI
	would have to call in the Boy Scouts or Russian Mafia for that
	kind of operation, but we all knew that anyway. A slight slip of
	the ad lib tongue. No harm done.

	I didn't know, until this Sunday, that there were actually real
	live versions of "Pump Up The Volume" running rampant across the
	country, impinging their commercial-free low power radio broad
	casts into an electromagnetic spectrum owned and operated by the
	Federal Communications Commission. And, as to be expected, the
	FCC is trying to put these relatively harmless stations out of
	business along with Howard Stern and Don Imus. One would think
	that WABC or KLAC or any other major market stations would little
	care if a podunk 20 watt radio station was squeezing in between
	assigned frequencies. And they probably shouldn't. But, as we
	learned, the Military lent an innocent hand.

	In support of the hobbies of servicemen, a local San Francisco
	base commander gave approval for a group of soldiers to establish
	a small, low power radio station for the base. Good for morale,
	keep the men out of the bars: you know the bit.

	But the ballistic missiles went off when the nation's premier
	rating service, Arbitron, listed KFREE as a top local station in
	the San Francisco market.

	"What station KFREE?" "Who the hell are they?" "What the fuck?"

	Needless to say, KFREE was costing the legitimate radio stations
	money because advertising rates are based upon the number of
	listeners not up and peeing during commercials. Since KFREE was
	ad-free, no contest. Arbitron assumes the rating to relect the
	existence of a real station - the numbers are there - and the
	local stations call the FCC and the FCC calls the base and as
	quick as you can scream, "Feds suck!" KFREE is off the air.

	Stomp.

	I was scheduled to speak today, but with the schedule seemingly
	slipping forward and backward at random haphazard intervals,
	there was no telling when what would occur. Mark Ludwig, of
	Virus Writing Contest fame and author of the much touted "Little
	Black Book of Computer Viruses" Virus gave a less then impas
	sioned speech about the evils of government.

	"I know most of you don't have any assets other than your comput
	er," Ludwig said to the poverty stricken masses of DefCon II.
	"But you will, and you want to make sure the government doesn't
	come crashing down around you whenever they want. They can and
	will take your life away if it suits them. There is no fourth
	amendment. Most search and seizures are illegal." And so it
	went.

	"Put your money off shore, kids," said Dr. Ludwig the theoretical
	physicist. "Find a good friendly country with flexible banking
	laws and the Feds can't get you."

	"And when the Feds do come for you, make sure that your entire
	life is on your computer. Rip up the papers after you scan them
	in. Your all-electronic life cannot be penetrated - especially
	if you get a case of the forgets. 'Oops, I forgot my password.
	Oops! I forgot my encryption key. Oops! I forgot my name.'"

	"Even your VISA and Mastercard accounts should be from overseas.
	Keep it out of the US and you'll be all the better for it." For
	those interested in such alternative, Ludwig recommends that you
	call Mark Nestman: of LPP Ltd. at 800-528-0559 or 702-885-2509.
	Tell him you want to move your millions of rubbles and dollars
	and Cyber-credits overseas for safe keeping because the Byzantine
	Police are at the front door as you speak. Order pamphlet 103.

	These are the defensive measures we can take protect ourselves
	against the emerging Police State. But offensive action is also
	called for, he says. "Help Phil Zimmerman. Send him money for
	his defense. Then, laugh at the Feds!" Haha, haha. Haha.
	Hahahahahaha. Ha!

	."When they come to the door, just laugh at them." Haha. Haha
	ha. Haha. "No matter what they do, laugh at them." Hahahahaha.
	Enough of that, please. If I laugh at 6 husky beer-bellied
	Cyber-cops who have an arsenal of handguns pointed at my head,
	they might as well send me to the Group W bench to commiserate
	with Arlo Guthrie. Peeing would come before laughing. But then
	again, I'm no longer a grunged out 20 year old who can laugh in
	the face of the Grim Reaper. "Yes, ossifer, sir. I'm a cyber-
	crook. I ain't laughing at you in your face, ossifer, sir . . ."
	I panic easily. Kissing ass well comes from a life long success
	of quid pro quo'ing my way from situation to situation.

	"And, now," Master Mark announced, "on to the results and awards
	for the Annual Virus Writing contest." Ludwig seemed suddenly
	depressed. "Unfortunately, we only got one legitimate entry."
	One entry? The media plastered his contest across the media-
	waves and the National Computer Security Association was planning
	a tactical nuclear response. One entry? What kind of subver
	sives have 20 year olds turned into anyway? In my day (Yeah, I'm
	old enough to use that phrase) if we called for a political
	demonstration thousands would pile through the subway turnstiles
	to meet a phalanx of well armed police appropriately attired in
	riot gear. One entry? Come on X-Generation, you can do better
	than that? No wonder the world's going to shit. Don't have
	enough trouble from the young-uns. Sheeeeeeesssh!

	Mark Ludwig's politically incorrect virus writing contest may
	have been a PR success but it was a business abortion. One
	entry. Shit. At the NCSA meeting in Washington, rivaling fac
	tions battled over how we as an association should respond.

	"Hang the bastard." "He's what's wrong with world." "Put him in
	a county jail with Billy-Bob, Jimmy-Ray and Bubba for a week and
	they'll be able to squeeze him out between the bars."

	C'mon you fools! Ignore him! Ignore him! If you don't like what
	he has to say don't egg him on. Ignore him. You want to do what
	the Feds did to poor Phil Zimmerman and make him a folk hero?
	Turning a non-event into the lead for the evening news is not the
	way to make something go away. I loudly advocated that he be
	treated as a non-entity if the goal was reduction to obscurity.
	I was right.

	Super-high priced PR and lobby firms had prepared presentation to
	wage an all-out attack on Ludwig and his contest. I bet! And who
	was going to pay for this? Peter Tippitt of Semantech ponied up
	what I believe amounted to $7,000 to get the pot going. No one
	else made a firm offer. Can't blame them cause it would have been
	no more effective than taking out an ad in Time proclaiming that
	evil is bad. The PR firm would have made their fees, the event
	would have made even more news and Ludwig would certainly have
	had to make a judgement and choose from more than one entry.

	But oddly enough, the one entry did not win.

	The winner of the Annual Virus Writing Contest was no less than
	Bob Bales, Executive Director of the NCSA. Not that Bob wrote a
	program, but if he had, Ludwig said, it would be called either
	Don Quixote or Paranoia, and it would be of the human brain at-
	tacking Meme type. The virus is a software equivalent of Prozac
	to alleviate the suffering in middle-aged males who have no
	purpose in life other than virus busting.

	"Is Winn Schwartau here?" Mark asked the audience.

	I was there. "Yo!"

	"Would you tell Bob that he's won a plaque, and a $100 check and
	a full year subscription to the Computer Virus Developments
	Quarterly." I'm the technology advisor to the NCSA so it was
	a natural request to which I was pleased to oblige.

	I told Bob about his 15 minutes of fame at DefCon to which he
	roared in laughter. "Good! Then I won't have to subscribe my
	self."



	I spoke next. Jeff introduced me by saying, "Winn says he
	doesn't want to speak to an empty room so he's gonna talk now."
	Some introduction. But, what a great audience! Better than most
	of the security above-ground starched sphincter tight suit and
	tie conference audiences I normally get. But then again, I get
	paid handsomely to address legitimate audiences where I have to
	be politically correct. At DefCon, insulting people was the last
	thing I worried about. It was what I focused on, onstage and
	off.

	"Hey, kid. Did you ever land Zimmerman in bed?"

	"You, you, er . . ."

	"C'mon kid. Give me your best shot."

	"Your mother . . ." A crowd gathered to see what kind of repar
	tee this little schnook could come up with. "Your mother .. ."
	C'mon kid. You got it in you. C'mon. "You, she is a . . .
	uh, . . . mother . . ." and he finally skulked away in sheer
	embarrassment. Poor kid. When he went to the men's room, men
	walked out. Poor kid. I don't think he ever figured out it was
	all a put on.

	The audience got it, though. Rather than go over what I rambled
	about for an hour, here comes a blatant plug: Go buy my new book
	"Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway."
	That'll sum it up real nice and neat. But what a great audience.
	Thanks.

	Little did I know, though, that I was also on trial.

	John Markoff of the New York Times was the first to ask, and then
	a couple of buddies asked and then a lady asked during the Q&A
	portion of my ad hoc ad lib speech. "How come you did it?" Did
	what? "How come you flamed Lenny DeCicco?"

	It turns out that someone adapted my electronic identity and
	logged on to the WELL in Sausalito, CA and proceeded to post a
	deep flame against Lenny. Among other none-too-subtle asper
	sions, 'my' posting accused Lenny of a whole string of crimes of
	Information Warfare and even out and out theft.

	Except, it wasn't me. I answered the lady's question with, "It
	wasn't me, I don't know Lenny and I don't have an account on the
	WELL." That satisfied everyone except for me. What happened
	and why? It seems that Lenny's former partner in crime Most-
	Wanted on the lam federal fugitive computer hacker Kevin Mitnick
	actually wrote and signed the letter with his initials. Or
	someone was spoofing him and me at the same time. But why? And
	why me?

	It took a couple of days after arriving home from DefCon to learn
	after extensive conversations with the WELL that my erased ac
	count from almost two years ago and then re-erased on June 20 of
	this year was accidentally turned back on by some mysterious
	administrative process that I cannot claim to fathom. OK, that's
	what they said.

	But perhaps most interesting of the entire Getting Spoofed inci
	dent was a single comment that Pei Chen, sysop of the WELL said
	to me while I complained about how such an awful anti-social
	attack was clearly reprehensible. Oh, it's simple, she said.

	"We have no security." Whooaaaahhh! The WELL? No security? I
	love it. I absolutely love it. Major service provider, no
	security. Go get 'em cowboy.

	The only other speaker I wanted to see was Peter Beruk, chief
	litigator for the Software Publisher's Association. This is the
	Big Software Company sponsored organization which attempts to
	privately interdict illegal software distribution as a prelude
	for both civil and criminal prosecutions. And with this group of
	digital anarchists, no less.

	The SPA scrounges around 1600 private BBS's to see who's making
	illicit copies of Microsoft Word or Quattro For Weanies or
	Bulgarian for Bimbos or other legitimate software that the pub
	lishers would rather receive their due income from then being
	stolen.

	"Which boards are you on?"

	"That would be telling." Big grin and laughs.

	"Is your BBS secure?" A challenge in the making.

	"Sure is."

	"Is that an offer to see if we can break in?" Challenge made.

	"Ahem, cough, cough." Challenge denied.

	"What name do you use on the boards?" Idiot question that de
	serves an idiot answer.

	"Fred." Laughs.

	"You mean you have a full time guy to download software from
	boards to see if it's legal or not?" "Yup."

	"So, you pay people to commit felonies?" Astutely stupid ques
	tion.

	"We have permission."

	"Why should we have to pay rip-off corporations too much money to
	use really shitty software?"

	"So don't buy it."

	"We don't. It's so shitty that it's barely worth stealing."

	"So don't steal it."

	"Just want to check it out, dude."

	"Scum sucking imperialists are making all of the money. The
	software designers are getting ripped off by the big software
	bureaucracies. Power to the people." Every generation goes
	through this naively innocent berating of capitalism. It doesn't
	make them Communists (in 1950 it did), just not full fledged
	capitalist pigs themselves yet. Soon come. Vis a vis Ludwig's
	comment on the asset-deprived audience. Soon come, man.

	"We go after BBS's that store illegal software."

	"So you're gonna put Compuserve in jail?" Big, big applause.

	Despite the openly verbal animosity between the free-ware believ
	ers and the Chief Software Cop, the spirited and entertaining
	disagreements maintained a healthy good natured tone that well
	exceed Peter's time limit, as DefCon II was coming to a close.

	It was time for one more stand up comedy attempt by a short haired
	bandanna wearing hippie/hacker/phreak who was not quite up to the
	job.

	"OK, guys. We've had some fun at the Feds expense. They're
	people, too. So, from now on, it's Hug a Fed. Go on, find a fed
	and go up to him or her and big them a great big bear hug full of
	love." The Feds that had been busted were gone. The ones still
	successfully undercover weren't about to blow it for a quick feel
	from a horny teenager.

	Next. The Cliff Stoll doll with an assortment of accessory yo-
	yos was a popular item. It was thrown pell-mell into the crowds
	who leapt at it with a vengeance like a baseball bleachers sec
	tion awaiting the 61st home run.

	"There used to be a Wife of Cliff Stoll doll, but no one's seen
	it in two years." Cliff is strange. I don't know if he's that
	strange, but it was a funny bit.

	"Then we have the LoD/MoD action figure set starring Erik Bloo
	daxe and Phiber Optik." GI Joe action set gone underground.
	Corny, but appreciated as hundreds of bodies dove to catch the
	plastic relics tossed from the stage.

	If anything, an anti-climatic end to an otherwise highly informa
	tive and educational conference. I can hardly wait till next
	year when, after word gets out, DefCon III will be attended by
	thousands of hackers and cops and narks who will try to replay
	the Summer of Cyber-Love '94 for a sequel.

	* * * * *

	More than anything I wanted to get away from the Sahara. Away
	from its nauseatingly chromatic carpets, it's hundreds of sur
	veillance cameras, and most of all, away from its exploding
	toilets.

	We decided to play, and play we did at the new Luxor Hotel which
	is an amazing pyramid with 4000+ rooms. There are no elevators as
	in a pyramid 'going up' is kind of useless, so Inclinators take
	passengers up the 30 some odd floors to hallways which ring
	around the impossibly huge hollowed out pyramid shaped atrium.

	This was play land. And for three hours we played and played and
	went to dumb shows that attract mid-western mamas from Noodnick,
	Kentucky, alighting in Vegas for their annual RV pilgrimage. But
	we went and enjoyed none the less.

	The "Live TV" show was anything but live except for lovely Susan
	who hosted us into the ersatz TV station. Her job is to look
	pretty, sound pretty and warm up the crowd for an over budget,
	overproduced schmaltz driven video projection that was to make us
	all feel like we were on stage with Dave. Letterman, that is.
	The effect does not work. But we enjoyed ourselves, anyway.

	"Everyone here on vacation?"

	"No!" I yelled out. Poor Susan was stunned. No? Why else would
	you be here?

	"What are you doing?" The TV audience of 500 was looking our
	way. Between the five of us we had a million dollars (give or
	take) of electronic wizardry stuffed around us, beneath us and in
	our laps.

	"Working." Gee, I'm quick.

	"What do you do?" Susan asked with a straight face. I bet she
	expected something like gas pumper, or nocturnal mortuary forni
	cator or 7/11 clerk.

	"We're hacking for Jesus. This is Cyber Christ!" I said pointing
	at Erik Bloodaxe.

	Silence. Dead silence again. Sleep with Phil Zimmerman silence.
	Except for us. We giggled like school boys. Psyche.

	"Ah, . . . that's nice." That was all she could come up with:
	That's nice. So much for ad libbing or deviating from the
	script. But the TV audience enjoyed it. A whole lot. They
	finally figured out it was put on. Not every one from the Mid-
	West is as stupid as they all pretend to be.

	Then it was time to get sick. VR rides do me in, but not to be
	publicly humiliated by my 20-something cohorts (and Mike Peros
	with whom I had to travel yet another 2000 miles that night) I
	jumped right into an F-14 simulator which rotated 360 degrees on
	two gimbals for an infinite variety of nauseousness.

	"Oh, shit!" I yelled as I propelled myself forward and around and
	sideways with sufficient g-force to disgorge even the most delec
	table meal. "Oh, shit." I had reversed the throttle and was now
	spinning end over end backwards. My inner ear was getting my
	stomach sick. "Oh, shit." Out of the corner of my eyes my four
	pals were doubled over in laughter. Had I barfed yet and not
	known it? God, I hope not. "Oh, shit." I came to a dead stand
	still, the video screen showed me plummeting to earth at escape
	velocity and I pushed the throttle forward as roughly as I could.
	An innate survival instinct came in to play. "Oh, shit!" The
	virtual aircraft carrier came into sight and after almost 2
	minutes of high speed rotating revulsion, I was expected to land
	this spinning F-14 on a thimble in the ocean. Right. I tried,
	and damned if I didn't make it. I have no idea how, but I got an
	extra 34,000 points for a safe landing. 120 seconds. Ding.
	Time's up.

	I got out of the simulator and spilled right onto the floor; one
	42 year old pile of humanity who had navigated nausea but whose
	balance was totally beyond repair. "Could anyone hear me?" I
	asked from my knees.

	"They were selling tickets."

	"Do I get my money back?"

	Onto the VR race cars. I really thought I'd throw up to the
	amusement of a thousand onlookers. Hacking then phreaking then
	flying and now driving. I put the pedal to the metal and
	crashed. The huge video display has me tipping end over end and
	the screen is shaking and the car I'm driving is shuddering
	violently but my brain can't compute it all. I'm gonna wretch, I
	just know it. But I keep on driving, decidedly last against
	people who haven't been handicapped with an inner ear so sensi
	tive I get dizzy when I watch a 5" black and white TV.

	We tilted out of there and alas, it was time to find a 200,000
	pound of metal to glide me home. It was a damn good thing I hadn't
	eaten before VR Land, but I wolfed down $3 hot dogs at the air
	port knowing full well that whatever they served on the plane
	would be a thousand times worse. So Mike and I munched, leaving
	Cyber Christ and friends to battle the press and the stars at the
	opening of Planet Hollywood at Caesar's Palace.

	And then an unexpected surprise. Lisa and friend; our first class
	objects of flirtation from the outbound trip which seemed like a
	month ago, appeared. But we were all so wiped out that a conti
	nent of innuendo turned into a series of short cat naps. We got
	a few flirts in, but nothing to write home about. Red Eye
	flights are just not what they're cracked up to be.

	As I crawled into bed at something like 7AM Eastern, my wife
	awoke enough to ask the perennial wife question. "What did you
	do all weekend?" I, in turn, gave her the usual husbandly re
	sponse.

	"Oh, nothing. Good night, Gracie."

	* * * * *

	(C) 1994 Winn Schwartau
	Winn Schwartau is an information security consultant, lecturer
	and, obviously, a writer. Please go buy his new book: "Informa
	tion Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway." Available at
	book stores everywhere. Winn can be reached at: Voice:
	813.393.6600 or E-mail: P00506@Psilink.com