HACK!
(Chapter 47 of Senses)
198?
It amazes me sometimes the coincidences you run across when you open a newspaper. Case in point: A certain day in April during a recent year that I will not name (although if you do a little research you can find out when it happened). Three random stories from The Los Angeles Times - I'll count them off for you - one, The Space Shuttle somethingorother (I don't remember, so don't bug me) launched on a secret pentagon mission that everyone knew was the launch of a satellite - two, a small earthquake struck under the Rose Bowl on a fault line that no one had previously suspected even existed - three, The Pentagon disclosed that a hacker had penetrated their defenses and had caused no damage to their files.
What I'm about to tell you is a story about me, my friends (yes, Jim Christopher is one of those friends, but that's another story - oh screw it, my friends are not a part of this story - forget I said that), and my own connection to the shuttle mission, that earthquake, and how I wound up with 138 floppy discs of information that I put to use later (and again much later) for a good cause.
It started out simply enough. A person that I know who shall remain nameless (I even call him that to his face) wanted me to do some hacking for him. Specifically, he wanted geological information about a number of areas for his research, and he could not get the most recent topological maps for certain areas off the coast of California, due to military restrictions. So he called me after finding out that the government computerized the information in the 80's.
I accepted the challenge. I for one can see no reason of national security that disallows my friend from knowing how deep the waters are in Santa Monica Bay are, and once an opinion forms in my head it takes a lot to shake it.
Upon doing some research I discovered that the U.S. Geological Survey was run by the Defense Department. This may sound surprising to you, but think back to when the first major oceanographic survey was done by Challenger. I know, I know, they were privately funded, but the point is that they were funded at all. You go where the money is, and as of the 50's or so, the big money is in Defense.
You grok that?
What this meant, however, was that I couldn't hack the information simply by raiding the park service's computer database. I needed to get into the Pentagon.
I'd resisted this challenge for a long time. I have heard the joke from my friends that if given the right equipment I could stop a war so many times that I no longer find it funny. Besides, the Pentagon is one tough cookie to crack.
What I mean is, most defense industry linkup systems do not allow for personalized passwords. The password changes daily based upon a strange logarithmic equation that used as part of its function the date and a rotating numerical schedule. Even if you can do logarithms in your head, which I can't, you're still trying for a one in a billion shot. If your luck is that good, play the lottery instead. It's safer.
That doesn't mean that all hope was lost. Quite the contrary. What that means is that national defense issues and information wouldn't be available to me. And that was just fine. I didn't want it. I wanted a map.
Map access would have to be another story, because geologic information needs to be accessed by people without the famous "eyes only" clearances. A good example is off the coast of Santa Barbara, where all the oil rigs are. Government and oil go hand in hand in this country, so the network needs to be there for government's friends, if nothing else. That was a weakness, and I intended to exploit it.
The best time to crack into a computer net is during normal working hours. Think about it. All access gets logged, and forget anything you've ever heard about tapeworm programs, except for your own computer. You can't see the computer your hacking into, so you don't know what modifications are there. Break in in plain sight, and they won't give you a second thought. Unless you access during a time when they've asked the users not to. That's just a risk you have to take.
So about lunchtime I got a beer and accessed the phone company (easiest thing in the world to hack if you have a plug-in phone) and began setting up my net. I first ordered a phone number in Las Vegas, complete with call forwarding and call waiting, and billed it to a P.O. box I invented in my head, using a zip code I pulled out of a zip code book a friend swiped from a post office. I then did the same in fifteen other cities, using different codes each time for billing, and calling from different numbers in different cities. I then set each phone in a loop of call forwarding. I then accessed the trouble records and placed a service call order for my own phone, saying that it was dead. I made a mental note to myself to actually break the phone before next week, when the service call would take place.
"Why did I do all this?" you may ask. Go ahead and ask. I'll wait.
Okay, I did this so that the call couldn't be traced back to my own phone. And even if by some strange piece of fiction the call could be traced, I had irrefutable proof that my own phone wasn't working. Just to be safe, I set the phone company record to show that I had placed the order the day before.
After all of that was done, I set up my computer and tried my first call to the computer phone number I had purchased from another one of my friends. The computer screen flashed the words "Access Code..." and then a curser. I experimented a bit to determine how many letters the input line would take. It took four. Good, there were only 1.7 million possible combinations.
I started my access code program from a separate window on the computer (I use Macintosh exclusively. Think about it, why buy a "windows" program for your IBM when they already come standard on a Mac?) and had a correct code in only thirty six hours of phone calls. My phone bill would be horrendous, but how could I have placed these calls if my phone was broken? No, I wouldn't push my luck that much. I'd erase the records of the first leg of the call.
After code one had been solved, I destroyed the phone link I had created and created another that started up in Anchorage, Alaska. I then dialed in immediately, because once a window is open it only stays open so long.
After "Access Code..." was the word "Password". This proved to be a six character code, with only 2.2 trillion combinations. However, the odds are always good that at least one person who uses the system uses a word that can also be found in the dictionary for his purposes. This narrows it down to less then 300,000 possible combinations (usually) so it is always worth a try. Besides, most computers won't log you off from a bad password try, although some will lock up. This wasn't one of the kind that locked up, and I was into the system in only two hours.
And it was almost a complete waste of time. The information I was being paid to get wasn't in the exterior access computers. It was buried in the Defense Department internal computers instead. I did discover what was by that point common knowledge, that the current "Defense Blackout" space shuttle mission was really just so that a military satellite could be launched. Hell everybody knew that.
I logged off and destroyed my new phone link system, and sat back to think about it. Something was very wrong, and I still couldn't think of a reason for topological survey information to be restricted in such a fashion.
I did some digging on my hunch and drove to U.C.L.A. to go through their Geography Library. They have a good one, according to my friend that sent me on this search in the first place. It's just that the maps are old, and he had irrefutable proof that more recent surveys had been done. I had my own reasons to believe him, so I believed him.
The point of this is that the people I met there (3 students and two professors) also found it odd that the data had not yet been released. I looked and sure enough, the area that I was trying to get the map of had been released before. I made a photocopy of the old map and took it home with me and called my friend to ask why the old map wasn't sufficient enough.
He told me that it was because of sediment layers that had accumulated at the bottom of the submarine canyons off the coast of California. He had reason to believe that the ocean was two feet shallower than previously thought, due to our garbage. That's a lot of garbage, and he wanted to prove it, or rather show that the government knew about it. I'm something of an environmentalist and an anarchist myself, so I had myself a beer and decided to get this information for my friend come hell or high water.
This would require some thought.
Then I had one of those weird pieces of inspiration that my friends tell me can only happen to me. It took a wild assumption on my part, but five phone calls posing as a reporter confirmed my hunch.
The Space Shuttle!
Now this was a secret space shuttle flight, so not much information was getting out, but a lot of information had to be transferred from the shuttle to flight control in Houston, and in turn to the Defense Department. After all, this was their show. The problem was how to get into that loop, and that was where I had my wild inspiration.
Have you ever heard of a space shuttle mission where somebody (usually the President of the U.S.) important didn't call up at some point just to say "you're doing a great job"? Thing is, how do they do it? The President spends little time in Houston, and these missions are going on all of the time. Therefore, a satellite linkup must exist that moves around the country. And to be the most economical, the feed should ride piggyback or compressed upon whatever signal path is already being used (I learned this trick from an old friend who used to be in the cable television business) and join up on whatever transponder is already in use by the shuttle crew. My phone calls confirmed this fact.
See the great thing? The signal they would send would be piggybacked upon another signal, and that signal would not be shut off after the phone call! Once I could find the common carrier I could work my way through the computer systems and get the information I wanted. I would simply have to work fast.
Then I had another thought. No passwords would be necessary. Who would hack from this direction that wasn't authorized to? They would probably know I was in there, but there wouldn't be anything they could do without shutting down communication! Now all I needed was the use of a satellite dish and the knowledge of who the V.I.P. was that was going to place the call, and when. And where he would be.
The President? Doubtful. The Vice Prez? Even more doubtful. Wait, think defense industry. Think strategic defense initiative, because that was probably what this "secret" satellite launch was about. I started making a list.
After about three hours of digging and racking my brain, I narrowed it down to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (most likely), a certain southern Senator (less likely), the Defense Secretary (extremely unlikely), and a few generals at the Pentagon.
I started scanning newspapers for clues, and was able to rule out the Senator and the Defense Secretary due to their own proximity to the United States (both were on vacation in the Bahamas). I figured that neither one would be able to place the kind of call I thought would be placed, and concentrated on Mr. Joint Chiefs.
Posing as a reporter again, I got a copy of the man's itinerary for the next several days (not hard to do), and found certain blocks of his schedule marked "intelligence meetings - closed to the public". During one of these then. There were only about a dozen of these, and I'd need to monitor all of them.
While my cable friend put in a fiber optic link from the street to my house so that I could access the Multisat dish that the cable company he worked for used to pick up cable television signals (this would also make me untraceable even if the possible universe of suspects was narrowed down to less than 100,000 people), I started on my math to determine during which of these "meetings" that the shuttle would be overhead, and in a few minutes stopped, because there had to be enough satellites up there for communication blackouts to only occur upon re-entry. I realized that I was thinking too much, and had a beer.
Then using the Multisat feed, I started scanning satellite feeds using my little black-box descramblers (not hard to make) during these meetings to find the right linkup. (For those of you who don't know, a Multisat dish has the unique advantage of being able to look at the entire sky and access every satellite that is viewable in the sky. Handy devices, these Multisats, but they're also more than 22 feet across. Hence the link we had built in my home.)
On try number five I got lucky, and got the linkup. I started running through baud rates and the carrier wave and violá, I got in and began my search.
I don't want to make it seem like it was easy. It wasn't. But I'm also not going to tell you trade secrets. Let me just say that I got into the network and found the geological files only to discover that there were rather a lot of them. I pushed the baud rate as high as it would go (14.4 K slow now but it those days that was rocket science) and started downloading and compressing files (my compression program can squeeze files to less that 5% their original size - not bad).
At this point I should point out that I could hear the phone conversation going on between Mr. Joint Chiefs and the shuttle crew. It didn't sound like the "howdy boys" (and girls) I had expected. I sounded like a military briefing. I started paying close attention after my files started downloading.
When I heard the words "laser test" I perked up. I have a hobby-like interest in laser technology. I then heard the word "Pasadena" and perked up considerably. I have a substantial interest in Pasadena, California. I live in Pasadena.
That was when the earthquake struck. I have an interest in those too: being a Californian I have too. It wasn't much as earthquakes go. I guessed it to be about a three on the infamous Richter scale. Not even enough to shake up my beer. It didn't even last long.
Now, I've experienced a lot of these, and don't think much about them. I even had the good fortune to be leaning back in a chair once when a minor one struck, and I have to tell you, that ride was fun. But no one said "congratulations gang" afterwards, and those were the exact words Mr. Joint Chiefs said when the earthquake stopped.
"It worked?" I heard an electronic voice say.
"A minor trembler, just where we expected," Mr. Joint Chiefs responded.
I sat there bug-eyed for a while. It takes a lot to faze me, considering the people I hang out with, but this one had me riveted to my seat. I couldn't believe my ears. They had caused an earthquake? Hold on, does not compute.
The pursuant conversation confirmed my suspicions. Amazing. Ay-May-Zing!
No way in hell was anyone going to announce this, especially from a "secret" space shuttle mission that was apparently as much a lesson in misdirection as anything else. I actually found myself laughing, thinking about the crap that Tom Clancy writes. Maybe he isn't all that far off.
To be honest, I wasn't horrified by the thought that we could cause an earthquake. I found myself curious, as an intellectual exercise, as to how they did it. Hacking and magic are the same way to me. It always boils down to the eternal question of how did they do that?
I retrieved all of the information that my friend had requested, and for good measure I included the translation program that the Pentagon used, which my friend had not asked for but would probably need. I then set about making copies for myself (hacker's privilege) and removing the data from my hard drive. I then began downloading all of the information either stored or accessed within the last eight hours. I wanted to solve this one. Fortunately I have a few hard drives relayed in sequence, because the amount of information was staggering. While I had downloaded 22 disks worth of compressed information for my friend, I soon calculated that I would need at least 100 more for what I was taking now. I'd also need a Hewlett-Packard emulation program. I made a mental note to find one, then finally logged off when the download was complete.
During the next half hour I destroyed all evidence that any hook up to a satellite dish had take place. I pulled out the fiber-optic link (which had been so thoughtfully been placed with pull ropes for easy removal) and took it to the dump, and transferred all of the information to floppy. I then created a tapeworm program for my Macintosh that could be accessed by either entering an incorrect password (on the first try) or by pressing the control key with the letters q, e, t, and u. After ten hours of work and another eight of sleep and another two to turn over the exact geological data my friend had asked for (which only took one disk and used up hardly any space on it) and another hour to find the emulation program I began to sort through the data.
It turned out that the recent renovation going on at the Rose Bowl only fifteen blocks from my home wasn't all just renovation. The football field had been excavated, and a crevice had been dug. I got a friend of mine with a plane to confirm that. I also had him look to see if the earth there had been burned in any way. It had been, according to him. I trusted him, so I believed him. Besides, I've got photographs.
I had postulated and then verified that an artificial fault line had been constructed at the Rose Bowl and had been set into motion, creating a small earthquake. At first I wondered about the location, but it occurred to me that this would be the best place for a field test.
Consider this; the first test could have been out in Nevada, where all the nuke testing takes place, and who'd know? But would the earthquake be a surgical strike, or would it set off other quakes? That you could only really test in California without raising more than a few eyebrows. It's very cynical, but it makes sense.
That same day, the day after the quake, I picked up a newspaper and read the three headlines that I mentioned at the beginning of this story. I had a good laugh about it, then double-checked my connections to be sure that I couldn't be traced. I was fairly certain that my work wasn't traced through the phone lines. They had to know about the shuttle linkup though. I'll bet that shook them up a bit.
As I set the newspaper down the big question finally hit me, and it should have done so much sooner. Why is the government doing this?
Blind luck allowed me to add two and two to get twenty-two. I already had the answer because of what I was originally hired to do: find a geological survey map which was no longer available on the open market. I decided to take a look at the information I had first retrieved for my friend, and realized for the first time that the surveys were not just isolated to surveys of the United States. I could put together a topological map of the world with this data.
And I did.
What I got was not only one hell of a map, but also a severe education on the location of earthquake faults. Like the Caymen Ridge off the coast of Cuba, or the one that was just as nasty (although it looked sedate enough on the surface) that ran through both Russia and China, with offshoots running even into Pakistan and India and a couple of countries I couldn't even name off the top of my head.
As my friend Jim would say much later, "Scott, that's scary fucking shit."
And I remembered that horrible earthquake in the Ukraine that happened while the leader of the Soviet Union was in the United States, and began to think that my anarchist streak may start growing out of reflex.
This was a weapon! And the perfect one at that. Who would believe that your enemy would cause an earthquake instead of dropping bombs? No one. The enemy forces would write it off a bad luck and move on. And remember that earthquakes rarely happen alone. Aftershocks can be as big if not bigger than the main quake.
This had to stop before some idiot thought he was God. Strike that. Some idiot already did think he was God, or else they wouldn't have tested it on their own people.
What could I do, without tipping my own hand? Jail does not appeal to me, even for a good cause.
I thought about it for a while, drank a few beers, and let my consciousness fade until I had the right idea. They already knew that a hacker had got into the Pentagon. Why not let them know that someone knew?
I used my original method of hacking into the Pentagon and took the precaution of setting up more than forty phone numbers before placing the call. Once in I hacked into E-Mail and posted a general notice (which I had composed before signing on) that read as follows:
Dear Mr. Joint Chiefs:
Don't bother investigating the man (or woman - I don't know) who owns this access code and password. He won't know what the hell this is about. I'm the hacker who accessed your records that you told the press about yesterday. I know you'll believe me because of my method. I used the space shuttle. Anybody else who reads this will be whopper gonzo confused, but you will know.
I know you didn't trace me hacking in through this system. I know you can't do it without me being on the system for a while, and I haven't ever been on long enough. I've hacked on this way before as well.
It was a nice experiment I witnessed yesterday. Really shook things up, didn't you? You know what I mean.
Anyway, I have been wondering something. This was what I believe is called a "surgical strike" type of operation. You must have felt pretty confident about it, considering the potential damage you could have done to your people. But it worked, and you must be feeling pretty proud.
But I suspect that there have been others. Perhaps one in the Ukraine a little while back, that killed over 100,000 people and set the region economically back into the stone age? A "not-so-surgical strike" perhaps? What would their leaders think?
Yes, it's blackmail I'm hitting you with. I'll admit that you probably had nothing to do with that mess, but will they?
Shut the process down. I'll know if you try it again.
I have the same maps you do, and you know it.
After the message was sent, I signed off and destroyed the link, and I haven't hacked my way into the Pentagon since.
It wasn't long after that the quake that became known as the "Whittier Narrows Quake" hit. This was a medium sized quake that hit the eastern part of Los Angeles County. A lot of property was damaged, and a few people were killed. Although the newspapers reported that this fault line was previously undiscovered, it was on my map.
So this time I hacked into the Central Intelligence Agency's computer system instead. It was much harder, I'll tell you (I had to use logarithms this time), and my respect for them went up considerably. This time I left an E-Mail message for the Director, and posted it to a public bulletin board. It said:
Matter of National Security.
I've hacked into your system. I've done the Pentagon before. Ask Mr. Joint Chiefs, he knows who I am.
Ask him why he knows, and how. Investigate. That's a tip.
Three weeks later, Mr. Joint Chiefs decided to retire. Did anybody else notice? Like I said, my respect for the C.I.A. jumped.
Temporarily, but that's another story.
I've been studying earthquakes since that time, looking for more of the unexplained kind, but I don't think it's necessary. First of all, I may not know if it happens, because as I've recently discovered, we keep on discovering new fault lines all the time. Second of all, about two months after the resignation of Mr. Joint Chiefs, the U.S. Geological Survey office finally released the maps that had got me involved in all of this stuff in the first place. The big map I constructed is now public record.
My gut feeling is that we're safe, and so is everyone else. The world has cooled off a great deal since the 80's. At least as for as this kind of thing goes. You know what I mean.
Anyway, I'm on a new pet project now, in my spare time. I've been wondering if the same technology that caused that earthquake can be turned for good purposes? Suppose we try to use it to try to predict earthquakes? I know a lot of people who would rest easier if that were possible.
I'll have a few beers and give it some thought.