The Hacker Crackdown

BANKAMER.ZIP 5406 06-11-91 Hacking Bank America CHHACK.ZIP 4481 06-11-91 Chilton Hacking CITIBANK.ZIP 4118 06-11-91 Hacking Citibank CREDIMTC.ZIP 3241 06-11-91 Hacking Mtc Credit Company DIGEST.ZIP 5159 06-11-91 Hackers Digest HACK.ZIP 14031 06-11-91 How To Hack HACKBAS.ZIP 5073 06-11-91 Basics Of Hacking HACKDICT.ZIP 42774 06-11-91 Hackers Dictionary HACKER.ZIP 57938 06-11-91 Hacker Info HACKERME.ZIP 3148 06-11-91 Hackers Manual HACKHAND.ZIP 4814 06-11-91 Hackers Handbook HACKTHES.ZIP 48290 06-11-91 Hackers Thesis HACKVMS.ZIP 4696 06-11-91 Hacking Vms Systems MCDON.ZIP 3830 06-11-91 Hacking Macdonalds (Home Of The Archs) P500UNIX.ZIP 15525 06-11-91 Phortune 500 Guide To Unix RADHACK.ZIP 8411 06-11-91 Radio Hacking TAOTRASH.DOC 4096 12-25-89 Suggestions For Trashing TECHHACK.ZIP 5063 06-11-91 Technical Hacking

The files above are do-it-yourself manuals about computer intrusion. The above is only a small section of a much larger library of hacking and phreaking techniques and history. We now move into a different and perhaps surprising area.

+------------+ |Anarchy| +------------+

ANARC.ZIP 3641 06-11-91 Anarchy Files ANARCHST.ZIP 63703 06-11-91 Anarchist Book ANARCHY.ZIP 2076 06-11-91 Anarchy At Home ANARCHY3.ZIP 6982 06-11-91 Anarchy No 3 ANARCTOY.ZIP 2361 06-11-91 Anarchy Toys ANTIMODM.ZIP 2877 06-11-91 Anti-modem Weapons ATOM.ZIP 4494 06-11-91 How To Make An Atom Bomb BARBITUA.ZIP 3982 06-11-91 Barbiturate Formula BLCKPWDR.ZIP 2810 06-11-91 Black Powder Formulas BOMB.ZIP 3765 06-11-91 How To Make Bombs BOOM.ZIP 2036 06-11-91 Things That Go Boom CHLORINE.ZIP 1926 06-11-91 Chlorine Bomb COOKBOOK.ZIP 1500 06-11-91 Anarchy Cook Book DESTROY.ZIP 3947 06-11-91 Destroy Stuff DUSTBOMB.ZIP 2576 06-11-91 Dust Bomb ELECTERR.ZIP 3230 06-11-91 Electronic Terror EXPLOS1.ZIP 2598 06-11-91 Explosives 1 EXPLOSIV.ZIP 18051 06-11-91 More Explosives EZSTEAL.ZIP 4521 06-11-91 Ez-stealing FLAME.ZIP 2240 06-11-91 Flame Thrower FLASHLT.ZIP 2533 06-11-91 Flashlight Bomb FMBUG.ZIP 2906 06-11-91 How To Make An Fm Bug OMEEXPL.ZIP 2139 06-11-91 Home Explosives HOW2BRK.ZIP 3332 06-11-91 How To Break In LETTER.ZIP 2990 06-11-91 Letter Bomb LOCK.ZIP 2199 06-11-91 How To Pick Locks MRSHIN.ZIP 3991 06-11-91 Briefcase Locks NAPALM.ZIP 3563 06-11-91 Napalm At Home NITRO.ZIP 3158 06-11-91 Fun With Nitro PARAMIL.ZIP 2962 06-11-91 Paramilitary Info PICKING.ZIP 3398 06-11-91 Picking Locks PIPEBOMB.ZIP 2137 06-11-91 Pipe Bomb POTASS.ZIP 3987 06-11-91 Formulas With Potassium PRANK.TXT 11074 08-03-90 More Pranks To Pull On Idiots! REVENGE.ZIP 4447 06-11-91 Revenge Tactics ROCKET.ZIP 2590 06-11-91 Rockets For Fun SMUGGLE.ZIP 3385 06-11-91 How To Smuggle

*Holy Cow!* The damned thing is full of stuff about bombs!

What are we to make of this?

First, it should be acknowledged that spreading knowledge about demolitions to teenagers is a highly and deliberately antisocial act. It is not, however, illegal. Second, it should be recognized that most of these philes were in fact *written* by teenagers. Most adult American males who can remember their teenage years will recognize that the notion of building a flamethrower in your garage is an incredibly neat-o idea. *Actually* building a flamethrower in your garage, however, is fraught with discouraging difficulty. Stuffing gunpowder into a booby-trapped flashlight, so as to blow the arm off your high-school vice-principal, can be a thing of dark beauty to contemplate. Actually committing assault by explosives will earn you the sustained attention of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Some people, however, will actually try these plans. A determinedly murderous American teenager can probably buy or steal a handgun far more easily than he can brew fake "napalm" in the kitchen sink. Nevertheless, if temptation is spread before people a certain number will succumb, and a small minority will actually attempt these stunts. A large minority of that small minority will either fail or, quite likely, maim themselves, since these "philes" have not been checked for accuracy, are not the product of professional experience, and are often highly fanciful. But the gloating menace of these philes is not to be entirely dismissed.

Hackers may not be "serious" about bombing; if they were, we would hear far more about exploding flashlights, homemade bazookas, and gym teachers poisoned by chlorine and potassium. However, hackers are *very* serious about forbidden knowledge. They are possessed not merely by curiosity, but by a positive *lust to know.* The desire to know what others don't is scarcely new. But the *intensity* of this desire, as manifested by these young technophilic denizens of the Information Age, may in fact *be* new, and may represent some basic shift in social values -- a harbinger of what the world may come to, as society lays more and more value on the possession, assimilation and retailing of *information* as a basic commodity of daily life.

There have always been young men with obsessive interests in these topics. Never before, however, have they been able to network so extensively and easily, and to propagandize their interests with impunity to random passers-by. High-school teachers will recognize that there's always one in a crowd, but when the one in a crowd escapes control by jumping into the phone-lines, and becomes a hundred such kids all together on a board, then trouble is brewing visibly. The urge of authority to *do something,* even something drastic, is hard to resist. And in 1990, authority did something. In fact authority did a great deal.

# The process by which boards create hackers goes something like this. A youngster becomes interested in computers -- usually, computer games. He hears from friends that "bulletin boards" exist where games can be obtained for free. (Many computer games are "freeware," not copyrighted -- invented simply for the love of it and given away to the public; some of these games are quite good.) He bugs his parents for a modem, or quite often, uses his parents' modem.

The world of boards suddenly opens up. Computer games can be quite expensive, real budget-breakers for a kid, but pirated games, stripped of copy protection, are cheap or free. They are also illegal, but it is very rare, almost unheard of, for a small-scale software pirate to be prosecuted. Once "cracked" of its copy protection, the program, being digital data, becomes infinitely reproducible. Even the instructions to the game, any manuals that accompany it, can be reproduced as text files, or photocopied from legitimate sets. Other users on boards can give many useful hints in game-playing tactics. And a youngster with an infinite supply of free computer games can certainly cut quite a swath among his modem- less friends.

And boards are pseudonymous. No one need know that you're fourteen years old -- with a little practice at subterfuge, you can talk to adults about adult things, and be accepted and taken seriously! You can even pretend to be a girl, or an old man, or anybody you can imagine. If you find this kind of deception gratifying, there is ample opportunity to hone your ability on boards. But local boards can grow stale. And almost every board maintains a list of phone-numbers to other boards, some in distant, tempting, exotic locales. Who knows what they're up to, in Oregon or Alaska or Florida or California? It's very easy to find out -- just order the modem to call through its software -- nothing to this, just typing on a keyboard, the same thing you would do for most any computer game. The machine reacts swiftly and in a few seconds you are talking to a bunch of interesting people on another seaboard.