Pat first accessed ARPANET by using a default code. "Back then there was no real need for security," he says. "It was all incredibly simple. Computers were developed for human beings to use. They have to be simple to access because humans are idiots."
ARPANET became a game for him--he saw it as "a new frontier to play in." He jumped from computer to computer within the system, accessing everything from the main computers regulating the network to mainframes at the Pentagon, air force, and army installations and research centers. "It was like going through an electronic road map, trying to get somewhere, without knowing where," he says. Pat talks in vague terms about downloading information from the computers he accessed, but is evasive about what he did with it. He says that some of it was sold, although what he sold and to whom and for how much remains unclear.
It is more likely that selling the data was of secondary concern; he was merely "fascinated" by the intricacies of the new technology - "This is the information age," he says. "Knowing about computers made me feel more intelligent. Very few people had access to them, and even fewer understood them."
At about the time that he was first hacking into ARPANET, a new program called Super Zap appeared which could bypass copy protection on IBM PC-type software.
Pat thought that its function mirrored his own activities, so he decided to call himself Captain Zap.
By 1980 Captain Zap was becoming more and more adventurous. He had learned the dial-ups for the White House computer network, which he accessed regularly over the next year, and had also dialed directly into the Pentagon. He was going for prestige hacks.
He used to download information from the White House, reams and reams of computer paper, and bring it home to his wife. "Look what I've found!" he would shout, but she was less interested in what he had found than in the fact he could get caught. And whatever it was that he had discovered, he himself can't remember. "There was all sorts of bullshit," he says. Some of it was encrypted, some not, but none of it seems to have been very memorable.
There was another use for the White House phone number, however. He would sometimes call the central operator number--a voice number, not a dial-up--and in his best bureaucratic style say something like, "This is Mr. McNamara, admin counsel. I need a secure line to the American embassy in Germany." He swears that the operators would patch him through, and that once connected to the American embassy--on a secure line, from the White House--he could request another secure line to whatever local number he wanted to call. He claims that Mr. McNamara was just a name that he had made up, and that whether or not there was such a person, the operators never turned him down.
Captain Zap was a believer in "knowing the lingo"--the lingo being the language necessary, whether computer-speak, telcospeak, or even bureaucratese--to obtain information or to persuade people to help you. This practice, known as social engineering, is a by-product of hacking, simply getting information from someone by pretending to be someone else.
It works like this. Say you need the dial-up for a particular computer. You call the voice number of the target company and ask to speak to the computer operator. When you get through, you put on your best telco repairman's accent and say, "We're doing a few repairs on the computer lines in your area. Have you been having trouble with your terminal?" The answer is invariably yes. "Yeah, I thought so," you say. "Look, we need to check the line. Can you start up your system and run me through it? What's your dial-up?" And so on. In most cases the operator will volunteer not only the dial-up, but the log-in and password as well.
Social engineering takes a lot of the hassle out of hacking, And for adolescent hackers it has an additional attraction: it gives them a chance to put one over on an adult. Deceiving grown-ups has always been a youthful pastime; social engineerg demands it.
