WEBVTT

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JACK: I want to play for you a narration of a piece of classic hacker literature.

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Everyone should be familiar with this. Some of you may even have

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parts of this memorized. Here, take a listen from the author himself.

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LOYD: Another one got caught today that’s all over the papers. Teenager arrested in

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computer crime scandal. Hacker arrested after bank tampering. Damn kids, they're all alike.

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I’m a hacker. Enter my world. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. And then it happened;

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a door opened to a world, rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s

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veins. This is it. This was where I belong. But this is our world now, the world of the electron

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and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying

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for what could be dirt cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.

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<!--more--> We explore, and you call us criminals.

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We seek after knowledge, and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars,

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you murder, cheat, and lie to us, and try to make us believe that it’s for our own good,

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yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that

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of judging people by what they say and they think, not what they look like. My crime is

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that of outsmarting you, something that you'll never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is

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my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all. After all, we're

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all alike. That was written in 1986. [Applause] My name’s Loyd, by the way, also known as the Mentor.

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JACK: That was indeed Loyd Blankenship, the author of the legendary Hacker Manifesto,

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so legendary that it actually appeared in the movie Hackers. Here, take a listen.

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AGENT BOB: This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch,

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the beauty of the baud. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. I am a hacker,

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and this is my manifesto. Huh, right? Manifesto? You may stop me, but you can't stop us all.

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AGENT RAY: That’s cool.

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AGENT BOB: Cool?

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AGENT RAY: Yeah, cool.

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AGENT BOB: You think it’s cool?

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AGENT RAY: It’s cool.

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AGENT BOB: It’s not cool. It’s commie bullshit.

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JACK: Loyd wrote that a few days after being arrested for hacking. Loyd was a

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member of one of the most infamous hacker groups of all time, the Legion of Doom.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK:

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Hey. I am in San Francisco and I am looking for a specific building, and while I look for it,

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I’m gonna walk, and I’m gonna tell you a story, and I want you to come with me. So,

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you've probably heard of the term ‘phreaker’, right, spelled with a PH? This is basically a

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phone hacker. What a phreaker is is someone who manipulates the phone system to make phreak phone

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calls or whatever. But did you know that the term ‘phreaker’ and the whole idea of it was

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injected into the mainstream by Esquire Magazine? Yeah, so, in 1971, Esquire interviewed the guy

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who created the blue box, and was like, show us how it’s done and all this stuff.

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The blue box is a magical thing that — you push buttons on it, it had certain tones and things,

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and if you hold it up to the phone, you can make a phreak phone call or whatever.

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It was basically a little box that hacked phones. So, they interviewed this guy, and he showed them

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how it works and all this sort of thing, and took them — kind of a tour of the underground world of

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phreakers, which at the time was very small and esoteric. Well, you had to be a geek of geeks in

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order to be a phreaker at the time. I mean, 1971, this is early phreaking days. So, that article

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came out, and it pretty much glorified phreaking, saying this is your way to empower yourself. So,

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that article came out, and it inspired thousands and — tens of thousands of people were reading

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this thing. Like, how do I get a blue box? How do I make this? I want to get one, too.

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So, there was just all this fever suddenly about people asking around, and kids on college campuses

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were now making blue boxes and getting together and trying to build these things. Of course,

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it didn’t explain in the article how to make it. So, finding that, it was very difficult.

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Google wasn’t around at the time. I mean, gosh, the internet wasn’t even around at the time. So,

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trying to find information on how to build these was pretty hard. But if you looked in the right

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areas, you could find them, and you ask the right people. Famously, Steve Wozniak read that article

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and worked with Steve Jobs to say, hey, let’s start building these blue boxes and sell them,

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and they did. This was their very first company before they started Apple.

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They even said, if we didn’t do that, we’d never make Apple, because this was a really good

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stepping stone to figure out how to work together and build things. So, it wasn’t just like,

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here’s how to do this cool electrical thing, but something about phreaking was just really cool

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at the time. The cool kids were doing it. They were like wizards. They could do things to the

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phones that normal people couldn’t do, and it was real magical at the time to be able to send

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these crazy signals into the phone and make it do stuff. But the phreakers weren't just cool kids;

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they were anti-establishment. It was like, we all have these little rebels inside us as teenagers,

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and this was a way to really let that rebel fly. Phreakers were a way to push back,

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to empower yourself, to fight the big monopolies of the world like Ma Bell.

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There was a magazine being published at the time called Ramparts, which was being published right

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here out of San Francisco. That’s where I’m headed right now. Ramparts — I feel like their

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whole attitude was poke their finger in the eye of the establishment, right? It was like,

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big corporations are corrupt, and here’s how you — could do to fight back. They were very

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critical of Christianity and sympathetic of Black Panthers,

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which were — the government considered them a terrorist group at the time.

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One of their most famous articles was when they found evidence that the CIA was secretly

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funding the student protests and student groups on college campuses to try to manipulate political

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discourse and ideas, and that turned into a huge investigation, and it was a big problem.

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So, Ramparts was doing this crazy journalism at the time. Oh, I think I see their office now.

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Gosh, these buildings are so cool. They're so old and so beautiful. So, Ramparts saw the

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phreaker movement stirring up, and they're like, let’s write an article. The article came out,

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and it was called How to Hack the Phone Company in Your Home. But it didn’t use the word ‘hack’;

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it said ‘regulate; How to Regulate the Phone Company in Your Home.

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I mean, I just read the article, so I’ll summarize it for you. It’s basically saying,

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you've heard of the blue box, but do you know about the mute box? The mute box is

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pretty cool. Basically, when you're going to make a long-distance call to someone — now,

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this was back in the seventies, right? So, I can't believe I have to explain this.

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There weren’t mobile phones yet, so long-distance calls actually cost by the minute, and it was very

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expensive to make long-distance phone calls. So, what the article says is that when a long-distance

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phone call connects, there’s a certain signal that gets sent from the receiver — from the

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receiver’s phone to the phone company indicating this call has connected; let the timer start. So,

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the toll begins. What this mute box does is it mutes that signal to never let the phone company

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know that the call started to start the timer for how long the call lasted. It would allow you to

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receive long-distance calls. Kind of a weird idea, but that’s what a mute box does. The article goes

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on to explain — now let’s show you how it’s done, how to make one. It has a parts list.

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It’s like, get a capacitor and get a resistor and get these kind of switches and put it in a box

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like this. It tells you how to solder it, how to — what wires to connect, where to put your phone in,

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and all this kind of stuff. It’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a mute box. Not only that;

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it says, now that you've built it, here’s how to use it. Then when you're using it, here’s

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how to verify when you're getting a free call. If you're hearing these tones, it’s not working. If

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you're hearing these tones, it is working. It’s really in depth of how this works and how to make

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it. I have arrived to where the Ramparts office used to be here on Pine Street in San Francisco.

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When they published this article in May of 1972, the police raided this office. They went

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up and they forced them to recall all the issues that they published. Said, get them back here.

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Call up every news stand that you sold it to, everyone that you've sent it to. Get

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the article back. You cannot publish this. They were like, what? You're crazy. They were like,

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you want a felony? Do you want a felony? Get the articles back here. Do you want a big fine? Either

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that or get your articles back here. So, they felt really pressured, and they called up as

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many places as they could to bring the articles back. It cost them $50,000 in lost revenue for

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buying back their articles or their magazines that they've already sold. When I heard that story,

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my immediate thing was, wait, what? The First Amendment of the constitution says Congress

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shall make no laws to restrict freedom of speech or freedom of press, and this is a press. They're

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just making magazines. They're doing journalistic work here. What happened was the phone company was

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so mad that this article came out that they asked the California police to do something.

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What the California police did was they found a rule in the law, California penal code 502.7.

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It says you cannot sell devices that will be used to defraud the phone company, and you cannot sell

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schematics or distribute plans or teach others how to defraud the phone company. I am just perplexed

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by this because — what? How is any YouTube video exist…? This law still exists on the books. It’s

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never been recalled or appealed or anything like that. So, how does any YouTube video exist that

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teaches you how to hack? How does any article exist that teaches you how to hack? I mean,

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shoot, just a little bit down the road from me is Stanford, and Stanford has classes on how to hack,

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how to do this exact thing. There are certificates on how to hack. It’s like,

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all these things exist, yet it’s against the law to teach someone how to hack? Are you serious?

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So, Ramparts couldn't recover from this, and that was the article that ended all articles for them.

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After that, the damage to the company, the reputation, the legal threats,

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the financial blow, was too much. So, Ramparts had to shut down, and that was it for them.

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[Music] I feel like as I’m sitting here looking up at the Ramparts office, the old building there,

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I could see that times have changed between then and now. These are old buildings. But

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that fight still wages on. It’s still going strong. Is there forbidden knowledge that we

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shouldn't share? Is there stuff that should be hushed up? Is there illegal tutorials out

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there that we shouldn't put out? It’s often questioned. All I gotta say is rest in peace,

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Ramparts. I think you started something much bigger than what you were.

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Okay, I’m back in the studio now, and I just pulled something out of storage. I’m gonna

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turn it on, and you see if you can guess what this is. [Machine whirring, clicking] That noise right

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there is so nostalgic to me. It’s the sound of the Apple IIe starting up. This wasn’t my

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computer. It was the family computer, right? I just inherited it. [Whirring] You hear that?

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This thing’s mad because I don't have a disc in the drive. It doesn't — see, here’s the thing;

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this is an Apple IIe, right? Even though it’s an Apple product, it does not resemble

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anything that you imagine an Apple product to resemble. This thing is a full computer but has

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no hard drive. It has no operating system at all. So, for anything to get working,

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you have to put a floppy disc in the disc drive. That’s like opening up an app, though, right?

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You can only have one app open on this computer at a time. It is ridiculous. So,

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I have to push this in, close this door, and then it’s still mad. [Whirs] It’s still trying to find

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the disc. Oh my gosh, hearing these noises invokes so many memories. When did circuitry

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stop humming and making noise? I miss that. These were the days when you didn’t just use a computer;

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you kind of danced with it. Getting things to work felt more like alchemy than anything. You

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might try something three times and it would work one out of three times even

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though you didn’t change anything. Manuals and books were impossible to find. So,

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you were on your own figuring out commands and settings without a tutorial. There was

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one sound in particular that when you heard it, it gave you a rush.

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It made you feel like this thing is capable of infinite possibilities. That

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sound was [dial tone] the dial tone. Hearing that noise from your computer felt like you

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had the whole world at your fingertips, a world where you could go anywhere and

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do anything. [Music] The dial tone was the sound of potential, pure potential.

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We're so hyper-connected these days that you don’t even realize that you're always online,

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but back in the eighties it was a big deal to go online, and it wasn’t like anything it is now.

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BBSs were popular then, which stands for bulletin board system, and it was often just some person

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running a computer out of their house, and if you call their house with a telephone which was

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connected to your computer, you could connect to their computer and read what it had on it.

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But it was way more complicated than that. Finding their phone number to dial was hard,

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to start with. Google wasn’t around yet to ask, hey, what phone number should I dial

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and what BBSs should I check out? So, you had to ask around in person, like to your friends

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and family. Maybe a local electronics shop might be able to help. Hey, do you know any good BBSs

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I should try? They might give you a few phone numbers. Then setting up your modem was a whole

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thing. You had to configure it for like, twenty minutes just to get it to work right. When you

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finally get it working and you dial the number, the line was busy. Of course, because any popular

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BBS would have all kinds of people trying to connect to it and see what’s there. So,

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you had to just keep dialing it again and again and again in hopes to get through eventually.

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When you finally got through, it felt like wizardry. The pixels on your screen would

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light up, showing you a portal into another world, and you'd get this sudden rush of excitement that

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you made a successful connection. You were in. Now it was time to look around and see

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what’s in there. BBSs might show you articles, like technical articles or political things.

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There might be programs to try, or there would just be messages from other users talking about

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their day. As you connected to these BBSs, you'd start to draw a map of the internet.

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You would take notes of all the places that you visited; their phone numbers, what they had,

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tips on connecting into it, your username that you used there. Often a BBS might lead you

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to another BBS, where it would say, if you like this place, you might also like this other place.

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Now you're starting to build a list of potential phone numbers that might work.

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The internet was rapidly changing, so a lot of phone numbers that you got were old phone numbers

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and they didn’t work anymore. They were for old BBSs that shut down or just stopped working. So,

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for a lot of people in the eighties, they really wanted to know more of what was out there. You

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could dial any phone number, and it may or may not have a computer connected to it. There was

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no official map or search engine back then to show you around the internet. The internet was

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very dark, and it was hard to navigate. Like, you have no idea how exhausting it

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was to try to do all this without a manual or a clear tutorial on how anything worked. But

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while it was cool and all to connect to a BBS, that’s just one other computer in the world.

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That’s just a computer you dialed into at someone’s house or something,

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which wasn’t connected to anything else. Surely there are bigger, more powerful computers in the

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world out there, but where? Surely there must be whole computer networks out there

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where you could bounce around from machine to machine. Yes, in fact, businesses, governments,

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and universities often had the biggest computers and the coolest networks to get into. So,

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what was the biggest computer network back then? [Music] It was the telephone system,

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or technically the PSTN, which stands for public switched telephone network. By the 1980s,

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the phone system was being more and more controlled by computers.

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Back in the early days, you had switchboard operators, actual humans that you told them

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what number you wanted to connect to, and they would connect that call for you by plugging

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in a wire. It wasn’t until the 1980s where electronic switches became so popular that

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there was no longer a need for human switchboard operators. These electronic phone switches were

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fascinating. They’d listen to the tones on the phone line to make their decisions;

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to connect people, to disconnect people, and of course, hackers — or I should say

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phreakers — were very curious what tones they could send the switches to make them do things.

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As technology progressed, those phone switches became computer-driven, which meant it was

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possible to get into a phone switch and see all the calls connected, disconnect them if you want,

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listen in on calls. Yeah, those computers were sometimes remotely accessible so that

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the phone company could get in there and configure and troubleshoot things, too. So,

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it meant that you could technically control the phones from a terminal on your computer in your

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house. It was just a matter of knowing what phone numbers to dial into and which computer

00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:11.680
to connect to. So, you can imagine the phone company did not want the phone number to these

00:19:11.680 --> 00:19:18.080
switches to be publicly known. At the same time, phreakers were desperate to find them.

00:19:18.080 --> 00:19:22.160
Because it was the largest network in the world, it became the coolest thing to hack

00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:27.040
back in the 1980s. They weren't just trying to figure out how to make free calls. They

00:19:27.040 --> 00:19:30.960
were also trying to figure out how the phone system worked in general. It was

00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:36.560
about being able to touch and interact with the largest network in the world. It was all about

00:19:36.560 --> 00:19:41.440
learning something new. There was one guy who was very curious how the phone network worked,

00:19:41.440 --> 00:19:47.280
and wanted to get in and learn more. His name was Paul. [Music] Paul Stira was a

00:19:47.280 --> 00:19:52.320
high-schooler living in Queens, New York. What Paul liked doing was war dialing.

00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:56.720
He’d just dial phone number after phone number to see if there was a computer on the other end

00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:01.120
that would pick up. But if you just dial random numbers, you're likely to get someone’s house.

00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:04.960
Someone would pick up the phone and say, hello? And then you'd hang up and try another number.

00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:08.960
But then someone gave him a tip. They said, hey, try calling higher numbers,

00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:14.720
like the last numbers in a block. Like, you know, phone numbers that end in 9999. Those

00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:18.560
numbers are often reserved by the telephone company themselves, so there’s a higher chance

00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:28.320
that they might be connected to a computer. So, he tried calling 555-9900, then 9901 and 9987,

00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:33.360
9955. He didn’t like doing things in sequential order. Eventually Paul found a few numbers that

00:20:33.360 --> 00:20:39.040
responded to his calls and had computer tones on the other end. This is what he was hunting for.

00:20:39.040 --> 00:20:44.880
A computer on the other end was answering his call. This fascinated him. So, he would use his

00:20:44.880 --> 00:20:49.920
computer to try dialing that phone number just to see what the computer was saying.

00:20:49.920 --> 00:20:56.320
So, he connected to it, and it said something; S. S. That’s it? One letter,

00:20:56.320 --> 00:21:00.960
the letter S? What does S even mean? He tried typing some commands, but he just kept getting

00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:07.440
the same response; S, S, S. Hm, that was weird. It seemed like anything he typed,

00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:12.880
he would just get an S back. Then he tried typing some numbers, but this time he got something

00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:20.400
different; W. W? This was all too obscure, and frustrated Paul. S or W is all he was getting

00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:24.240
from this computer? He started smashing all the keys to see if any of them worked,

00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:29.840
and nope. All of them either gave S or W back. Lame. Out of desperation, he picked up his phone,

00:21:29.840 --> 00:21:35.520
which was connected to his modem, and he just blew into it. Take that, computer!

00:21:35.520 --> 00:21:41.200
[Music] Then his computer lit up. Suddenly, a series of characters began to fill the screen.

00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:47.440
He was getting way more than S and W now. He tried new commands now, and whoa, suddenly he could talk

00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:52.960
to the computer on the other end of the line, and it would respond to him in code. Whoa, he

00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:59.760
got in! With the brief gust of hot air, Paul had reset and taken control of a machine that belonged

00:21:59.760 --> 00:22:07.040
to the phone company. He tried typing a command; log in. He had been on BBSs before and read about

00:22:07.040 --> 00:22:12.320
what commands that phone computers use, so he was just trying random ones. ‘Print’ got him access

00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:17.680
to useful files. ‘Show users’ returned a list of employees that he could impersonate to gain

00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:22.080
access to get more privileges on this network. He told his friend Eli about this computer.

00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:27.120
Eli thought, oh, you must have gotten into an SCCS, a Switching Control Center System,

00:22:27.120 --> 00:22:31.520
AKA the beating heart of the city’s telephone system. It appeared he was,

00:22:31.520 --> 00:22:35.920
in fact, in a telephone switch, and this was for the New York Telephone Company.

00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:39.440
This controlled calls and phone numbers. It was part of the inner workings of the

00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:44.320
phone company. He wanted to try something. Nothing big, just a little something just

00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:49.200
to prove this wasn’t a dream. So, he looked up his friend’s phone number, which was in there,

00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:54.480
and it showed which features his friend had. So, he gave his friend a new feature free of charge,

00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:58.720
three-way calling, and then logged out. This is where you could call two people at once.

00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:05.520
It was real fancy at the time, and cost extra. This was hacking at its finest in the 1980s.

00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:09.840
Discovering a computer all on your own by war-dialing — out of all the numbers in the world,

00:23:09.840 --> 00:23:14.720
you found one that works — figuring out a way to get into it, and then finding some

00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:21.040
useful commands, then to do a little something just to prove you were there? Oh man, how cool.

00:23:21.040 --> 00:23:26.560
Paul got a real high from this experience. If connecting to BBSs felt like wizardry,

00:23:26.560 --> 00:23:30.960
getting into a computer like this was on another level. It wasn’t just magic

00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:36.400
anymore. This was god powers. This was bending reality, creating from nothing,

00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:40.640
unlocking truths that were buried deep in the mysteries of the internet.

00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:47.360
This is what hackers lived for in the eighties. [Music] Ever since that Esquire article in 1971,

00:23:47.360 --> 00:23:52.080
people got more and more interested in phreaking, and that just grew and grew.

00:23:52.080 --> 00:23:58.000
By the way, even though Esquire popularized and romanticized blue boxes and phreaking,

00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:03.360
they never got in any trouble for doing that. In November of 1985,

00:24:03.360 --> 00:24:10.400
a new online magazine published their first issue. It was called Phrack, which starts with a PH. It’s

00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:17.360
a combination of ‘phreak’ and ‘hack’. Now, back in 1985, there weren't even web browsers yet,

00:24:17.360 --> 00:24:22.080
so Phrack didn’t have their own website to publish their e-zine, too. Instead,

00:24:22.080 --> 00:24:27.040
they published Issue #1 on a BBS and encouraged people to share it, spread it to other BBSs. So,

00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:32.720
it did. Any hacker BBS worth its salt back then had a copy of Phrack. Honestly,

00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:37.920
it was just a text document, no photos in it. Text files were king back then mainly because it was

00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:42.320
faster to send text over the internet, because images were really big and took forever to see.

00:24:42.320 --> 00:24:48.320
So, text files were just where it was at. Issue #1 of Phrack had some interesting articles. Like,

00:24:48.320 --> 00:24:52.320
well, there was one just how to make international calls. Not for free; just how to

00:24:52.320 --> 00:24:57.360
call internationally if you ever have to. It had a list of country codes and had to dial them. But it

00:24:57.360 --> 00:25:02.160
had some pranky stuff in there, too. Like, did you know you could call a phone company, state that

00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:05.840
you're someone else, and tell them ‘I no longer want service, and could you please terminate

00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:11.040
my number?’ That’s how you can get the phone company to disconnect someone else’s telephone.

00:25:11.040 --> 00:25:14.560
There’s stuff in there like how to use a PBX if you're ever on one, and there’s

00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:20.720
an article about how to pick locks, and an article on how to make acetylene blue bombs,

00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:25.600
basically saying put some rocks and Fun Snaps in a plastic bag, fill the plastic bag with acetylene,

00:25:25.600 --> 00:25:30.640
a highly flammable gas, throw it off a building, and when it hits the ground, the Snaps create a

00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:36.080
spark, and that explodes the balloon, making a loud noise and a big ball of fire. See,

00:25:36.080 --> 00:25:42.560
anarchy was pretty popular on BBSs back then. It was everywhere you looked; bomb-making tutorials,

00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:47.120
lock-picking techniques, shoplifting advice, how to bypass security systems,

00:25:47.120 --> 00:25:52.640
and other urban survival guides. I just ran a Twitter poll asking people if they

00:25:52.640 --> 00:25:57.600
ever went online when they were a kid and saw plans on how to make a flamethrower.

00:25:57.600 --> 00:26:01.680
Half my followers said, yes, they did see plans on how to make a flamethrower when

00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:07.200
they were a kid. A real popular book among teenagers then was The Anarchist Cookbook,

00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:11.120
which had schematics and diagrams on how to make bombs, explosives,

00:26:11.120 --> 00:26:17.200
and cause havoc. I was fifteen when I first saw it, and it spooked me a bit. This seemed

00:26:17.200 --> 00:26:22.480
like serious destruction. But I took a look at it again just now, and it looks like it

00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:27.920
was written by kids for kids. It’s not very detailed. Some of the ideas don’t work at all,

00:26:27.920 --> 00:26:33.200
and there’s no safety precautions to follow. I remember going into a bookstore when I was

00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:38.400
a kid. It was Walden Books, actually, in the mall. I was just walking through the bookstore, and one

00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:45.120
book caught my eye and it made me stop dead in my tracks. The title of the book was Steal This Book.

00:26:45.120 --> 00:26:52.320
[Music] It stared at me like a dare. Go ahead, steal me. I swear, I thought long and hard about

00:26:52.320 --> 00:26:57.520
it, but ultimately didn’t. I couldn’t ask my dad to buy it for me either, because it seemed

00:26:57.520 --> 00:27:01.760
like it was a book I wasn’t supposed to have. So, I just grabbed it and flipped through it,

00:27:01.760 --> 00:27:07.840
and it was wild, very anti-establishment, part survival guide, part political manifesto.

00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:13.040
It was encouraging me to steal, to rebel against capitalism. Crazy stuff was in it;

00:27:13.040 --> 00:27:17.760
how to hitchhike, how to dumpster dive, where to get free clothes, how to make smoke bombs

00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:24.320
and disrupt phone lines, how to run a pirate radio station. It was written in 1971. Again, it’s wild

00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:29.920
to me that Ramparts was raided for publishing an article on how to make a mute box, but half

00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:34.160
the kids in the seventies and eighties were finding schematics on how to make bombs online.

00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:37.040
A good percentage of them were actually trying to make them,

00:27:37.040 --> 00:27:43.280
which is even more wild. eBay has banned The Anarchist Cookbook now from being sold there,

00:27:43.280 --> 00:27:49.920
which — a book that practically half my followers have read as a teenager is now banned on eBay.

00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:55.520
I’m telling you, anarchy was in style in the eighties. There was a certain attitude that Steal

00:27:55.520 --> 00:27:59.920
This Book and The Anarchist Cookbook possessed, and that seemed to carry right on over into what

00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:05.440
the internet culture was like in the eighties. It was counter-culture, anti-establishment. There was

00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:10.720
distrust of authority. Smash the system. It wasn’t just a vibe. It was practically

00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:15.360
the first principles that a lot of people were operating at. The early internet wasn’t slick

00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:22.800
or sanitized. It was raw, lawless, DIY. Sharing of text files was like sharing of contraband.

00:28:22.800 --> 00:28:26.640
Whether you were reading articles on how to pick a lock or get a free phone call,

00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:31.280
on how to make a bomb, it all seemed to have some sort of cloak of secrecy. What you were

00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:35.920
doing was accessing forbidden information that they didn’t want you to see. The internet felt

00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:41.600
like a digital back alley where SysOps were gatekeepers to secret knowledge. [Music] It was

00:28:41.600 --> 00:28:47.760
punk rock at its core. It was cyber-anarchy. It was the idea that the system could be subverted,

00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:53.760
bent, and reprogrammed. It wasn’t just fun. It was freedom. These kids would take the shiny,

00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:59.280
polished world and peel it back and look into the guts and wires and bits and bytes that

00:28:59.280 --> 00:29:04.320
controlled it. They found themselves in control of it. They didn’t need to ask for permission.

00:29:04.320 --> 00:29:08.960
You scavenge parts to build computers. You cracked programs instead of buying them.

00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:13.840
It’s like the rules were suddenly optional. Obstacles were just challenges, and the world

00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:20.880
was incredibly fun for those who were curious of how it worked. A lot of these ideas were

00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:27.280
coming across my screen as a teenager, and that shaped me to who I am today. Yeah,

00:29:27.280 --> 00:29:33.520
there’s a schematic for how to build a flamethrower on my computer. Interesting.

00:29:33.520 --> 00:29:39.520
This stuff gave me an enormous amount of destructive power, and I had to learn what

00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:46.000
to do with that power. Did I make a flamethrower as a kid? Absolutely. It was just hairspray and

00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:51.760
a lighter, but it did spray fire. Did I make bombs? Absolutely. I’ve gotta say, I’m really

00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:56.160
lucky that I didn’t blow off a finger or set the whole house on fire, since that could have easily

00:29:56.160 --> 00:30:01.440
happened with all the things I was doing. The ethics of stealing would come up again and again.

00:30:01.440 --> 00:30:07.760
Stealing is wrong, but the phreakers of the 1980s had a different way of looking at things. To them,

00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:12.960
making a free phone call by hacking the system wasn’t theft. It was exploration. Here’s the

00:30:12.960 --> 00:30:17.520
logic; they’d place calls late at night when the phone lines weren't very busy. The infrastructure

00:30:17.520 --> 00:30:22.160
was already up and running whether they were using it or not. Their calls didn’t displace

00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:27.360
anyone else. It didn’t congest the network. It didn’t cause the phone company anything extra.

00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:33.280
So, if no one lost anything, was anything really taken? That was the ethical loophole that they

00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:38.640
lived in. If there’s no marginal cost, no harm, and no deprivation, then how could it be theft?

00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:43.440
Many phreakers genuinely believed this. Others didn’t care because, let’s be honest, a big part

00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:51.840
of the scene was driven by anti-authoritarianism, curiosity, and a taste for anarchy.

00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:58.080
Things really started to heat up in 1984. At that time, AT&T wasn’t just a phone company;

00:30:58.080 --> 00:31:05.600
it was the phone company, a telecommunications giant with a stranglehold on every call made

00:31:05.600 --> 00:31:13.600
across America. It was massive, monolithic, and seemingly unbreakable. To many in the underground,

00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.440
anarchists, hackers, phreakers, it was the very symbol of centralized control, the system

00:31:19.440 --> 00:31:26.640
incarnate. But in January of that year, the unthinkable happened. The US government stepped

00:31:26.640 --> 00:31:33.120
in and forced a breakup. AT&T was declared a monopoly too powerful for its own good, and under

00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:40.080
legal pressure, it was torn apart, shattered into eight separate entities, the so-called Baby Bells.

00:31:40.080 --> 00:31:47.120
For those watching from the digital shadows, it was seismic. The unbreakable had broken.

00:31:47.120 --> 00:31:50.320
[Music] A vast, unified network had splintered

00:31:50.320 --> 00:31:54.640
overnight, and with fragmentation came opportunity, new cracks in the system,

00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:59.680
new scenes to explore. The wires were alive again with people probing, learning,

00:31:59.680 --> 00:32:06.160
exploiting, looking for hidden stuff. It was the dawn of something wild, a freer, looser,

00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:12.160
more chaotic network, and the perfect playground for cyber-anarchists ready to test their limits,

00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:18.080
and Phrack was there watching it all. The digital magazine seemed squarely planted in the hacker,

00:32:18.080 --> 00:32:24.240
phreaker, and anarchy culture. The authors of the articles were kids in the scene, voices from the

00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:30.720
digital underground. Let me read a passage from Phrack. ‘During the summer of 1984, an idea was

00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:34.560
formulated that would ultimately change the face of the computer underground forever.

00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:38.960
This particular summer, a huge surge in interest in computer telecommunications placed an

00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:44.800
incredibly large number of new enthusiasts on the national computer scene. From out of this chaos

00:32:44.800 --> 00:32:50.880
came a need for learned instructors to help pass on their store of information to new throngs. The

00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:59.040
need was met by nine hackers who formed a group called the Legion of Doom.’ Now, the name sounds

00:32:59.040 --> 00:33:04.560
pretty menacing, Legion of Doom, or LoD for short. But really, the name comes from a comic book. The

00:33:04.560 --> 00:33:09.440
group of super villains in DC Comics is called the Legion of Doom. In fact, one of the guys who

00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:15.520
started the LoD hacking group went by the name Lex Luthor, which was the arch nemesis of Superman.

00:33:15.520 --> 00:33:20.400
Phiber Optik was one of the members of Legion of Doom, and that’s Phiber spelled with a PH. Here’s

00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:25.266
a clip of him talking at a convention in New York fifteen years ago explaining what it was.

00:33:25.266 --> 00:33:29.440
PHIBER OPTIK: LoD was one of the first organized hacker groups in a

00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:36.080
very disorganized computer underground. The main purpose of LoD initially was

00:33:36.080 --> 00:33:41.920
to take information primarily that was found trashing at Telco’s central offices and type

00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:47.520
it in and make it available in what were known as LoD tech journals, which were available

00:33:47.520 --> 00:33:54.000
online in text file sections of bulletin board systems, so-called elite bulletin board systems.

00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:58.720
JACK: Oh yeah, trashing was big back then. This is where you would go behind an office

00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:02.480
and look through their trash. They would look for phone numbers or computers or

00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:06.240
manuals on how to configure things, or any sensitive information that the company had

00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:10.640
thrown out. Phone companies were of particular interest to trash. Again,

00:34:10.640 --> 00:34:16.000
the ethics of stealing comes in. Is it stealing when you're taking it from someone’s trash can?

00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:21.240
The sixteenth episode of Dateline NBC actually interviewed one of the Legion of Doom members.

00:34:21.240 --> 00:34:22.720
JANE: Good evening. I’m Jane Pauley.

00:34:22.720 --> 00:34:27.840
STONE: And I’m Stone Phillips, and welcome to Dateline NBC. How do real hackers operate,

00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:30.360
and just what kind of damage can they do?

00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:34.520
JACK: It’s so weird to me that you could turn on the TV back then and learn what trashing was.

00:34:34.520 --> 00:34:38.960
STONE: Adam belonged to an elite hacker club called the Legion of

00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:44.000
Doom. One of the methods he used to obtain secret computer codes was to

00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:48.461
rummage through the trash at Bell South, the regional phone company in Atlanta.

00:34:48.461 --> 00:34:49.760
ADAM: Let’s see, back a few years ago,

00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:54.400
they weren't locked. You could just slide the doors open, reach in, grab a bag, and leave.

00:34:54.400 --> 00:34:57.760
JACK: [Music] Now, one thing that was worth its weight in gold to these hackers were

00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:02.640
simply manuals for how computers worked. Again, there was no Google to search for how something

00:35:02.640 --> 00:35:07.520
worked. Again, there were no browsers even invented yet. There was no YouTube to walk

00:35:07.520 --> 00:35:12.480
you through a tutorial on how to use a computer or an application. If you got into a computer that

00:35:12.480 --> 00:35:19.120
was giving you funky messages back, you probably had no idea how to operate it. A simple manual on

00:35:19.120 --> 00:35:25.360
how to use that computer would have been amazing, but it was extremely rare. You had no idea what

00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:30.000
commands to type on it. The phone company did have manuals to these computers — obviously

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.000
someone had to know how to use them — but they were very well-guarded documents.

00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:37.520
They did not want to share it, because if the wrong person got the manual,

00:35:37.520 --> 00:35:41.840
it meant they could do anything they wanted in the telephone network. Keep in mind,

00:35:41.840 --> 00:35:48.000
passwords were not always mandatory back then. Security was often through obscurity, actually.

00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:52.320
Like, hide your computer by not sharing the phone number with anyone, and don’t show anybody how

00:35:52.320 --> 00:35:56.800
to use it who isn't authorized. So, they often relied on nobody knowing what the phone number

00:35:56.800 --> 00:36:01.760
was and nobody knowing how to use it even if they did dial it. The word ‘cybersecurity’ didn’t show

00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:07.440
up until 1983. We're talking about the land of computers before cybersecurity was even a thing.

00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:13.360
What a magical time that was, because honestly, the whole internet had doors wide open anywhere

00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:17.600
you looked. It’s just that the doors were hidden, and it was up to you to find them.

00:36:17.600 --> 00:36:20.560
So, members of the Legion of Doom would go searching through trash

00:36:20.560 --> 00:36:23.520
cans behind telephone companies, and when they found something,

00:36:23.520 --> 00:36:28.800
they would type it up and share it on their LoD BBS for others to see. In this way,

00:36:28.800 --> 00:36:33.200
they started amassing all kinds of random manuals and documentation that the phone company was

00:36:33.200 --> 00:36:38.640
throwing out. I want to stress so many of these articles didn’t show you how to hack anything.

00:36:38.640 --> 00:36:43.040
It simply was a manual that the manufacturer gave out for how to use their own computers.

00:36:43.040 --> 00:36:49.680
Legion of Doom quickly became the most respected, most desirable BBS in the entire hacking scene,

00:36:49.680 --> 00:36:54.960
trafficking in all kinds of precious information about telephone and computer systems. It was the

00:36:54.960 --> 00:37:07.840
place where any hacker worth their salt wanted to be. Okay, so, Ronald Reagan comes into our story

00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:13.024
here, president of the United States at the time. He went to the movies, and he saw this.

00:37:13.024 --> 00:37:17.520
DAVID: [Typing] People sometimes make mistakes.

00:37:17.520 --> 00:37:19.320
COMPUTER: Yes, they do.

00:37:19.320 --> 00:37:20.720
JENNIFER: How can it talk?

00:37:20.720 --> 00:37:24.400
DAVID: It’s not a real voice. This box just interprets signals

00:37:24.400 --> 00:37:26.000
from the computer and turns them into sound.

00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:28.960
COMPUTER: Shall we play a game?

00:37:28.960 --> 00:37:30.460
DAVID: Oh.

00:37:30.460 --> 00:37:32.120
JENNIFER: I think it missed him.

00:37:32.120 --> 00:37:42.320
DAVID: Yeah, weird, isn't it? [Typing] Love to. How about global thermo-nuclear war?

00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:47.904
COMPUTER: Wouldn’t you prefer a good game of chess?

00:37:47.904 --> 00:37:54.800
DAVID: [Typing] Later. Let’s play global thermo-nuclear war.

00:37:54.800 --> 00:37:56.560
COMPUTER: Fine.

00:37:56.560 --> 00:38:00.040
DAVID: Alright. Wow.

00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:05.280
JACK: That’s the 1983 movie WarGames. It’s a film about a kid who got into a computer

00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:08.880
thinking he was just playing a video game, but it turned out to be a military computer,

00:38:08.880 --> 00:38:12.480
and it triggered a bunch of real alerts that — the government thought they were under attack,

00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:19.040
and all-out war was breaking out. Well, the story goes President Reagan saw it and asked around, is

00:38:19.040 --> 00:38:24.240
that possible that that could happen to us? They thought about it and came back to him and said,

00:38:24.240 --> 00:38:30.400
yes, a kid could trigger a war if he got into the wrong computer. Then Reagan said, well,

00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:35.440
what law is there to stop someone from doing that? And there wasn’t one. There was no law against

00:38:35.440 --> 00:38:41.520
hacking into computers in the 1980s. Technology always moves faster than the government.

00:38:41.520 --> 00:38:46.000
If you broke into a computer, looked around, downloaded things, changed data on there,

00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:50.400
there was no law saying that what you were doing was illegal. It was a paradise for hackers to

00:38:50.400 --> 00:38:55.440
just roam free and explore without worry. Can you imagine such a time and place? [Music] So,

00:38:55.440 --> 00:38:59.840
Reagan’s like, well, we can't have that. On October 12th, 1984,

00:38:59.840 --> 00:39:04.960
US Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, or CCCA. It was

00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:09.280
a classic tough-on-crime bill. It upped the penalties for growing and selling marijuana,

00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:14.320
it expanded judges’ powers to deny bail to defendants, and it created for the first

00:39:14.320 --> 00:39:21.040
time ever a computer crime law. The police were excited to use this law to catch ‘em some hackers.

00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:25.920
I think honestly WarGames and Hollywood scared the government so bad that they thought hackers

00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:30.800
were capable of anything and they were dangerous thugs, terrorists, causing chaos and destruction

00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:35.760
on the internet. They were the next big threat to America, and the feds wanted to get ahead of this

00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:42.560
and stop it. The police started their campaign with sting boards, BBSs designed to look like

00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:49.120
a hacker BBS, but it was secretly operated by the cops. The first ones were created in 1985.

00:39:49.120 --> 00:39:53.680
There was the Underground Tunnel, and it was operated out of Austin, Texas. It was run by

00:39:53.680 --> 00:39:59.760
a hacker calling himself Pluto, but really it was just a police sergeant. There was another BBS set

00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:04.560
up by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona called The Phone Company. It

00:40:04.560 --> 00:40:09.200
sounded a little like ‘on the internet, no one knows you're a dog’ kind of operation.

00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:13.840
But according to Bruce Sterling, the guy who wrote the book The Hacker Crackdown, these sting boards

00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:18.560
actually worked, at least sometimes. Most hackers at the time were just young men who barely knew

00:40:18.560 --> 00:40:23.040
how to type twenty words per minute, and maybe they watched the movie WarGames themselves,

00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:27.920
and they were curious on how to hack. So, they’d float into a cool-sounding BBS like Underground

00:40:27.920 --> 00:40:33.040
Tunnel. It seemed legit and allowed them in, so they’d look around and then they’d slip up

00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:39.040
and get in trouble, maybe by trying to buy or sell something stolen like a credit card. But

00:40:39.040 --> 00:40:44.000
all they ever saw were noobs doing dumb things, like people saying they can hack into something,

00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:49.280
but then it’s all talk, and police had no evidence to prove that they actually were dangerous.

00:40:49.280 --> 00:40:55.600
As far as I know, the sting boards did not result in any actual arrests. I really think it’s because

00:40:55.600 --> 00:41:00.320
most of the phreakers and hackers back then weren't really doing anything that bad. There

00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:04.960
was something I came across which I think really emphasizes the lightheartedness of it all. Here,

00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:09.520
let me show you. Back in the early nineties, there was a radio program called This American

00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:14.640
Life. They interviewed some teenage hackers at the time, and they found this one kid who would

00:41:14.640 --> 00:41:19.760
try to steal credit cards from people and then use that to buy things for himself. It sounds

00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:24.800
bad when I say it, but listen to how this kid describes how he stole someone’s credit card.

00:41:24.800 --> 00:41:28.080
CARDER: Basically, the way it works is this. You call up somebody. You say,

00:41:28.080 --> 00:41:32.880
this is the AT&T operator. I have a priority collect call for so-and-so’s

00:41:32.880 --> 00:41:37.200
name. You have to — the whole point is you have to sound like you're not calling

00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:41.040
somebody up with the intention of getting them — you have to sound like you've been

00:41:41.040 --> 00:41:45.520
sitting in this chair for ten hours and you want to go home. So, you gotta go,

00:41:45.520 --> 00:41:50.240
this is the AT&T operator. I have a collect call from Paul. Will you accept charges, sir?

00:41:50.240 --> 00:41:54.160
Uh, yeah, I’ll accept charges. Alright, hold on one second. You tap on the keyboard. You say,

00:41:54.160 --> 00:41:57.280
I’m sorry, you seem to have a restriction on your phone line. You can't accept collect

00:41:57.280 --> 00:42:01.360
calls to this line. Then they yell and they go, what do you mean I can't accept collect calls

00:42:01.360 --> 00:42:05.440
to my line? I’ve been getting collect calls to this line for twenty years. Then you gotta go,

00:42:05.440 --> 00:42:08.720
sir, there’s nothing I can do about it. My computer says you can't receive a collect

00:42:08.720 --> 00:42:12.560
call on this line. Would you like to try an alternate billing method? In which case

00:42:12.560 --> 00:42:15.080
they’ll proceed to either give you a calling card or a major credit card.

00:42:15.080 --> 00:42:18.480
JACK: But the thing was, despite this clever, little plan of theirs,

00:42:18.480 --> 00:42:23.800
they were wildly unsuccessful at it. I mean, listen to what Ira Glass thinks of these kids.

00:42:23.800 --> 00:42:30.800
IRA: But K-Rad, Mr. Warez, and Fred were involved in very low-level types of crimes. All of them

00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:36.640
involved computers. They pirated software. They scammed free CD-ROM games. They cheated

00:42:36.640 --> 00:42:42.560
one of the big online computer services out of a few hundred dollars and online time. Oh no,

00:42:42.560 --> 00:42:47.960
they didn’t steal very much, and they didn’t steal very effectively, but they did try to steal.

00:42:47.960 --> 00:42:53.200
JACK: He doesn't think much of these kids, does he? He’s not scared or intimidated by these crazy

00:42:53.200 --> 00:42:59.360
hackers at all. He seems to understand just how low level of a crime this whole thing is,

00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:03.520
and maybe doesn't even believe that they've done any of this. Oh, and it’s kind of funny;

00:43:03.520 --> 00:43:09.920
I’ve been accused of being Ira Glass a lot, actually. I’m not Ira, but This American

00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:14.800
Life was a huge inspiration to me. I adore Ira Glass, even met him once. So, I actually have

00:43:14.800 --> 00:43:20.480
a picture with me and Ira, and he’s kind of a hero of mine. But it’s wild. In this episode,

00:43:20.480 --> 00:43:24.560
Ira Glass follows these three hackers into a hacker convention in New York City.

00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:29.760
HACKER1: Yeah, I just really want to stress that, you know, we're not that — in other ways we're not

00:43:29.760 --> 00:43:34.800
bad people and we don’t go around trying to screw off people in any way we can, 'cause we're not at

00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:47.200
all. You know, I do social work, I tutored kids, I do a lot of stuff which isn't necessarily evil and

00:43:47.200 --> 00:43:53.120
more good. But sometimes it’s just like — I don't know, man. I like doing it. I can't explain it.

00:43:53.120 --> 00:43:56.640
IRA: Well, talk about that part of it. What is the thrill of doing it?

00:43:56.640 --> 00:44:01.520
HACKER1: That’s the first — that was the reason I started carding, was the reason. It was the thrill

00:44:01.520 --> 00:44:07.840
of going — when you went in there, it was real — it was like Mission Impossible. We went in;

00:44:07.840 --> 00:44:12.000
we had gloves on and stuff, and we picked it up. We had like — we had it all worked out.

00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:18.800
We were connected. We had lookouts and stuff. It’s a lot of fun. It’s like,

00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:24.840
you're doing stuff that is not exactly legal and — not legal at all, and it’s fun.

00:44:24.840 --> 00:44:29.920
IRA: We took the elevators up to the floor where the hackers convention was

00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:35.120
taking place. K-Rad said that real hackers do not use their skills like this. They do

00:44:35.120 --> 00:44:40.080
not use their skills for personal gain. They don’t do carding. They don’t steal.

00:44:40.080 --> 00:44:44.560
The whole idea of computer hacking is that — for these guys, anyway, is that it’s a kind

00:44:44.560 --> 00:44:51.120
of pure Zen pursuit. It’s an ends in itself. You break into the computer for its own sake and to

00:44:51.120 --> 00:44:57.040
look around and for the knowledge of everyone, especially you. We stood in the hallway. People

00:44:57.040 --> 00:45:04.640
streamed by. We tried to move to a corner where we would not be overheard, and K-Rad said actually

00:45:04.640 --> 00:45:09.920
that they had never really talked about their illegal activities this much before with anyone.

00:45:09.920 --> 00:45:12.880
K-RAD: The most thing I’m worried about is I’m actually starting for

00:45:12.880 --> 00:45:15.760
the first time to say this all out loud, everything I’ve done,

00:45:15.760 --> 00:45:20.720
and suddenly it doesn't sound as hacker-much anymore, and I’ve known that ever since I

00:45:20.720 --> 00:45:25.040
moved into — and doing maybe some credit card thing. That's why I’m in fact even

00:45:25.040 --> 00:45:28.880
considering giving up on doing all the carding and stuff like that, which is — seriously, I am.

00:45:28.880 --> 00:45:30.480
HACKER2: My worst fear is that I’m gonna end up going

00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:32.880
to hell for doing this, and that’s my worst fear.

00:45:32.880 --> 00:45:34.880
IRA: Do you believe in hell?

00:45:34.880 --> 00:45:37.200
HACKER2: Yeah, I do.

00:45:37.200 --> 00:45:41.360
IRA: And you think you can go to hell for getting a computer on somebody else’s credit card?

00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:45.120
HACKER2: I don't know, I hope not. I really hope not.

00:45:45.120 --> 00:45:51.280
JACK: See, that’s the kind of kids that the police were creating laws for,

00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:56.000
they were setting up sting boards for. The Secret Service was investigating kids like

00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:02.080
this because they thought they were dangerous criminal terrorists. Did they sound like

00:46:02.080 --> 00:46:07.600
dangerous criminal terrorists to you? Federal authorities were putting a ton of effort and

00:46:07.600 --> 00:46:13.600
time and resources into stopping these kind of kids. It just seems disproportionate to me. I

00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:18.560
was just reading the book Hacker Crackdown today, and I read this part where lawmakers in Arizona,

00:46:18.560 --> 00:46:22.480
the people who were trying to crack down on hackers, were scared to leave their

00:46:22.480 --> 00:46:28.480
office at night because they park their car in a bad area of downtown Phoenix.

00:46:28.480 --> 00:46:33.440
They said people would rob their cars, break into windows, and threaten them if they went to their

00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:39.200
cars too late. Yet, these lawmakers seem to ignore the crime going on in their own parking lot and

00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:44.320
focused on kids like this who often weren't even stealing anything at all, just poking their nose

00:46:44.320 --> 00:46:49.760
into the phone company’s computers just to look around, to do something to prove they got in. I

00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:55.200
mean, listen to what Adam says, a member of the Legion of Doom, when questioned on Dateline NBC.

00:46:55.200 --> 00:47:00.800
ADAM: At Bell South, we were able to get into all manner of computers,

00:47:00.800 --> 00:47:02.000
the phone switches themselves.

00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:06.800
HOST1: In essence, you got to where you could have turned off everybody’s phones in Georgia.

00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:10.440
ADAM: Just about any one of a couple dozen of us could have done that.

00:47:10.440 --> 00:47:14.720
HOST1: For more than a year, Adam and his friends had free access to

00:47:14.720 --> 00:47:19.360
the inner workings of twelve Bell South computer systems. [To Adam] They say you

00:47:19.360 --> 00:47:23.830
could have crashed or broken the 911 system here.

00:47:23.830 --> 00:47:25.440
ADAM: The operative word for me is ‘could have’.

00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:27.120
HOST1: You could have done that?

00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:32.560
ADAM: Yes. I could go out and shoot people. You can.

00:47:32.560 --> 00:47:36.320
JACK: See, that’s one of the big things I see again and again in this story,

00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:42.080
breaking in versus causing harm. Legion of Doom seemed to love the challenge of getting in,

00:47:42.080 --> 00:47:47.680
but rarely did much once they did get in. Just getting in was fun enough. There was no need to

00:47:47.680 --> 00:47:53.680
cause damage. That wasn’t their goal. It wasn’t what they did. They just liked finding ways in.

00:47:53.680 --> 00:47:58.320
But the more Legion of Doom got access to, the more the police got more worried that

00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:03.280
they would take down the whole internet or the phone system or something. Maybe in some

00:48:03.280 --> 00:48:06.960
way I could see why the police were worried, because of all this anarchy rhetoric online

00:48:06.960 --> 00:48:10.800
at the time. All this talk about bomb-making and stealing and tearing down the government

00:48:10.800 --> 00:48:16.880
and smashing the system might have caused the police to worry even more than they needed to.

00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:23.760
At times it did feel like the internet was forming some kind of army to cause chaos. But a lot of

00:48:23.760 --> 00:48:30.320
hackers and phreakers had no intention of causing chaos. [Music] The police didn’t have a very keen

00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:35.120
eye when it came to trying to catch hackers. They didn’t understand this culture at all. They

00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:38.880
accused a lot of people of being part of Legion of Doom even when they had nothing to do with

00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:45.280
LoD. LoD was trying to be pretty secretive. To get into their BBS, you had to be on the allow list,

00:48:45.280 --> 00:48:49.600
which meant the police couldn't get in to see what was going on there. That was a double-edged sword.

00:48:49.600 --> 00:48:54.960
The more notorious that LoD became, it meant the more interested that the police became in them.

00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:59.840
But if you did happen to get the password to get into the LoD BBS, you'd see technical journals

00:48:59.840 --> 00:49:04.640
describing telecommunications and computer systems in a remarkable level of detail.

00:49:04.640 --> 00:49:09.440
Just looking at the table of contents of one of their now-leaked documents, I see Part 3:

00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:16.000
Step-By-Step Switching System Nodes. Part 4: A Guide to the PrimeOS Operating System. Part 5:

00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:20.880
Identifying and Defeating Physical Security Intrusion Detection Systems, Part 2: The Exterior.

00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:26.640
That last one is written by the LoD founder, Lex Luthor. Lex Luthor’s post, despite it being Part

00:49:26.640 --> 00:49:33.600
2, is still 5,200 words long. This kind of insider knowledge and exclusivity was enough to earn LoD

00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:38.400
plenty of respect, but they also had information that they refused to publish even to their

00:49:38.400 --> 00:49:43.280
private board because it was too sensitive. Even members were limited to how much they could see.

00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:47.120
Like, there was a special section on the board called The Fifth Amendment, which had a document

00:49:47.120 --> 00:49:54.480
describing in detail how to break into PBX phone systems developed by the Rome Corporation. A PBX

00:49:54.480 --> 00:49:58.880
is a device used to make phone calls typically operating internally in the phone network,

00:49:58.880 --> 00:50:04.000
but sometimes in large businesses who have a lot of phone lines. Someone at LoD got the manual for

00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:10.720
this PBX and read through it, and in there they learned that phone technicians can use a PBX to

00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:17.280
listen in on phone calls to perform maintenance and troubleshoot. Built into the PBX was a way to

00:50:17.280 --> 00:50:23.600
spy on calls. Because LoD knew this, they could if they wanted spy on phone calls,

00:50:23.600 --> 00:50:28.320
too. They could listen in on someone else’s call. That was one of the documents posted

00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:33.680
on their Fifth Amendment BBS, which members were only allowed to read but never copy.

00:50:33.680 --> 00:50:38.146
Here’s Phiber Optik, one of the members of LoD, talking about it at the Hope Conference.

00:50:38.146 --> 00:50:43.440
PHIBER OPTIK: I want to take a few moments to rewind a little bit and speak on behalf of

00:50:43.440 --> 00:50:50.160
our rules that we live by in our community long before the FBI and Secret Service succeeded in

00:50:50.160 --> 00:50:57.840
infiltrating our community. What I will say is this, is that we’ve always spoken of the quest

00:50:57.840 --> 00:51:05.120
for knowledge as being most important in our pursuits, that this was always a noble cause,

00:51:05.120 --> 00:51:12.080
that the destruction of systems, crashing systems, was always something that we avoided doing at all

00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:20.800
costs. Whether by accident or as a joke, it was something that was always frowned upon.

00:51:20.800 --> 00:51:27.840
The fact that information about technology should be freely available was something that we always

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:34.640
held to be of great importance. So, we always frowned upon companies who charged money for

00:51:34.640 --> 00:51:40.320
technical documentation and information about operating systems, which was very hard to find

00:51:40.320 --> 00:51:47.920
in the 1980s, for example, which is why trashing and things of that nature were so popular, was — a

00:51:47.920 --> 00:51:53.680
lot of the times was to find manuals on how to use the systems that we were getting access to.

00:51:53.680 --> 00:51:59.040
JACK: I think that was where the heart of it all was, the belief that information should

00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:06.000
be free. [Music] Not stolen, not sold. Free. It was less about exposing secrets and more

00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:12.640
about liberating knowledge that was locked behind corporate firewalls or buried in obscure systems.

00:52:12.640 --> 00:52:17.680
Hackers weren't trying to destroy anything. They were trying to understand it, document it,

00:52:17.680 --> 00:52:23.440
and share it. Phone manuals, switchboard maps, internal memos, obscure technical how-to’s,

00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:28.320
all of it was fuel for their curiosity. Publishing that information wasn’t just

00:52:28.320 --> 00:52:32.000
rebellion; it was a public service. It was about leveling the playing field,

00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:36.720
about making the closed systems of power readable to anyone with a terminal who was

00:52:36.720 --> 00:52:43.120
willing to learn. For many, that was the real prize. Not money, not chaos. Access.

00:52:43.120 --> 00:52:47.920
The idea that no system should be so sacred that it couldn't be understood,

00:52:47.920 --> 00:52:54.160
that knowledge wasn’t a crime, that documentation wasn’t dangerous, that teaching others how things

00:52:54.160 --> 00:53:01.520
worked wasn’t subversion. That was empowerment. Again, let me quote from Phrack Magazine. ‘LoD

00:53:01.520 --> 00:53:05.440
members may have entered into systems numbering in the tens of thousands. They may have peeped

00:53:05.440 --> 00:53:09.600
into credit histories. They may have monitored telephone calls. They may have snooped into files

00:53:09.600 --> 00:53:14.480
and buffered interesting texts. They may still have total control over entire computer networks,

00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:19.040
but what damage have they done? None, with the exception of the unpaid use

00:53:19.040 --> 00:53:25.440
of CPU time and network access charges. What personal gains have any members made? None.’

00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:29.760
They were curious teens testing the limits of what was possible. They weren't supposed to be

00:53:29.760 --> 00:53:35.040
able to get into the Telco and listen in on phone calls, but they could, and that made it feel like

00:53:35.040 --> 00:53:40.560
what they were doing was impossible, and that brought a great sense of satisfaction on its own.

00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:45.680
But the police were convinced they were evil anarchist super villains. I mean, Legion of Doom

00:53:45.680 --> 00:53:50.800
is a group of super villains in the comic books, right? I was talking with a friend the other day,

00:53:50.800 --> 00:53:56.560
and he said that the more menacing a hacker group name sounds, the likely more innocent that they

00:53:56.560 --> 00:54:01.280
are, and the more innocent the name is, the more dangerous it probably is. Like, Legion of Doom

00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:08.000
sounds dangerous, and Lizard Squad sounds pretty silly, yet it’s really the other way around.

00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:12.160
[Music] The sting boards caught some of the noobs who wanted to be in LoD,

00:54:12.160 --> 00:54:17.280
but the police really wanted to stop the core members of Legion of Doom. There was one hacker

00:54:17.280 --> 00:54:23.280
named Wasp who started crashing computers at Bellcore. That’s the telecommunications research

00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:28.960
and development arm of the Bell Telephone Company. He was just going in smashing up the place,

00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:34.880
taking things down, just causing havoc in the phone company. Long-time Legion of Doom member

00:54:34.880 --> 00:54:39.840
named Ctrl C saw this and was like, no, no, no, that’s not right. We don’t crash systems. You're

00:54:39.840 --> 00:54:45.920
gonna give hackers a bad name. This guy, Ctrl C, he has his own storied history with Bell.

00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:49.360
He used to do trashing runs behind the company’s branch in Michigan,

00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:52.640
and he learned what documents they would toss behind, and he learned enough that

00:54:52.640 --> 00:54:57.440
way to learn how to hack in and give himself free long-distance calling whenever he wanted,

00:54:57.440 --> 00:55:01.840
mostly so he could connect to BBSs around the country without having to pay long-distance fees.

00:55:01.840 --> 00:55:07.600
But Michigan Bell caught Ctrl C in 1987, and they found out that this big, bad hacker was

00:55:07.600 --> 00:55:11.680
actually a pretty likeable, harmless kid. He definitely didn’t have any money to pay

00:55:11.680 --> 00:55:15.520
back all those long-distance connections, and arresting him wasn’t worth their time,

00:55:15.520 --> 00:55:21.760
so they turned him into a kinda local mascot. Posters went up with Ctrl C’s face on them around

00:55:21.760 --> 00:55:27.520
Michigan Bell’s offices, warning employees to shred their trash. He actually signed the posters.

00:55:27.520 --> 00:55:32.640
Even better, he got on their payroll to help them secure their phone company better,

00:55:32.640 --> 00:55:37.920
all while he was still in Legion of Doom. This wasn’t as uncommon as you'd think, too,

00:55:37.920 --> 00:55:42.720
and in this case it ended up benefiting everyone. So, when this Wasp guy came in

00:55:42.720 --> 00:55:49.200
crashing around at Bellcore, breaking things, Ctrl C recruited some of his LoD colleagues,

00:55:49.200 --> 00:55:53.600
which included people from Georgia like the Prophet, Leftist, and Urvile. Together,

00:55:53.600 --> 00:55:59.280
the LoD members helped Bellcore’s security team lure Wasp into a honey pot, which is a

00:55:59.280 --> 00:56:03.520
machine used to log a bunch of activity once someone connects to it, and Wasp was caught,

00:56:03.520 --> 00:56:08.160
and LoD came out feeling good about it. Don’t go crashing systems or LoD will come after you, and

00:56:08.160 --> 00:56:15.360
you don't want a hacker group coming after you. Of course, the cops didn’t focus on that side of LoD.

00:56:15.360 --> 00:56:20.640
They thought they knew LoD, and they stuck to their preconceptions that hackers are troubled

00:56:20.640 --> 00:56:25.520
criminals. In fact, the investigation got bigger. The Secret Service started getting involved. I

00:56:25.520 --> 00:56:29.840
think the FBI starts getting in there since hackers are getting free long-distance calls,

00:56:29.840 --> 00:56:36.000
and this makes it a federal crime. Let me read to you a passage from The Hacker Crackdown,

00:56:36.000 --> 00:56:40.880
Bruce Sterling’s book. ‘As early as 1986, the police were under the vague impression

00:56:40.880 --> 00:56:46.960
that everyone in the underground was Legion of Doom. LoD was never that large, but LoD

00:56:46.960 --> 00:56:52.080
got tremendous press, especially in Phrack, which at times read like a LoD fan magazine,

00:56:52.080 --> 00:56:55.520
and Phrack was everywhere, especially in the offices of Telco’s security.

00:56:55.520 --> 00:57:01.760
You couldn't get busted as a phone phreak, a hacker, or even a lousy codes kid or warez dude

00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:07.840
without the cops asking if you were a member of LoD.’ LoD complained about this on Phrack.

00:57:07.840 --> 00:57:11.520
The Legion of Doom has been called everything from organized crime to a communist threat to

00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:15.520
national security to an international conspiracy of computer terrorists bent on destroying the

00:57:15.520 --> 00:57:20.240
nation’s 911 service. Nothing comes closer to the truth than bored adolescents with too

00:57:20.240 --> 00:57:26.240
much spare time. Now, despite the almost total lack of cybersecurity in a lot of systems then,

00:57:26.240 --> 00:57:30.080
there were hacker conferences going on. The oldest-running hacker conference is

00:57:30.080 --> 00:57:35.040
Summercon. It started in the eighties by Phrack Magazine. The feds thought, well,

00:57:35.040 --> 00:57:39.360
if we want to catch a hacker, Summercon is the place to be. It’s swarming with hackers.

00:57:39.360 --> 00:57:46.720
[Music] So, in 1988, the Secret Service went to Summercon in St. Louis to try to find hackers

00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:50.960
committing crimes. Now, if the Secret Service shows up to a hacker conference with their

00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:55.840
earpieces and nice suits, they’ll stick out like a sore thumb, so they needed a disguise,

00:57:55.840 --> 00:58:01.280
but not just a disguise; someone to pose as a hacker themselves, an insider. So they got

00:58:01.280 --> 00:58:06.160
a mole, someone who looked and talked like a hacker. They even gave their mole a nickname,

00:58:06.160 --> 00:58:12.000
Dictator. Dictator and the Secret Service went to St. Louis and got a hotel room right next

00:58:12.000 --> 00:58:16.080
to the conference. It was your classic sting operation. The Secret Service set

00:58:16.080 --> 00:58:21.200
up in the hotel room right next to Dictator’s room, and then drilled holes in the walls of

00:58:21.200 --> 00:58:25.680
the hotel room so they could put cameras up and one-way mirrors and microphones.

00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:32.400
They had full surveillance of Dictator’s room. So, then Dictator goes into Summercon — hey, fellow

00:58:32.400 --> 00:58:37.680
hackers — and meets some dudes at the conference and invites them back to his room for a hang-out

00:58:37.680 --> 00:58:42.720
sort of party thing and stuff. The Secret Service got all excited when they saw hackers filling the

00:58:42.720 --> 00:58:48.880
hotel room. They watched intently, excited to catch a hacker in the act. So, they sat and

00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:56.320
watched, ears perked, equipment on. But they were disappointed. It was just a bunch of nerds hanging

00:58:56.320 --> 00:59:00.000
out talking nerdy, like how frustrated they get when someone picks up a phone in their house

00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.600
and disconnects them from the internet, or they were comparing modem speeds. It was a big waste

00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:16.640
of time. But then they do witness a crime. One of the hackers pulls out a can of beer and drinks it.

00:59:16.640 --> 00:59:23.360
Oh no, he happened to be under the legal drinking age. That was the only crime that the Secret

00:59:23.360 --> 00:59:33.440
Service saw at Summercon in 1988. These curious and bored teenagers involved with LoD stayed

00:59:33.440 --> 00:59:38.560
out of trouble for the most part. They didn’t think being a hacker was bad or illegal at all.

00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:44.320
If we back up a bit, the word ‘hacker’ was coined by the kids at MIT’s Model Railroad Club. To them,

00:59:44.320 --> 00:59:50.880
a hack was simply a playful or clever solution to a technical problem. The computer hackers of

00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:56.560
the eighties had their own idea of what a hacker was, and it was never criminal. Here’s some people

00:59:56.560 --> 01:00:01.280
at a hacker camp in the 1980’s explaining what they think the word ‘hacker’ means.

01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:06.400
CAMPER: A hacker is just a person who hacks away at the computer keyboard until the program

01:00:06.400 --> 01:00:11.520
works. Now, a cracker on the other hand is almost the same thing. He just hacks away

01:00:11.520 --> 01:00:15.720
at that keyboard but until he breaks into, cracks the system security on a computer.

01:00:15.720 --> 01:00:19.840
CAMPER2: A hacker never finishes a program. A hacker will get to a

01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:23.040
point where a program does something — they maybe take a deep breath and say,

01:00:23.040 --> 01:00:28.240
how can I make it do this? How can I make it do that? It’ll just keep working. The hacker

01:00:28.240 --> 01:00:32.640
often will show up with a computer until he collapses at the keyboard or something.

01:00:32.640 --> 01:00:36.640
STEVE: They do not have so much the normal friends to distract them,

01:00:36.640 --> 01:00:40.800
other activities to go to. They don’t generally have girlfriends, anything that’s gonna need a

01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:44.840
large attachment, commitment of their time. The computer is it and only it.

01:00:44.840 --> 01:00:51.360
JACK: That last voice was Steve Wozniak, who we can easily say was one of the greatest hackers of

01:00:51.360 --> 01:00:56.640
all time for creating Apple computers. [Music] LoD kept out of trouble for the most part,

01:00:56.640 --> 01:01:01.600
even when they broke into newer and bigger networks, but this wasn’t going to last forever.

01:01:01.600 --> 01:01:08.960
This was going to be the last time that hackers got to enjoy free, un-scrutinized, harmless fun.

01:01:08.960 --> 01:01:15.600
On October 16th, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law an amendment to the CCCA, that

01:01:15.600 --> 01:01:21.760
computer crime law I talked about earlier. The amendment was called The Computer Fraud and Abuse

01:01:21.760 --> 01:01:28.800
Act, or CFAA, and this was legendary. This one was important. You see, the Comprehensive Crime

01:01:28.800 --> 01:01:34.640
Control Act, the CCCA, from 1984 only defined a very narrow range of illegal computer crimes.

01:01:34.640 --> 01:01:39.600
It banned using computers to try to obtain national secrets or financial records or hack

01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:45.840
into government computers in general, and that was about the gist of it. The CFAA starts out with a

01:01:45.840 --> 01:01:53.120
whopper of a statement saying it’s illegal to access a computer without authorization.

01:01:53.120 --> 01:02:00.720
Wow. But wait, it goes on. It also says it’s illegal to exceed authorized access. That part,

01:02:00.720 --> 01:02:06.880
exceeding authorized access, is one of the most absurdly broad and legally sloppy phrases to

01:02:06.880 --> 01:02:13.040
ever make its way into federal law. What does that even mean, because who decides what’s authorized?

01:02:13.040 --> 01:02:19.120
Because the truth of it is that everyone violates this all day, every day, because the way it’s

01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:24.960
written means that if you violate the terms of service of an app or a website, that means

01:02:24.960 --> 01:02:31.600
you exceeded your authorized access or used the site in a way that you weren't authorized to do.

01:02:31.600 --> 01:02:37.920
That means you just committed a federal offense. So, that lie you put on your dating

01:02:37.920 --> 01:02:43.040
profile — it’s against the terms of service to lie on there, which means you're using the site in an

01:02:43.040 --> 01:02:48.080
unauthorized manner. Your company issued you a computer for work? It’s for business use only.

01:02:48.080 --> 01:02:53.200
If you check Facebook on it, that’s not authorized activity. Sharing your Netflix or Spotify password

01:02:53.200 --> 01:02:58.240
with a friend? That’s unauthorized use of the service. I could just go on and on about how

01:02:58.240 --> 01:03:02.400
many times you've probably violated this or used a website in an unauthorized way. Like,

01:03:02.400 --> 01:03:06.960
have you used a browser plug-in to fill in a form on a job application or when purchasing

01:03:06.960 --> 01:03:10.160
concert tickets? That’s a violation of their terms of service since you can't

01:03:10.160 --> 01:03:14.960
use automation when interacting with the site. Have you played Solitaire on a school computer?

01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:20.320
Illegal. You're authorized to use that computer for educational purposes only. Used a coffee

01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:25.760
shop Wi-Fi without buying anything? Illegal. Unauthorized access. That’s for customers only.

01:03:25.760 --> 01:03:33.360
Can you tell I hate the CFAA? That’s just the first line of it. The CFAA effectively

01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:40.000
criminalizes violating the terms of service. Every day millions of people technically break

01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:44.480
this law by doing totally harmless things, and while most people aren't prosecuted,

01:03:44.480 --> 01:03:52.000
the law gives prosecutors a loaded weapon to easily take someone down, and they do it all the

01:03:52.000 --> 01:03:57.040
time. The law goes on. It talks about spreading malware, performing denial-of-service attacks,

01:03:57.040 --> 01:04:00.560
insider attacks, stealing passwords, altering and destroying someone else’s data,

01:04:00.560 --> 01:04:06.960
and this law made in 1986 still reigns as one of the predominant computer hacking laws today.

01:04:06.960 --> 01:04:12.480
It’s poorly written, vague, and outdated, but most of all, it’s misused. If you've ever heard

01:04:12.480 --> 01:04:17.840
someone get arrested on this show, they probably got charged with violating the Computer Fraud and

01:04:17.840 --> 01:04:25.680
Abuse Act of 1986. What it meant back then for hackers like the LoD was that all of a sudden,

01:04:25.680 --> 01:04:31.200
a lot of what they were doing was no longer child’s play. It was now a federal offense.

01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:36.880
A federal offense. Did they understand that? Did these guys follow what politicians were doing in

01:04:36.880 --> 01:04:42.160
Washington DC? I bet most of them did not have a clue. But more importantly, have you ever met

01:04:42.160 --> 01:04:47.960
a teenager? The quickest way to get them to do something is to tell them that they can't do it.

01:04:47.960 --> 01:04:50.880
HOST2: What’s the lesson in your story for other hackers?

01:04:50.880 --> 01:04:52.400
ADAM: Don’t get caught.

01:04:52.400 --> 01:04:54.640
HOST2: Not ‘don’t do it’.

01:04:54.640 --> 01:04:57.280
ADAM: People are going to do what they're going to do.

01:04:57.280 --> 01:05:04.000
HOST2: How do you think it plays to people at home when you tell others simply don’t get caught?

01:05:04.000 --> 01:05:08.800
ADAM: That’s their own business. I don't think it’s right for other people to tell

01:05:08.800 --> 01:05:13.360
me how to live my life, so I shouldn’t tell other people how to live their lives.

01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:16.320
HOST2: Yet you acknowledge that hacking is wrong.

01:05:16.320 --> 01:05:21.480
ADAM: Smoking is wrong. Taking drugs is wrong. People do it all the time.

01:05:21.480 --> 01:05:26.800
JACK: That was Adam, a member of the LoD. In September 1988, Adam’s friend,

01:05:26.800 --> 01:05:33.520
another member of the LoD called The Prophet came across a document that stunk of wrong.

01:05:33.520 --> 01:05:37.120
He got into a computer at Bell South and was looking at the files on it,

01:05:37.120 --> 01:05:42.240
just curiously looking for manuals that might be interesting, and he stumbled onto a three-page

01:05:42.240 --> 01:05:48.720
text file called Bell South Standard Practice Control Office Administration of Enhanced 911

01:05:48.720 --> 01:05:55.840
Services for Special Services in Major Account Centers Dated in March 1988. It’s a long file

01:05:55.840 --> 01:05:59.920
name, so I’m just gonna call it the E911 file. But it was an incredibly technical

01:05:59.920 --> 01:06:05.280
and boring document to read. It’s just a few pages of the thickest jargon you can imagine.

01:06:05.280 --> 01:06:08.000
There weren't many people in the country who would be able to make sense of this,

01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:12.800
but The Prophet thought that this was something special, something coveted. A manual for Bell’s

01:06:12.800 --> 01:06:17.840
911 service? [Music] The Prophet grabbed this document from Bell South’s computer. Again,

01:06:17.840 --> 01:06:23.360
the ethics of stealing is brought up here. He didn’t rob Bell South of the document. He copied

01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:29.120
the document, and Bell South still had their copy and had no idea that he grabbed a copy of it. So,

01:06:29.120 --> 01:06:33.760
is it really stealing? The Prophet was a little scared of this document,

01:06:33.760 --> 01:06:37.920
so he stashed it on a friend’s computer. He didn’t even want it on his own device. The

01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:44.800
Prophet then shared this E911 manual with Craig Neidorf. That’s White Lightning. Craig was one

01:06:44.800 --> 01:06:51.040
of the founders of Phrack Magazine. Craig was like, whoa. Prophet’s like, yeah, whoa.

01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:55.360
Craig was like, we should publish this in Phrack. Prophet’s like, I don't know,

01:06:55.360 --> 01:06:59.920
there’s a lot of sensitive stuff in here. But together the two of them censored out all the

01:06:59.920 --> 01:07:04.720
extra sensitive stuff like phone numbers and specific Bell South employees’ names,

01:07:04.720 --> 01:07:09.840
and that pesky warning at the top, ‘Not for public use or disclosure’. So, on February 25th,

01:07:09.840 --> 01:07:17.600
1989, Phrack published this E911 document under a random name that they made up. But now everyone

01:07:17.600 --> 01:07:22.320
could see it. It was spreading around all the BBSs in the underground. The Prophet tried to

01:07:22.320 --> 01:07:26.960
distance himself from this document. That’s why he stashed it on someone else’s computer. But that

01:07:26.960 --> 01:07:32.800
guy’s computer that he stashed it on found it and saw it, and saw that Prophet is who put it there.

01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:38.800
He looked at it, and this E911 file looked serious, so he passed it on to a friend,

01:07:38.800 --> 01:07:44.080
and his friend agreed and passed it on to AT&T, and they passed it over to Bell

01:07:44.080 --> 01:07:50.240
South. Bell South was very upset that their manual was exposed. There were two versions,

01:07:50.240 --> 01:07:56.400
a highly-redacted one on Phrack, and the original one that Prophet copied. It made Bell very

01:07:56.400 --> 01:08:01.680
uncomfortable to see such a highly-sensitive document out there in the hands of hackers.

01:08:01.680 --> 01:08:05.760
By the time Phrack published the E911 file, [music] the telephone companies and police

01:08:05.760 --> 01:08:09.920
were already on high alert for what hackers might be plotting against the phone system. So,

01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:14.560
this made them turn all their attention to Phrack to find out who was making this and put an end to

01:08:14.560 --> 01:08:19.200
them, and who published this article. Their worries were validated a few months later.

01:08:19.200 --> 01:08:24.240
On June 13th, 1989, it was a really weird day for criminals of Palm Beach County,

01:08:24.240 --> 01:08:29.600
Florida. If you had to call your probation officer on that day and you dialed up the number for the

01:08:29.600 --> 01:08:35.840
Delray Police Station, you'd end up chatting with a lady named Tina. Tina was in New York,

01:08:35.840 --> 01:08:42.880
and she was a phone sex worker. It’d be weird. So, you'd be like, what? So, you'd hang up and say,

01:08:42.880 --> 01:08:46.080
I must have gotten the wrong number. So, you'd dial the police station again,

01:08:46.080 --> 01:08:50.560
but again you would get Tina saying something sexy. Someone had rerouted

01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:56.240
the Palm Beach probation department number to a phone sex line in New York, which I

01:08:56.240 --> 01:09:01.360
think is pretty funny, right? This is classic hacker pranks. Come on, that’s funny, right?

01:09:01.360 --> 01:09:05.680
The cops didn’t think it was funny at all, though, nor did Bell South, and it was time to

01:09:05.680 --> 01:09:10.160
put an end to these hackers. Bell long suspected that hackers would come after them, and this was

01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:16.240
proof that they were able to attack. Bell South quickly formed an intrusion task force with more

01:09:16.240 --> 01:09:22.000
than forty employees working overtime. For weeks, twenty-four hours a day, security experts rotated

01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:27.280
in twelve-hour shifts, running through countless records, trying to piece together what happened.

01:09:27.280 --> 01:09:33.040
How were these calls being rerouted to a phone sex line? What they found out shocked them.

01:09:33.040 --> 01:09:37.840
Someone had remotely connected into the phone company and tampered with the database. They were

01:09:37.840 --> 01:09:43.280
creating ghost phone numbers with no personal information attached and nowhere to bill to.

01:09:43.280 --> 01:09:49.600
How dare someone generate phone numbers with no one to bill to? Quick, someone tell the Secret

01:09:49.600 --> 01:09:55.760
Service how awful this crime is! So, they called the Secret Service and told them. Not long before

01:09:55.760 --> 01:10:01.040
that, the company had introduced a new digital diagnostics program called REMOB, short for remote

01:10:01.040 --> 01:10:05.520
observation. Hackers not only knew about it, but they figured out how to reprogram it and take

01:10:05.520 --> 01:10:10.880
control of it. It allowed them to eavesdrop and spy on any calls they wanted. Ira Glass

01:10:10.880 --> 01:10:15.503
went into the apartment of one of the hackers who was there in the eighties doing all this.

01:10:15.503 --> 01:10:17.440
ACID PHREAK: So, I got kind of a lot of equipment around here. I’ve got a

01:10:17.440 --> 01:10:21.600
fax machine here. I’ve got — in my room I’ve got five phone lines. I got a two-line phone,

01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:24.820
but I’ve got — everything else connects to computers or a fax.

01:10:24.820 --> 01:10:29.520
IRA: There were cheesy kung-fu movies on video. In a CD-player there was old-school rap,

01:10:29.520 --> 01:10:34.000
Nine Inch Nails, The Doors, Jimmy Hendrix. Then he says, let me show you the good stuff,

01:10:34.000 --> 01:10:36.627
and he pulls out Xeroxes of old spiral notebooks.

01:10:36.627 --> 01:10:43.040
ACID PHREAK: I have here what was seized from me that they had to return back to

01:10:43.040 --> 01:10:47.440
me. It’s my evidence examination report by the United States Secret Service,

01:10:47.440 --> 01:10:57.840
subject Acid Phreak. These notes have basically all the systems I got into. Look,

01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:02.320
I have little sketches and diagrams of how things work, different protocols and networks,

01:11:02.320 --> 01:11:09.240
definitions. See, all that stuff was really good. I had stuff outside the country, NASA.

01:11:09.240 --> 01:11:11.403
IRA: It’s something defense? What is that?

01:11:11.403 --> 01:11:11.435
ACID PHREAK: Government defense.

01:11:11.435 --> 01:11:12.400
IRA: Government defense.

01:11:12.400 --> 01:11:18.000
ACID PHREAK: Yeah, that’s a Washington number. McDonald’s. Since I had Telenet,

01:11:18.000 --> 01:11:24.400
I had McDonald’s accounts. If you were a McDonald employee, I could raise your pay.

01:11:24.400 --> 01:11:28.560
So, that way you'd get $15 an hour for shuffling burgers and stuff.

01:11:28.560 --> 01:11:31.187
IRA: So, did you decide just at random to help someone out?

01:11:31.187 --> 01:11:34.200
ACID PHREAK: I’d do it to anybody. I just wanted to know how.

01:11:34.200 --> 01:11:39.840
JACK: Can you imagine that, changing the pay rate of your friends at McDonald’s? Well,

01:11:39.840 --> 01:11:44.800
this guy Ira interviewed says he didn’t do it. However, there was a kid who did.

01:11:44.800 --> 01:11:49.200
A sixteen-year-old kid in Indiana learned what was needed to get into McDonald’s computers,

01:11:49.200 --> 01:11:54.080
and his friends did work there. So, he stole one of the logins for the managers at McDonald’s and

01:11:54.080 --> 01:12:00.480
got access, and he actually gave his friends raises, which was epic. From then on, that kid

01:12:00.480 --> 01:12:06.640
was known as the Fry Guy. Fry Guy was immature, though; loud, a bit annoying. He was the kinda kid

01:12:06.640 --> 01:12:12.400
who would claim to be in LoD but actually wasn’t and would never be because he was a scammer. He

01:12:12.400 --> 01:12:17.200
created this crazy, elaborate way to steal money from Western Union and credit card companies.

01:12:17.200 --> 01:12:21.600
It was really intricate, and he would reroute the victims’ phone numbers to a nearby pay

01:12:21.600 --> 01:12:25.760
phone so that when the credit card company would call the victim to confirm a charge,

01:12:25.760 --> 01:12:29.360
it would then go to the pay phone outside Fry Guy’s house. He would answer it and say, yeah,

01:12:29.360 --> 01:12:34.480
yeah, I do approve that charge. [Music] He ended up stealing $6,000 this way, and he would boast

01:12:34.480 --> 01:12:39.520
about this on BBSs. People would be like, dude, you are breaking the hacker code. Stop doing that.

01:12:39.520 --> 01:12:44.720
A month after the phone-sex prank, on July 22nd, the police caught Fry Guy,

01:12:44.720 --> 01:12:49.840
and suddenly he wasn’t cocky anymore. He buckled pretty quickly under pressure,

01:12:49.840 --> 01:12:54.880
and he admitted to all the stuff he did. But then he just kept talking. He added like, oh,

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it wasn’t all me; Legion of Doom was doing it, too. This was a story that made sense.

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In the cops’ eyes, the Legion of Doom were the bad guys. Fry Guy offered to testify against the

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Legion of Doom despite never even being part of it. He told the police that the Legion of Doom

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are planning to take out the telephone network on a major US holiday. I think it’s the fourth

01:13:17.760 --> 01:13:23.440
of July. I’m pretty sure he just made it up to try to get out of trouble, but the cops took him

01:13:23.440 --> 01:13:30.160
very seriously. He became a golden informant. But this news was every police investigator and phone

01:13:30.160 --> 01:13:35.520
company’s worst nightmare. The Legion of Doom was going to take out the phone company? Man,

01:13:35.520 --> 01:13:39.760
that would bring America to a standstill. But July fourth was a long ways off,

01:13:39.760 --> 01:13:44.080
so the prosecutors were starting to think that maybe this kid was just a windbag,

01:13:44.080 --> 01:13:49.440
and they again focused on trying to figure out who was in LoD and to find them and arrest them.

01:13:49.440 --> 01:13:54.160
But the LoD was good at hiding, and the cops could simply not find enough evidence on them to figure

01:13:54.160 --> 01:14:00.400
out who was in it, and would have to wait for someone to slip up. [Music] On January 15th,

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1990, it was a US holiday, MLK Day. At 2:25 p.m. Eastern Time,

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a call-routing computer switch at AT&T failed. No problem. There are other switches,

01:14:14.080 --> 01:14:19.600
backups. A single failure is not a big deal. But the failed switch sent a message,

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‘help me’, to a second switch, and the second switch didn’t help. It failed, too,

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and on to the third, the fourth, the fifth, the fiftieth. A cascade of phone switches were all

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failing one after another. The AT&T network was going dark across the country. In the

01:14:39.440 --> 01:14:45.200
control room at AT&T headquarters in New Jersey, dozens of screens were stacked two stories high.

01:14:45.200 --> 01:14:50.160
They showed data feeds, charts, and maps of the US peppered with dots and lines

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representing phone services to hundreds of millions of people. This afternoon,

01:14:54.560 --> 01:15:00.800
engineers and technicians watched as red flashes spread from one screen to another.

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Around 60,000 people lost their phone service. This was before the internet, so it wasn’t like

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you could just text someone instead. Businesses froze. Services were interrupted. Conversations

01:15:11.760 --> 01:15:18.880
and lunch dates were abandoned. Almost 50% of calls through AT&T failed. For around nine hours,

01:15:18.880 --> 01:15:25.680
more than 70 million phone calls were impacted in all. News of this outage started spreading

01:15:25.680 --> 01:15:31.200
through all the LoD members. Hey man, did you hear? AT&T is down. Oh, what happened? Nobody

01:15:31.200 --> 01:15:36.800
knows. Did you do it? No, of course not. [Music] LoD started to get nervous, though.

01:15:36.800 --> 01:15:42.560
Maybe one of them did do it. If not them, then maybe it was the work of a cyber-attack,

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maybe someone that they taught. They were puzzled, too, and worried. Imagine being that US attorney

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from Indiana that day. Fry Guy said that LoD was planning a big attack on a major US holiday,

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and here’s a major outage on Martin Luther King Junior Day. Was this what the sixteen-year-old

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scamp predicted? He just got the date wrong? The police thought this must be the work of

01:16:04.800 --> 01:16:09.120
Legion of Doom. They were the ones with the stolen telephone manuals, hacking the phone companies,

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and they could reroute calls and mess with the 911 systems. If anyone could

01:16:12.720 --> 01:16:18.400
take out the phone company, it was definitely Legion of Doom. But was there any evidence?

01:16:18.400 --> 01:16:23.040
Some initial reports suggested that there might have been a bug in the system. Did

01:16:23.040 --> 01:16:27.680
hackers exploit that bug or did they trip over it? Did that matter? The phone companies were

01:16:27.680 --> 01:16:34.320
down and someone was to blame. Nobody really knew, but the police and Secret Service weren't

01:16:34.320 --> 01:16:40.320
going to take any chances of this happening again. They decided now is the time to strike, to take

01:16:40.320 --> 01:16:46.640
out whoever they thought hacked the system, and their number-one suspect was the Legion of Doom.

01:16:46.640 --> 01:16:51.440
But they were gonna discover that Legion of Doom was only the beginning. There was a second hacker

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group called the Masters of Deception, and this story is about to get way more crazy.

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Not because of the hackers, though, but because of the police who totally got out of control.

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But you'll have to join me in Part 2 to hear the rest of this story. Part 2 comes out in one week.

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[END OF RECORDING]