The Soviet hacker gang wasn't the only reason for the subsequent U.S. government crackdown on the computer underworld. But the threat of a Communist plot to steal top-secret military data was enough to focus the attention of the previously lethargic investigators. The federal authority's lack of urgency in dealing with what appeared to be a threat to national security had been documented by Clifford Stoll in The Cuckoo's Egg, and the diffidence displayed by the FBI and the Secret Service in that case had caused them a great deal of embarrassment. After Stoll's disclosures, the authorities began monitoring hacker bulletin boards much more closely.
One of the boards staked out by the Secret Service was Black ICE, the Legion of Doom's favorite, located somewhere in Richmond, Virginia. On March 4, 1989, two days after the arrest of the Soviet hacker gang, intrigued Secret Service agents recorded the following exchanges:
I SAW SOMETHING IN TODAY'S PAPER THAT REALLY BURNS ME, growled a Legionnaire known as Skinny Puppy, initiating a series of electronic messages.' He continued:
SOME WEST GERMAN HACKERS WERE BREAKING INTO SYS- TEMS AND SELLING INFO TO THE RUSSIANS. IT'S ONE THING REINa A HACKER. IT'S ANOTHER BEING A TRAITOR. IF I FIND
OUT THAT ANYONE ON THIS BOARD HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT, I WILL PERSONALLY HUNT THEM DOWN AND MAKE THEM WISH THEY HAD BEEN BUSTED BY THE FBI. I AM CON- SIDERING STARTING MY OWN INVESTIGATION INTO THIS INCIDENT AND DESTROYING A FEW PEOPLE THE BKA [German federal police] DIDN'T GET. DOES ANYONE CARE TO JOIN ME ON THIS CRUSADE? OR AT LEAST GIVE SUPPORT? CAN I CLAIM AN ACT UPON THESE CREEPS AS LOD VENGEANCE FOR DEFILING THE HACKERS IMAGE?
An hour and a half later the Prophet uploaded his response:
DON'T FROTH AT THE MOUTH, PUPPY; YOU'LL PROBABLY JUST ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF THE AUTHORITIES, WHO SEEM TO HAVE HANDLED THIS WELL ENOUGH ON THEIR OWN. TOO BAD THE IDIOTS AT NASA AND LOS ALAMOS COULDN'T HAVE DONE THE SAME. HOW MANY TIMES ARE THEY GOING TO ALLOW THEIR SECURITY TO BE PENETRATED? HOW DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT DOMESTIC HACKERS? MY GUESS IS, THE FEDS ARE GOING TO RF.AR DOWN ON IJS HARDER.
The Highwayman, one of the bulletin board's system operators, suggested, LET'S BREAK INTO THE SOVIET COMPUTERS AND GIVE
THE INFO TO THE CIA. I KNOW YOU CAN GET ON A SOVIET PSN [Public Switched Network, the public telephone system] FROM AN EAST
GERMAN GATEWAY FROM WEST GERMANY.
Other Legionnaires were less patriotic. Erik Bloodaxe said, TAKE MONEY ANY WAY YOU CAN! FUCK IT. INFORMATION IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY, AND SHOULD BE SOLD. IF THERE lS MONEY TO BE MADE, THEN MAKE IT. FUCK AMERICAN SECRETS. IT DOESN'T MATTER. IP RUSSIA REALLY WANTED SOMETHING, THEY WOULD PROBABLY GET IT ANYWAY. GOOD FOR WHOEVER SOLD IT TO THEM! The last message was posted late that same night. THIS GOVERNMENT DESERVES TO BE FUCKED, said the Urvile. I'M ALL FOR A GOVERNMENT THAT CAN HELP ME (HEY, COMRADE, GOT SOME SE-
CRETS FOR YOU CHEAP). FUCK AMERICA. DEMOCRACY lS FOR LOSERS.
DICTATORSHIP, RAH! RAH! At this early date there were rumors that Chaos had been involved with the Soviet hackers, even that some of its members had been arrested. One of the Legionnaires tried calling up Altos--the board in Munich that had become an internationa hacker hangout--to find out what was going on, but the board was down due to some sort of technical fault.
To the watching Secret Service agents, at least some of the messages suggested that American hackers might well follow in the footsteps of the Soviet hacker gang and go into business selling military or industrial secrets. It was disquieting--even if the characteristic hacker bravado was taken into account.
But in reality, the Soviet hacker gang was only a momentary distraction for the Legion of Doom. By the next day the flurry of interest had died out; the bulletin board messages resumed the usual pattern--technical queries; reports on hacking sites; postings about police surveillance, about Secret Service monitoring, about the FBI and the CIA.
Black ICE was the LoD's principal board, and was restricted to twenty users (mostly LoD members). It was accessed by remote call forwarding, which kept it- -or so it was believed--one step ahead of the law. The name Black ICE came from a novel by the science-fiction writer William Gibson. ICE, for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics, was a program that kept watch for hackers; when it detected them, it literally "fried their brains"--the deadly "black" countermeasure.
