Approaching Zero
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The Extraordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers, And Keyboard Criminals
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Paul Mungo
Bryan Glough
*****
This book was originally released in hardcover by Random House in 1992.
I feel that I should do the community a service and release the book in the medium it should have been first released in... I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did..It provides a fairly complete account of just about everything.....From motherfuckers, to Gail 'The Bitch' Thackeray.....
Greets to all,
Golden Hacker / 1993
Death Incarnate / 1993
*****
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Golden Hacker and Death Incarnate were to lazy to do anything more than to put the book on a scanner and run an OCR on what it produced. There were however several small errors in the text - obviously result of OCRing it and not reading afterwards. I corrected most of them while reading the book from the screen. It is really worth reading - altough it shows hacker community from lamers point of view. Maybe someone will make TeX file of that, I'm too lazy, as I already read it <grin>
Emin <1993>
P.S. Steve Jackson won his case against SS and they will have to pay for their ignorance during witch hunts...
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PROLOGUE
Fry Guy watched the computer screen as the cursor blinked. Beside him a small electronic box chattered through a call routine, the numbers clicking audibly as each of the eleven digits of the phone number was dialed. Then the box made a shrill, electronic whistle, which meant that the call had gone through; Fry Guy's computer had been connected to another system hundreds of miles away.
The cursor blinked again, and the screen suddenly changed. WELCOME TO CREDIT
SYSTEMS OF AMERICA, it read, and below that, the cursor pulsed beside the prompt: ENTER ACCOUNT NUMBER.
Fry Guy smiled. He had just broken into one of the most secure computer systems in the United States, one which held the credit histories of millions of American citizens. And it had really been relatively simple. Two hours ago he had called an electronics store in Elmwood, Indiana, which--like thousands of other shops across the country--relied on Credit Systems of America to check its customers' credit cards.
"Hi, this is Joe Boyle from CSA . . . Credit Systems of America," he had said, dropping his voice two octaves to sound older--a lot older, he hoped--than his fifteen years. He also modulated his natural midwestern drawl, giving his voice an eastern twang: more big-city, more urgent.
"I need to speak to your credit manager . . . uh, what's the name? Yeah, Tom. Can you put me through?"
Tom answered.
"Tom, this is Joe Boyle from CSA. You've been having some trouble with your account?"
Tom hadn't heard of any trouble.
"No? That's really odd.... Look, I've got this report that says you've been having problems. Maybe there's a mistake somewhere down the line. Better give me your account number again."
And Tom did, obligingly reeling off the eight-character code that allowed his company to access the CSA files and confirm customer credit references. As Fry Guy continued his charade, running through a phony checklist, Tom, ever helpful, also supplied his store's confidential CSA password. Then Fry Guy keyed in the information on his home computer. "I don't know what's going on," he finally told Tom. "I'll check around and call you back."
But of course he never would. Fry Guy had all the information he needed: the account number and the password. They were the keys that would unlock the CSA computer for him. And if Tom ever phoned CSA and asked for Joe Boyle, he would find that no one at the credit bureau had ever heard of him. Joe Boyle was simply a name that Fry Guy had made up.
