WEBVTT 00:00:00.154 --> 00:00:05.920 JACK: Computers aren’t always right. They make mistakes, encounter errors, and crash. Sometimes 00:00:05.920 --> 00:00:10.800 the errors can be frustrating especially when the computer is at a big company and it makes 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:16.320 a billing error that says you owe them $1,000. When that corporation won’t admit it’s their 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:22.320 mistake and insists you pay for the bill that you didn’t create, this can be infuriating. But 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:27.600 what can you do when you try to fight it but the corporation refuses to admit it’s their problem? 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:34.720 Well, some hackers know exactly what to do. JACK (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] 00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:40.880 These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:59.904 I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:00:59.904 --> 00:01:01.520 JACK: Hey. MOBMAN: Yo, what up? 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:04.240 JACK: You want to tell us your name? MOBMAN: Everybody calls me Mobman. 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:09.360 JACK: Hacking changed Mobman’s life but to understand how it changed his life, 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:12.320 we need to go back to when he was just a kid. 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:16.080 MOBMAN: Alright so I started off, I’m a little kid. I’m like, eight, 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:22.880 nine years old. Got a Nintendo, you know, the old NES square box, blow in the cartridge, push it in 00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:30.480 a few times. I was addicted to video games, like nonstop. I’d sneak out in the middle of the night 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:35.120 and go play it while my mom is asleep. JACK: His mom would catch him doing this 00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:38.720 and take his Nintendo away. Little Mobman was addicted, so… 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:45.760 MOBMAN: I’ll go find it and then skip school just to play the video games. Very sneaky kid. 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:56.640 I was like, the devil. Eventually she took a hammer and smashed the shit out of the Nintendo. 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:02.000 That was my first computer, so I got to see the insides, look at it, 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:09.920 take it all apart, try to figure out how to get it back to working and stuff. That did not happen. 00:02:09.920 --> 00:02:19.280 It did not get fixed but I learned a little bit about it. The next thing was I got a computer. 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.200 [MUSIC] I started playing a game called Ultima Online. 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:28.160 It’s a massive multiplayer roleplaying game. A lot of people now, they would be able to relate to it 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:34.480 as like World of Warcraft. Ultimate Online, if you die they can take all your stuff and 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:39.360 pretty much leave you naked and bare. JACK: As you might have guessed Mobman became 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:44.240 addicted to Ultima Online. As a teenager he found himself playing it every chance he could. 00:02:44.240 --> 00:02:49.200 MOBMAN: The computer breaks. Mom’s like, I ain’t paying somebody to fix it ‘cause 00:02:49.200 --> 00:02:54.000 you broke it like, three or four other times. I had to learn how to fix all that stuff and how 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.600 the actual operating system works. JACK: He gets it working again and starts 00:02:57.600 --> 00:03:01.520 taking an interest in computers and learned how to do a little programming and troubleshoot 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:06.080 problems on the computer. But still he’d find himself playing Ultima Online all the time 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:10.000 and back then to be online, you needed a phone and modem to connect to the internet 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.760 so he’d often hear his mom shouting… MOBMAN: Phone’s busy. I know you’re on that 00:03:13.760 --> 00:03:20.240 damn game. Blah, blah, blah. She’ll go and disconnect the phone so I’ll go outside. I 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:29.040 found the little phone box thing and I’ll splice the cables of the neighbors and run them into ours 00:03:29.040 --> 00:03:33.200 so then I could use their telephone. JACK: After years of playing Ultima Online 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:38.480 and using his computer every day for hours a day, he started to become pretty good at computers. He 00:03:38.480 --> 00:03:42.640 started visiting some of the more popular online bulletin boards and chat rooms and learning how 00:03:42.640 --> 00:03:46.640 to do different hacks like making free phone calls and stuff. He started learning that 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:50.960 software has exploits so what does he do? MOBMAN: In Ultima Online – so me and my buddies, 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:56.080 we’ll sit out there and we’ll figure out ways to exploit the game. We’ll hide out in front 00:03:56.080 --> 00:04:02.480 of people’s houses, stealth our way, which you basically turn invisible. We’ll wait outside 00:04:02.480 --> 00:04:07.280 somebody’s house, their door. When they opened it, then we’ll just walk inside their door, 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:12.480 invisible, and wait for them to leave [00:05:00] and then steal all their shit. We built our own 00:04:12.480 --> 00:04:18.960 scams. Like, we’ll pull up the trading window to trade somebody for stuff and then we’ll close it. 00:04:18.960 --> 00:04:22.400 Their stuff will be too heavy and it’ll fall and drop on the ground or they can’t move 00:04:22.400 --> 00:04:27.520 and we’ll just kill them and then take it. Eventually we bought a boat in the game. You could 00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:33.840 have a boat; you could sail around and do shit. There was a little cargo bay in front of the boat 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:38.080 and you could store your shit in it. It works like a house; you have to have a key or whatever, 00:04:38.080 --> 00:04:43.680 you can open and close the – lock it so you can’t get in. But we learned if you park a boat 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:48.560 at the bow in front of another bow of another boat and you’re standing out in your boat, 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:56.960 apparently your privileges of your boat links over to their boat and you could like, open their cargo 00:04:56.960 --> 00:05:03.280 and take all their shit. We spent a couple weeks just going and hitting every boat on the whole 00:05:03.280 --> 00:05:09.280 damn server and stealing everybody’s stuff. JACK: Players could open tickets and complain on 00:05:09.280 --> 00:05:14.240 the forums but Mobman and his pirating friends never got caught doing this. They made a lot of 00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:19.200 in-game money stealing from all these players and he wanted to show off his epic loot so he 00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:23.440 made a website showcasing what he had. MOBMAN: We’d take snippets of the game and 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:28.080 that’s how I started learning action script and Flash. I’d put some music behind it and 00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:33.760 release them all up online on our GeoCities websites. Then we used to hack each other’s 00:05:33.760 --> 00:05:38.480 websites and take them down and stuff. JACK: In the 90s when you played Ultima Online, 00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:42.720 it asks if you want to save your login so you don’t have to type it in next time. If you do 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:49.120 this it actually saves your username and password in a clear text file called uo.cfg. 00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:55.280 MOBMAN: We figured that out and we’re like oh cool, so if we get other people’s uo.config file, 00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:58.960 ‘cause there’s some idiots at school that play it, we could log in as them. 00:05:58.960 --> 00:06:04.720 JACK: Now we have all the ingredients for a fresh-baked hack. Mobman is now one part computer 00:06:04.720 --> 00:06:10.640 tech, two parts griefer, one part programmer, and a dash of greediness. His mission is to 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:16.960 somehow take that uo.cfg file from other players online. He mixed all this together and created a 00:06:16.960 --> 00:06:20.480 pretty clever program. MOBMAN: It’s a remote-access 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:25.280 tool. It was a Trojan horse virus. JACK: He built a program that would allow 00:06:25.280 --> 00:06:30.560 him to take control of another computer. MOBMAN: You could open and close a CD ROM. You 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:37.840 could flip the screen. You could hide the start button. You could move the mouse on their screen, 00:06:37.840 --> 00:06:44.680 click around, you could open up their C-drive, change their wallpaper. There 00:06:44.680 --> 00:06:48.080 was a whole bunch of other stuff. JACK: He also connected it to ICQ, 00:06:48.080 --> 00:06:51.760 a common messaging app back then. MOBMAN: When they get infected with it, 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:56.800 it’ll send you an ICQ message and it’ll tell you their IP address 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:00.160 and that they’re online. JACK: Mobman called his virus 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:05.920 Sub7. Now that he spent some time creating it, it was time to put it to work. 00:07:05.920 --> 00:07:11.280 MOBMAN: In Ultima Online we’ll stand by a bank. We’ll go buy their – oh, man, we got – ‘cause we 00:07:11.280 --> 00:07:19.920 were rich in the game. We had castles and millions of gold and all of our characters were badass 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:25.840 because of our thievery and stealing everybody’s stuff from the boats and the other things and 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:30.000 killing everybody and stuff. People were like, how did you get all that stuff? We were like oh, 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:36.160 no, we made this little program and it gives you unlimited gold. We’re like hey, do you want it? 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:40.160 They were like yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re like cool, what’s your ICQ? We’ll send it over to you. 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:46.480 So we’ll message them and then we’ll send them the EXE and then we’ll put up an error code. 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:54.320 File Not Found, Error, OK Cancel, or whatever and then we’ll send them the thing. They’ll run it 00:07:54.320 --> 00:07:59.520 and they’ll be like oh, it didn’t work. It gave me some error. Then they’ll run it again, 00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:03.360 infecting themselves again, and then run it again and then they infected themselves like, 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:07.520 three or four – people infect themselves like, ten times before they figure out oh, 00:08:07.520 --> 00:08:12.640 I guess it just doesn’t work. I’m like oh, man, I must have missed a file, I forgot to send it 00:08:12.640 --> 00:08:17.360 to you, then you give up or whatever. Then they go off on their own merry, merry way. 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:20.960 Then you remove them off of ICQ and be like oh, sorry, I guess the hack didn’t work. 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:27.120 JACK: Once that player is infected Mobman would swoop in and grab the uo.cfg file which contained 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:31.120 the username and password of that player. MOBMAN: You’re looking for other cheater – people 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:36.800 that want to cheat in the game. You tell them that you have the cheat for them. 00:08:36.800 --> 00:08:42.800 I think that still goes on to this day. You see Minecraft and all those other 00:08:42.800 --> 00:08:48.080 stupid – YouTube videos out there are like oh, we got this hack; you get free gold. Or 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:54.640 wall hacks and shit. All those are infected with some type of malware or whatnot. You can scan 00:08:54.640 --> 00:09:01.520 them. It’s the same typical thing. That’s just how we came up with doing this stuff back then. 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:05.760 Nobody else was doing that, keep in mind. We came up with that method 00:09:05.760 --> 00:09:11.280 to say hey, you’re gonna get cheats. Here you go, [00:10:00] here’s the file; run it. 00:09:11.280 --> 00:09:16.960 They’ll log in and then – there’s some stories. I’ll log in and people will log in real quick, 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:20.320 take all their stuff. I’ll have a couple guys standing by the bank. We’ll just steal all their 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:27.760 things, go to their house, and then I’ll go and delete their characters. These people spend years 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:35.600 leveling up their dudes and stuff and I’d just delete – confirm Yes or No, yes, gone. There’s 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:43.600 no recovery. It’s over. I would probably commit suicide if that happened to my account. 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:48.560 JACK: You’re so cold, man. MOBMAN: Dude, I look back and it’s like, 00:09:48.560 --> 00:09:54.480 oh my god, those poor little kids. You know? It’s so bad. So I’ll delete all their shit and 00:09:54.480 --> 00:10:01.440 then we’ll make a new character, dress it up with a skirt or something, whatever, just fuck with 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:06.560 them. Then they eventually figure it out. JACK: What they figured out is that they’ve been 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:10.880 hacked and that somebody logged into their account, stole all their items, and deleted 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:15.360 their character. This would be a character that they had worked on for years and it’s all of a 00:10:15.360 --> 00:10:21.760 sudden gone. High-level players that were wiped out by Mobman and hit with this Sub7 virus must 00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:27.520 have felt a level of rage like no other. MOBMAN: But they can’t prove or know anything. 00:10:27.520 --> 00:10:32.000 I can’t even keep up. I get so many people – I had so many people 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:37.040 that I had coming back to me where I could go and log into their accounts. 00:10:37.040 --> 00:10:42.240 Not just their accounts in UO but I could log into their computers. 00:10:42.240 --> 00:10:46.800 Now, I don’t really log into computers but there were a couple times where some of them had webcams 00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:50.480 and I’ll turn on their webcam ‘cause that was another option. You could turn on their webcam 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:57.733 and watch them. I see their moms be up on their computer watching some sexual stuff, you know? I 00:10:57.733 --> 00:11:08.240 could tell you some stories about that. JACK: 00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:11.600 This Sub7 virus was working really well for Mobman. 00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:16.560 He was able to social engineer dozens of players to install the virus and he was able to take 00:11:16.560 --> 00:11:22.800 tons of in-game items and gold from them. MOBMAN: Right, so I started getting overwhelmed 00:11:22.800 --> 00:11:28.800 in the UO. I started making so much bank, so much money, and being awesome and getting 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:33.040 all these people and stuff like that. I wanted to share it with my other buddies, 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:42.080 my friends that were in my clan, or guild that we had. I sent it to those ding dongs on ICQ. 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:50.080 I’m like here’s the client, here’s how you use it, go start sending it to people. Do what I 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:57.200 do. Y’all have been hanging out; you all see how it works and stuff ‘cause we’re all on ICQ. They 00:11:57.200 --> 00:12:03.520 started using it and then sending it to people and then apparently they sent it to their friends 00:12:03.520 --> 00:12:08.560 and their friends sent it to their friends. Then they built the fucking website 00:12:08.560 --> 00:12:13.280 and started giving it away to everybody and stuff like that. The next thing I know, 00:12:13.280 --> 00:12:20.240 everybody knows about Sub7. I see other idiots in UO like hey, you want to get a cheat? Blah, 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:27.600 blah, blah. I’m like sure, yeah, what’s your ICQ number? They’ll try to send it to me and infect me 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:33.280 with it. I’m like, that’s fucking pretty awesome. I’m gonna have a talk with my friends because I 00:12:33.280 --> 00:12:41.360 told them not to give it out but they did. They gave it out and spread it. I’m not the one that 00:12:41.360 --> 00:12:46.160 gave it away to everybody if you will, or made the website or anything. That was my 00:12:46.160 --> 00:12:51.200 ding dong juvenile delinquent friends. JACK: Even though Sub7 was created to steal Ultima 00:12:51.200 --> 00:12:56.880 Online log ins, Mobman had built a lot of features into it like the ability to grab any file, change 00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:02.800 files, upload files, and turn the webcam on. Sub7 started to spread and was used by all kinds of 00:13:02.800 --> 00:13:06.560 different people for all kinds of different reasons. Some students would infect their 00:13:06.560 --> 00:13:10.800 teachers with it and change their grades. MOBMAN: They sent it to their friend and they’re 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:17.600 playing the cup holder game, opening, closing the CD ROM. They got them inspired and interested in 00:13:17.600 --> 00:13:22.160 computers ‘cause they have to learn social engineering. You have to convince somebody 00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:28.800 to open the file and run it. It got people learning about the operating systems. 00:13:28.800 --> 00:13:33.840 JACK: But some people already knew how computers worked and took this to the next level, infecting 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:38.000 dozens and hundreds of people at a time. MOBMAN: You could attach it to anything, though. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:43.040 First there’s a button like Browse and then you pick an executable like Calculator. Then 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:49.680 you click Meld and it’ll meld the malware with the executable and the executable will 00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:57.120 still run and act normal except it has – Sub7 infects you when you run it. 00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:01.760 JACK: I started thinking about some of the stuff I downloaded back in the warez days. I’m pretty 00:14:01.760 --> 00:14:04.560 sure I probably downloaded this. MOBMAN: Oh yeah, you got infected. 00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:10.080 JACK: As a kid I did download a lot of shitty things and ran them. As I think back, [00:15:00] I 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:15.120 do remember getting my grandma’s computer infected with the Sub7 virus and having to learn how to 00:14:15.120 --> 00:14:21.280 wipe it off. I never thought I’d ever meet the maker of that virus that hit me in 2002. This 00:14:21.280 --> 00:14:26.320 is why even today you should never run a program that you don’t trust because it could infect you 00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:31.840 with Sub7 or another Trojan. This malware that Mobman made was spreading all over the internet 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:38.240 like an unchecked disease. Mobman only used Sub7 to steal Ultima Online logins for himself. 00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:43.040 He never used it to steal anyone’s credit cards, bank statements, or anything like that. 00:14:43.040 --> 00:14:50.000 MOBMAN: I just don’t like stealing credit card – you know, money or 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:55.920 things from them. ‘Cause Ultima Online I didn’t think of it like that because it was virtual. 00:14:55.920 --> 00:15:04.640 It was on the internet. I think of my grandma. I always get the image of my little old lady grandma 00:15:04.640 --> 00:15:10.320 and if somebody would rob her I would kill that person. Know what I mean? 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:15.360 JACK: Mobman finished high school with good grades but his obsession with video games grew stronger. 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:19.920 Because he was tapping into his neighbor’s phone lines and spending all night on the computer, his 00:15:19.920 --> 00:15:24.480 relationship with his parents evaporated. MOBMAN: Yeah, they don’t ever talk to me, 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:28.240 during all that whole time. I was disowned as a child. 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:31.040 JACK: Because of this he hardly ever went home. 00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:35.440 MOBMAN: No, I wasn’t. Most of the time I was staying over at my girlfriend’s 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:40.640 apartment or whatever, or out over at friends’ houses couch-surfing, 00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:45.360 trying to get on that internet. JACK: He was drawn like a moth to a flame. 00:15:45.360 --> 00:15:48.320 He would go wherever he could find free internet access. 00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:57.040 MOBMAN: Video games ruined my – Ultima Online ruined my life, or my early livelihood. 00:15:57.040 --> 00:16:00.320 I’m like, eighteen at this – or I was about to turn eighteen 00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:05.120 and I got a cell phone. I was seventeen. They let me sign the contract ‘cause they’re idiots. 00:16:05.120 --> 00:16:10.160 I thought you had to be eighteen to sign a legal binding contract. I got a phone bill; it was like, 00:16:10.160 --> 00:16:14.960 $900 and that’s a lot of money. JACK: He looks at the bill and it says 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:17.280 he called Kansas and some other states for an 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:21.520 ungodly amount of time. MOBMAN: I never – I don’t know anybody in 00:16:21.520 --> 00:16:25.360 Kansas or Arkansas or wherever the hell – I didn’t make these calls. 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:27.280 JACK: He decides to refute the bill with AT&T. 00:16:27.280 --> 00:16:32.400 MOBMAN: Let me call them up and see what the hell this $900 charge is. They said 00:16:32.400 --> 00:16:38.400 I called somebody in Kansas or Wisconsin. I don’t even know anybody up in that state. I 00:16:38.400 --> 00:16:46.000 did not call somebody up there for twenty hours. You need to remove this $900 bill 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:53.840 charge on my phone. They’re like no, sir. We’re not gonna do that. You made that call and you’re 00:16:53.840 --> 00:16:58.880 gonna have to pay it or we’re not gonna give you service. I’m like, we’ll I’m not even eighteen. 00:16:58.880 --> 00:17:03.440 You signed this contract so I don’t have to pay it anyway. They’re like, well then we’re gonna 00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:08.640 disconnect you altogether. I’m like well, I’m just gonna log in and change it myself. They’re like, 00:17:08.640 --> 00:17:15.840 we got smarter people working here than you. You’re a young punk kid and stuff, blah, blah, 00:17:15.840 --> 00:17:19.760 blah. So I hang up. JACK: By this point Mobman has 00:17:19.760 --> 00:17:24.160 developed a complex because of his previous online exploits. He was thinking to himself… 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:30.480 MOBMAN: I made this Sub7. I fucking own everything in Ultima Online, the greatest game ever. 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:35.520 JACK: After he hangs up with AT&T he feels powerless against this large corporation. He 00:17:35.520 --> 00:17:39.760 honestly didn’t make the calls they claimed he did and there’s nothing he can do about 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:47.520 it except pay it. Rage brews inside him. He just heard AT&T tell him that their systems 00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:52.560 are too secure for him to hack into. MOBMAN: I’m like oh, really? They think they’re 00:17:52.560 --> 00:17:58.880 smarter and better than me, that they can push me around? I didn’t make these calls. 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:07.680 I get on my vengeful, upset – I see red. JACK: Mobman got a list of AT&T phone numbers 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:11.440 that had modems on them. He could use his computer to dial the number and 00:18:11.440 --> 00:18:16.240 see if it connected. [DIALING] This is called wardialing. He would go down the list dialing 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:20.480 number after number to see if it connected to any computer in the AT&T network. 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:24.560 MOBMAN: I sat all night logging into different PBXs, 00:18:24.560 --> 00:18:30.400 calling up all kinds of weird exchanges. I get into a couple of them. 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:34.960 JACK: Every once in a while he would connect to an AT&T system and amazingly enough the 00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:40.320 systems he accessed did not have a username or password. When you dialed into it, it would 00:18:40.320 --> 00:18:44.000 immediately give you a command prompt. MOBMAN: Yeah, it just throws you in. Dude, 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:48.080 there’s no fucking security back then man, there’s no nothing ever. 00:18:48.080 --> 00:18:53.600 JACK: This was an operating system Mobman had never seen before, some weird, AT&T terminal or 00:18:53.600 --> 00:18:58.560 something so he didn’t know any commands. MOBMAN: I’m typing like, question mark and help 00:18:58.560 --> 00:19:03.440 and stuff. It gives you a little list of commands. You type in that command 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:07.840 and type help. You keep getting lists of different stuff and try to figure out what 00:19:07.840 --> 00:19:11.280 everything freaking does. [00:20:00] JACK: He keeps getting access to one system 00:19:11.280 --> 00:19:16.320 after another and he’s exploring and learning the AT&T network, studying it, 00:19:16.320 --> 00:19:20.720 mapping it. He keeps going deeper. MOBMAN: Man, if they had Red Bulls back then 00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:26.720 I’d be just on more Red Bulls. It was a natural high. It’s like, I don’t know, you’re just 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:34.080 doing it. It’s like the whole world closed off. I get enveloped, enclosed into that – 00:19:34.080 --> 00:19:42.800 it’s me, the computer, that’s it. You could be – house is on fire and I wouldn’t even know. 00:19:42.800 --> 00:19:48.480 JACK: Mobman spends eight hours gaining access into AT&T’s network, slowly making progress but 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:52.160 still nothing significant yet. MOBMAN: Eventually I typed in 00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:55.920 the wrong command. JACK: At that same moment the 00:19:55.920 --> 00:20:02.640 computer he dialed into went offline. MOBMAN: Nothing worked. Then I tried dialing 00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:06.640 some of the other numbers that I was able to connect to prior in some of the other machines 00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:12.560 and they were all off, too. Then I thought it was me, so I tried calling in from a different 00:20:12.560 --> 00:20:22.000 address. That didn’t work. Then I decided to give them a call, call AT&T customer support again, 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:29.520 see if they can fix my phone bill. I got them on the line and again, we’re not fixing your bill, 00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:35.920 blah, blah, blah, you made these calls. I’m like, I did not, blah, blah, blah, 00:20:35.920 --> 00:20:41.520 but hey, how’s your all’s network over there in California and 00:20:41.520 --> 00:20:46.800 Nevada and stuff? They’re like well we just have a big network outage over there. 00:20:46.800 --> 00:20:51.680 It’s been out for a couple hours. JACK: He realized the commands he typed on that 00:20:51.680 --> 00:20:58.800 computer had caused a major outage at AT&T. MOBMAN: Apparently it rewrote the firmware 00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:06.160 on it and bricked one of these central switching PBXs which happened to run like, 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:13.600 the whole west coast telephone systems or something. I’m like oh, really? 00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:26.480 Well, if you want to know why, I’ll tell you if you fix my phone bill. 00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:33.760 I start bragging. I bragged to them; I sit there and I tell them what I did and all this stuff. 00:21:33.760 --> 00:21:36.400 Obviously I gave them my name, my phone number, 00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:45.280 and all that. [LAUGHING] JACK: Obviously that’s one of the 00:21:45.280 --> 00:21:51.760 situations you probably reflected back on a lot. What do you think about that now? 00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:59.920 MOBMAN: Yeah, don’t be an idiot. Nowadays obviously you’ve got VPNs and all that shit. 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:05.440 If you want to do something illegal, I could definitely get away with stuff if I want to now 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:14.000 but I don’t. I don’t do anything illegal. JACK: Mobman told AT&T how he hacked into their 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:17.440 systems, gave his name and phone number, and waited for them to call him back 00:22:17.440 --> 00:22:21.920 so that they could remove the charges from his phone bill. He sat there after hanging up. 00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:27.440 MOBMAN: I’m still upset. They didn’t fix my shit. I hacked all their stuff. 00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:31.920 I’m waiting for them to call me back. I just get back on and keep trying to do other shit, 00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:38.800 hack and do stuff. Then I think I went and played some Ultima Online afterwards. 00:22:38.800 --> 00:22:44.000 JACK: A few days go by. Still no call back from AT&T. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:53.520 MOBMAN: Yeah my friends, my girlfriend, and my mom got a visit from a detective 00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:57.360 or an FBI guy or something and left them their business cards. 00:22:57.360 --> 00:23:05.520 I was like oh shit, oh shit, [00:25:00] what am I gonna do? I had a job; I forgot what I was doing. 00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:12.400 I was working at Taco Bell or some shit and these detective people were looking for me. 00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:15.600 I was worried that I’m gonna get picked up, I’m gonna get arrested, I don’t know 00:23:15.600 --> 00:23:27.760 what’s happening. I said alright, well let me confront it. I had lots of friends, computer 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:33.680 friends. One of them lived in Washington and there was a library in Washington and apparently 00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:40.880 that library had a database, a little computer that was like the White Pages. You could type in 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:47.520 anybody’s name or phone number, reverse-look up, front look up, sideways, whatever you want to do. 00:23:47.520 --> 00:23:51.680 It has everybody’s information. JACK: Mobman uses this computer to look 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:56.320 up the information on the detective that’s looking for him. 00:23:56.320 --> 00:24:00.320 MOBMAN: I get his house phone number and his address and stuff. I call him at his house, 00:24:00.320 --> 00:24:05.680 at like 3:00 in the morning. He’s asleep 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:14.560 but he answers the phone. I’m like hey, what’s up? I heard you were looking for me. He’s like yeah, 00:24:14.560 --> 00:24:21.200 I just want to talk to you about AT&T. They said that you were having some issues with them and 00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:29.200 I think – why don’t you meet me up and get a cup of coffee and we can go over this stuff? 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:36.320 I’m like dude, I’m not stupid. You’ve been looking for me for like a month and knocking 00:24:36.320 --> 00:24:42.400 on all my friend’s doors and shit. I think you’re gonna arrest me so I’m not gonna meet up 00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:50.640 with you with some coffee. I’m not stupid. He’s like alright, yeah, I get it. You are wanted. 00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:57.120 I’m gonna have to take you in. Where are you? I’ll come and get you. I’m like, 00:24:57.120 --> 00:25:02.880 I’m not gonna tell you where I am. I’m not stupid; again, I’ll reiterate that. 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:10.000 But however, I get my paycheck Friday and I’ll meet you at my girlfriend’s apartment complex on 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:18.720 Saturday at the pool and I’ll turn myself in. He’s like okay, well, where do you work? 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:25.360 I’m like dude, really? Then I hang up. JACK: He wanted to do the right thing. He didn’t 00:25:25.360 --> 00:25:29.840 want to be a criminal or a fugitive. He just wanted to face his problem. He thought he might go 00:25:29.840 --> 00:25:35.120 to jail so he spent the next few days stashing all his computer files in safe spots all around the 00:25:35.120 --> 00:25:39.680 internet and sorting out any loose ends. MOBMAN: I was like alright. I went and got 00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:48.800 my paycheck and I went in that Saturday and went to the pool. I went and walked in there. 00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:53.760 They came like, they had SWAT team there. A bunch of dudes with machine guns 00:25:53.760 --> 00:25:59.120 surrounded me, basically, and put me in… JACK: What did you think as soon 00:25:59.120 --> 00:26:08.880 as you saw a SWAT team? MOBMAN: I’m frozen. I’m just like, standing there. 00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:11.280 What am I gonna do? Pull out my nine and start 00:26:11.280 --> 00:26:19.600 shooting at them? JACK: No, I mean, 00:26:19.600 --> 00:26:22.440 I would just be so scared. Like, why are there people pointing guns at me? 00:26:22.440 --> 00:26:28.960 MOBMAN: I don’t know! I don’t care. It’s cool. My girlfriend, she’s there walking up. 00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:32.160 They let me kiss and hug my girlfriend goodbye. 00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:36.000 They gave me my cell phone. They’re letting me make calls in the back of the cop car. 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:42.240 I’m calling up my buddies; I’m like yeah, I’m going to jail. Write me a letter or something. 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:45.360 Then they took me to jail. JACK: His girlfriend was not happy 00:26:45.360 --> 00:26:50.240 to see him arrested at her pool. MOBMAN: Yeah, she was sad but she was 00:26:50.240 --> 00:26:53.760 good. She came to the jail and visited me a lot, and all that stuff. 00:26:53.760 --> 00:26:56.800 JACK: Mobman was questioned and taken to jail. 00:26:56.800 --> 00:27:03.120 MOBMAN: It sunk in the first couple days, like two or three days. It’s like man, I’m missing people, 00:27:03.120 --> 00:27:10.080 blah, blah, blah. But then it becomes like a whole different world inside of jail. It has its own 00:27:10.080 --> 00:27:17.040 ecosystem, if you will. You start learning all the stuff in there and whatnot. I was like, 00:27:17.040 --> 00:27:26.400 the pretty cool guy in jail. I’m a young, skinny, nerdy fucking dude but nobody fucked with me 00:27:26.400 --> 00:27:32.800 at all because I was the cool hacker guy that could like, when they get out we could all hook 00:27:32.800 --> 00:27:40.560 up and make lots of money and do shit. Everybody wanted to be my friend. 00:27:40.560 --> 00:27:44.640 I had it made; I was good at chess. I learned Pinochle, played Dominoes, 00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:52.400 I got sent to Lockdown a few times. That was fun, got to hang out with all the murderer people. 00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:59.520 Yeah, it was an experience. It opens your eyes. I learned how to become humble and 00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:04.000 very respectful [00:30:00] in there. JACK: Strangely enough he was still able 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:09.840 to get on a computer while in jail. MOBMAN: Some of the guards there, the officers, 00:28:09.840 --> 00:28:17.040 they were going to school for computers or they had a computer there and they want to learn stuff. 00:28:17.040 --> 00:28:21.280 Who’s the guy they come and talk to about learning things? This guy. 00:28:21.280 --> 00:28:25.680 JACK: Which was a lot of fun for Mobman. MOBMAN: Hell, yeah! They let me go hang out, play 00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:35.200 on the computer, show them things. There was the law library. Law library was amazing. That had the 00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:41.120 internet but you couldn’t get on the internet so I had to hack the computer locally. I remember how I 00:28:41.120 --> 00:28:54.080 did that, was Magnifying Glass. Yeah, magnify.exe. I deleted Magnify and renamed cmd.exe to magnify 00:28:54.080 --> 00:29:01.920 and then I went back to the login screen. You hit Windows + H and it brings up the accessibility 00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:08.800 magnify which was actually command prompt and system-launched it for me. Now I have 00:29:08.800 --> 00:29:16.400 admin of their little law library computer. Then I got everybody’s name, address, all the – I mean 00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:21.200 well, not everybody but all the correctional officers. Got into their HR department and got 00:29:21.200 --> 00:29:29.200 all their information, printed that out, signed up for pretty much every magazine on the planet. 00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:37.040 Like, the mail that I got every day was bags, like those big garbage bags full of mail.