Software problems are not uncommon, but few have such spectacular effects. And coming so soon after the computer bomb threat, rumors flourished that AT&T had been hit by hackers. In the course of researching this book, the authors were told more than once that the AT&T failure had been caused by a computer bomb. One source even claimed he could identify the culprit. The rumors continue to circulate, as they do about everything in the computer underworld.
However, there is absolutely no proof that it was a computer bomb, and AT&T's final, official explanation remains that the shutdown was caused by an errant piece of software.
The attack did not affect the emergency 911 numbers, which are handled by local carriers. Nor, even if it was a bomb, was it likely to have been linked to the previous incident. But it had taken place on a national holiday--Martin Luther King Day--and the coincidence bothered the authorities.
On January 18th, three days after the AT&T system collapsed the Secret Service began a nationwide sweep, targeting hacker gangs--in particular the Legion of Doom--and anyone who appeared to be a threat to the phone system.
Their first call was on Knight Lightning. The handle belonged to Craig Neidorf, a twenty-year-old prelaw student at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and one of the coeditors of the underground newsletter PHRACK. He was found in his room on the third floor of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house. Special Agent Tim Foley, who had been investigating the attacks on the telephone computer switches for seven months, and Reed Nolan, a security representative from Southwestern Bell Telephone, questioned Neidorf about an article in PHRACK on the electronic switching systems. They also brought up the E911 document. They knew that Neidorf had received a copy of the file from the Prophet, and had published it in PHRACK in February 1989. According to Foley, Neidorf admitted knowing that the E911 tutorial had been stolen from BellSouth.
The next day Foley returned with a search warrant and the local police. The ESS article had been forgotten; Neidorf was instead charged with ten felony counts centering on the publication of the E911 file in PHRACK. If found guilty, he faced a sentence of up to sixty-five years in prison.
On January 24, 1990, the Secret Service operation moved to Queens, New York, to the homes of several known hackers. The first target was a twenty-year-old known among the underground as Acid Phreak. When the Secret Service arrived, they told him that he was suspected of causing the AT&T crash nine days earlier. One of the agents pointed to his answering machine. "What's that for?"
he asked. "Answering the phone," Acid Phreak said. He wasn't arrested, but instead was asked to accompany the agents to their headquarters in the World Trade Center, where he was questioned until the early hours of the morning.
Phiber Optik, who also lives in Queens, was raided next. According to hacker lore, he was awakened in the middle of the night and confronted with nine loaded guns, which seems unlikely, as most other raids were conducted by one or two agents, usually accompanied by a telephone security man. Another New York hacker, the Scorpion, a friend of both Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak, was also raided on that day.
On March 1st the action moved to Texas, with an almost comically aggressive bust of a games publishing company.
The day started early, in Austin, with a dawn raid on the home of Loyd Blankenship. Loyd, known as the Mentor to colleagues in the Legion of Doom, was also sysop of an underground bulletin board, the Phoenix Project, and the author of a series of "hacker tutorials" in PHRACK. He and his wife were roused from their bed by a team of six Secret Service agents, a local cop, and a representative from Bellcore.
While his own computer and equipment were being seized, Loyd was driven to his office at Steve Jackson Games. The company specialized in publishing computer games, most of them involving role-playing of one sort or another. At the time it employed fifteen people and had a turnover of $500,000. Founded by Steve Jackson, the company also ran its own, completely legitimate bulletin board, which functioned as an information service for its customers. The only remarkable thing about the bulletin board was its name--Illuminati, after the secret, world-dominant sect that had so exercised the Soviet hacker gang. Computer enthusiasts the world over clearly read the same books.
