The Hacker Crackdown

Before computers and their phone-line modems entered American homes in gigantic numbers, phone phreaks had their own special telecommunications hardware gadget, the famous "blue box." This fraud device (now rendered increasingly useless by the digital evolution of the phone system) could trick switching systems into granting free access to long-distance lines. It did this by mimicking the system's own signal, a tone of 2600 hertz. Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Computer, Inc., once dabbled in selling blue-boxes in college dorms in California. For many, in the early days of phreaking, blue-boxing was scarcely perceived as "theft," but rather as a fun (if sneaky) way to use excess phone capacity harmlessly. After all, the long-distance lines were *just sitting there*.... Whom did it hurt, really? If you're not *damaging* the system, and you're not *using up any tangible resource,* and if nobody *finds out* what you did, then what real harm have you done? What exactly *have* you "stolen," anyway? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, how much is the noise worth? Even now this remains a rather dicey question.

Blue-boxing was no joke to the phone companies, however. Indeed, when *Ramparts* magazine, a radical publication in California, printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box in June 1972, the magazine was seized by police and Pacific Bell phone- company officials. The mute box, a blue-box variant, allowed its user to receive long-distance calls free of charge to the caller. This device was closely described in a *Ramparts* article wryly titled "Regulating the Phone Company In Your Home." Publication of this article was held to be in violation of Californian State Penal Code section 502.7, which outlaws ownership of wire-fraud devices and the selling of "plans or instructions for any instrument, apparatus, or device intended to avoid telephone toll charges." Issues of *Ramparts* were recalled or seized on the newsstands, and the resultant loss of income helped put the magazine out of business. This was an ominous precedent for free-expression issues, but the telco's crushing of a radical-fringe magazine passed without serious challenge at the time. Even in the freewheeling California 1970s, it was widely felt that there was something sacrosanct about what the phone company knew; that the telco had a legal and moral right to protect itself by shutting off the flow of such illicit information. Most telco information was so "specialized" that it would scarcely be understood by any honest member of the public. If not published, it would not be missed. To print such material did not seem part of the legitimate role of a free press.

In 1990 there would be a similar telco-inspired attack on the electronic phreak/hacking "magazine" *Phrack.* The *Phrack* legal case became a central issue in the Hacker Crackdown, and gave rise to great controversy. *Phrack* would also be shut down, for a time, at least, but this time both the telcos and their law-enforcement allies would pay a much larger price for their actions. The *Phrack* case will be examined in detail, later.

Phone-phreaking as a social practice is still very much alive at this moment. Today, phone-phreaking is thriving much more vigorously than the better-known and worse-feared practice of "computer hacking." New forms of phreaking are spreading rapidly, following new vulnerabilities in sophisticated phone services. Cellular phones are especially vulnerable; their chips can be re-programmed to present a false caller ID and avoid billing. Doing so also avoids police tapping, making cellular-phone abuse a favorite among drug-dealers. "Call-sell operations" using pirate cellular phones can, and have, been run right out of the backs of cars, which move from "cell" to "cell" in the local phone system, retailing stolen long-distance service, like some kind of demented electronic version of the neighborhood ice-cream truck.

Private branch-exchange phone systems in large corporations can be penetrated; phreaks dial-up a local company, enter its internal phone-system, hack it, then use the company's own PBX system to dial back out over the public network, causing the company to be stuck with the resulting long-distance bill. This technique is known as "diverting." "Diverting" can be very costly, especially because phreaks tend to travel in packs and never stop talking. Perhaps the worst by-product of this "PBX fraud" is that victim companies and telcos have sued one another over the financial responsibility for the stolen calls, thus enriching not only shabby phreaks but well-paid lawyers.

"Voice-mail systems" can also be abused; phreaks can seize their own sections of these sophisticated electronic answering machines, and use them for trading codes or knowledge of illegal techniques. Voice-mail abuse does not hurt the company directly, but finding supposedly empty slots in your company's answering machine all crammed with phreaks eagerly chattering and hey-duding one another in impenetrable jargon can cause sensations of almost mystical repulsion and dread.

Worse yet, phreaks have sometimes been known to react truculently to attempts to "clean up" the voice-mail system. Rather than humbly acquiescing to being thrown out of their playground, they may very well call up the company officials at work (or at home) and loudly demand free voice-mail addresses of their very own. Such bullying is taken very seriously by spooked victims.

Acts of phreak revenge against straight people are rare, but voice-mail systems are especially tempting and vulnerable, and an infestation of angry phreaks in one's voice-mail system is no joke. They can erase legitimate messages; or spy on private messages; or harass users with recorded taunts and obscenities. They've even been known to seize control of voice-mail security, and lock out legitimate users, or even shut down the system entirely.

Cellular phone-calls, cordless phones, and ship-to- shore telephony can all be monitored by various forms of radio; this kind of "passive monitoring" is spreading explosively today. Technically eavesdropping on other people's cordless and cellular phone-calls is the fastest- growing area in phreaking today. This practice strongly appeals to the lust for power and conveys gratifying sensations of technical superiority over the eavesdropping victim. Monitoring is rife with all ma

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The term "hacker" has had an unfortunate history. This book, *The Hacker Crackdown,* has little to say about "hacking" in its finer, original sense. The term can signify the free-wheeling intellectual exploration of the highest and deepest potential of computer systems. Hacking can describe the determination to make access to computers and information as free and open as possible. Hacking can involve the heartfelt conviction that beauty can be found in computers, that the fine aesthetic in a perfect program can liberate the mind and spirit. This is "hacking" as it was defined in Steven Levy's much-praised history of the pioneer computer milieu, *Hackers,* published in 1984. Hackers of all kinds are absolutely soaked through with heroic anti-bureaucratic sentiment. Hackers long for recognition as a praiseworthy cultural archetype, the postmodern electronic equivalent of the cowboy and mountain man. Whether they deserve such a reputation is something for history to decide. But many hackers -- including those outlaw hackers who are computer intruders, and whose activities are defined as criminal -- actually attempt to *live up to* this techno-cowboy reputation. And given that electronics and telecommunications are still largely unexplored territories, there is simply *no telling* what hackers might uncover. For some people, this freedom is the very breath of oxygen, the inventive spontaneity that makes life worth living and that flings open doors to marvellous possibility and individual empowerment. But for many people -- and increasingly so -- the hacker is an ominous figure, a smart- aleck sociopath ready to burst out of his basement wilderness and savage other people's lives for his own anarchical convenience. Any form of power without responsibility, without direct and formal checks and balances, is frightening to people -- and reasonably so. It should be frankly admitted that hackers *are* frightening, and that the basis of this fear is not irrational. Fear of hackers goes well beyond the fear of merely criminal activity.