Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace (18 page)

many hackers disagreed with the MOD style much in the same way

Phiber Optik had enjoyed humiliating those "in the know" publically [sic]....

Eli also started a chapter called "MOD Policy, " in which he articulates the group's code of ethics and what he calls "DA RULEZ. "

MOD generally frowns upon mischievous stunts that lead to abuse

of a system, damaging of a system or any type of anarchy for no

apparent reason other than to "be c00l. "

When Paul saw that paragraph, much later, he remembered The Learning Link computer crash. He was amazed at the obvious spin control his friend was putting on the MOD gang's exploits. He felt the same way when he read that MOD no longer stood for Masters of Disaster. Now they were the Masters of Deception, according to Eli. Sounds less threatening and certainly, less destructive.

The Masters of Deception. That was a good one. Who was deceiving who?

Of course, there was plenty of reason for spin control in those days. In the wake of the raids and the Harper's forum, the media had discovered MOD in a big way. In fact, the whole hacking scene was making the news. It was a heady feeling, especially for Eli. Six months ago, he was in the background, just a kid hanging out with friends who knew a lot more about the technical aspects of hacking than he did. Maybe he even felt a little insecure about it. But the Harper's forum had given him stature. He was a national celebrity now. He was Acid Phreak. Now, everybody wanted to hear what Eli had to say.

Tonight, in fact, two reporters from Newsday mingle among the adolescents in the atrium's open expanse of ferns and chrome rails and fresh-juice joints. The Village Voice is doing a really huge piece about MOD, and EH has taken that reporter under his wing. Esquire wants to do a primer on how to hack. Geraldo's people are sniffing around, and a screenwriter is even talking to Mark about a movie.

Everything is a media event these days. And what the media want to see is some real live hacking. Break into things, they plead. Show us how to social engineer, they beg. Log in to the phone company, create an unbillable phone number, smile for the camera. To help his friends navigate the unknown, Eli writes in "The History of MOD": Mention should be made to all other members of a media event concerning the group in any way. (Don't hog the show) The media is a VERY tricky thing to deal with. They are looking for sensationalism.

But wait: Aren't Eli and Mark the subject of a major federal investigation? Wasn't thousands of dollars' worth of their computer equipment just confiscated?

It would make sense to lay low. On the other hand, all the attention is a little overhwelming and it really doesn't feel like they're in big trouble. Instead, it feels like they'd just got discovered. John Perry Barlow has even recovered sufficiently from the mesmerizing appearance of his credit history on his computer screen to travel to New York, where he'd met Mark and Eli face-to-face. Well, actually, he'd been in town on some other business. An NBC producer wanted Barlow to defend the use of LSD on some TV news show segment, since Barlow had been, after all, the one who'd gotten the Grateful Dead to come to Millbrook in 1967 to hang out with Timothy Leary.

The NBC producer happened to be dating the Harper's editor who had put together the hacker forum. So somehow, Barlow found himself at dinner with the editor, the producer, and the hackers. They all met at Shun Lee, a Manhattan restaurant known not only for its delicious Chinese menu but also for its sixties' sophisticate decor (James Bond meets red-eyed dragons). Mark and Eli were immaculately dressed and on their best behavior when they slid into one of the long low booths that skirt Shun Lee's perimeter. Bravely, they ate jellyfish.

Barlow thought he knew exactly who these boys were. He recognized an earlier incarnation of himself. He ordered bourbon and water and slipped the drinks to (underage) Mark. The boys, although obviously spooked by the recent raids, weren't about to back off from their hacking activities. They said it was a matter of honor.

Barlow couldn't help but think of beavers.

He used to go to war with beavers on the ranch. They'd get into the irrigation ditches and build dams. As soon as Barlow would blow up one dam, they'd build another, twice as big and a lot uglier. It put those beavers under a lot of pressure to build those darns under those conditions. But they couldn't help it.

And here was Mark, a beaver in Barlow's eyes. Mark's turf was blown up by the feds and he was still coming back for more. The raid only validated his experience, only made hacking more worth the effort. Here was a boy who had lived the better part of the first decades of his life in obscurity, devoted to his obsessive pursuits, who was unknown outside of a tiny circle of enthusiasts. And then suddenly one day he woke up and was famous. He was alive, he was important, he was brilliant. He knew all sorts of things about forbidden computer systems, and he no longer was just a kid filling up the long hours between "Star Trek" reruns. For the first time in Mark's life, he was somebody he was a public enemy, worthy

of the attention of the government of the United States at the highest levels. Not to mention the attention of Harper's magazine, Esquire magazine, "Good Morning America, " and The Village Voice.

Soon after that dinner, Barlow returned to Pinedale and felt like a furtive beaver himself. It was a coincidence, maybe, that the FBI cornered Barlow, too, but it was an event that had far-reaching consequences.

An FBI agent came to call at the ranch, asking Barlow an afternoon's worth of questions. Someone had stolen the proprietary code embedded in the microprocessors of Apple's Macintosh computers. The code made Macs unique, and now someone was anonymously mailing it around on floppy disks (even Barlow had gotten one in the mail). Did Barlow mind talking about the theft?

How the FBI had gotten Barlow's name was anybody's guess. But the whole experience made Barlow realize how profoundly ignorant the entire federal government was about computers, civil liberties, and the electronic frontier.

As he would later write about FBI agent Baxter, in a groundbreaking manifesto he called "Crime and Puzzlement": I... found in his straggles a framework for understanding a series of recent Secret Service raids on some young hackers I'd met in a Harper's magazine forum on computers and freedom. And it occurred to me that this might be the beginning of a great paroxysm of governmental confusion during which everyone's liberties would become at risk.

Barlow posted his writings on the WELL, where they were read by Lotus 1-2-3 creator and zen millionaire Mitch Kapor.

Kapor, who lives in Boston, was struck by Barlow's description of the FBI agent's visit to the ranch because Kapor coincidentally had been visited by an East Coast version of Agent Baxter. Kapor was also unnerved at the direction the world seemed to be taking. Obsessive about computers himself

in his youth Kapor had driven from Boston to New

Hampshire to avoid the sales tax that stood between him and his first Apple II Kapor empathized with the plight of

Phiber Optik, Acid Phreak, and Scorpion.

One day, Kapor called Barlow from his private jet and asked if he could detour from a scheduled business trip to visit Pinedale. There was a local airstrip, so within hours, the two men were hatching a plan for a new group, a national organization that would fight vigorously to protect civil liberties in cyberspace. The group's name would be the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Kapor and Barlow decided that Mark and Eli needed some expert legal advice. With Kapor signing the checks, a meeting was arranged for Mark, Eli, and Paul with a lawyer at the sprawling Manhattan offices of the late Leonard Boudin, who at the time of his death months earlier was among the best known civil liberties lawyers in the country. Boudin had been the man who protected Cuba's U. S. interests for decades, and who represented Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa after his prison release.

The boys' meeting there in early 1990 was heady stuff. Subsequently, Kapor paid for Mark and Eli to fly to Boston to tell him their story in person. Mark got queasy on the plane; it was his first flight. No charges had been filed, no lawyers formally retained to defend the MOD boys. But the promise of protection seemed implicit. And protection would be welcome. Who knew how far this nonsense would go otherwise? MOD was not the only hackers' group under attack. The government had just raided three LOD hackers in Atlanta. A sting aimed at various hackers across the nation, called Operation Sundevil, was under way and, to the adults at least, the government was overreaching its authority. One man, an adult from Texas named Steve Jackson, was threatened in 1990 with the loss of his business, because federal agents had seized his company's computer system. It seemed they'd been after an LOD guy named The Mentor, an employee at Jackson's company, which created role-playing games in the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. Jackson at that time was working on a fantasy game about computer hackers, which the government apparently believed was a handbook for computer crime. Of course, the government's true agenda was anyone's guess. The government didn't have to tell you what it was up to. One day agents could show up at your door, hand you a warrant, and take your stuff. Out the door would go the precious computer systems of Steve Jackson Games.

And the maddening thing of it was, no one was getting arrested; the government seized this stuff, then sat on it. Jackson would later be vindicated, but that was of no comfort now. The situation resembled a scene from George Orwell's 1984.

The times are perilous, but at least hackers are now getting the attention they deserve. With all the excitement, MOD'S

ranks are growing. One recently inducted member is The Plague, who studies programming at a Manhattan college. The Plague is the scion of Russian emigre parents. He has a light brown pony tail and high cheekbones, a good-looking kid who looks like Ilya Kuriakan in the "Man from U. N. C. L. E. " The Plague is paranoid, and at today's gathering, he keeps close watch on anyone he suspects might be a government informant. "Follow him, " The Plague hisses to a friend as a hacker named Long John Silver surreptitiously slips up the stairs to Third Avenue.

There's The Seeker, the "electronics" expert who loves to build all manner of devices to cheat the phone company. Mark likes to stay overnight at his Manhattan apartment.

John Lee is in MOD now, too. So is his friend Julio Fernandez, a kid from the Bronx who uses the handle Outlaw. Julio's in the group basically because he's John's friend. John's induction into MOD was only natural, because of his intense thirst for computer conquests; all he wants to do is penetrate new systems. He's learned so much about hacking and cracking in the one year since he got his modem that he's caught up with the rest of the MOD pack. He'll do anything to get into a new computer. He breaks into a network, then turns over the information to the other MOD members. He's the scout; they chart the territory.

On the pay phone, John connects to an operator. "Hey, I'm up on a pole here, " he says, using his deepest, most authoritative, most adult voice. It's Supernigger's signature line and has become standard patter; they all use it now. If only the operator could see John, a tall, twenty-year-old black kid in a white T-shirt and khaki pants so baggy they could hold a friend. He doesn't look at all the part he's playing

a white, middle-aged, tool-belted lineman doing a service

check. But he sounds the part. And maybe that's enough. Just maybe the operator will fall for his smooth line of technobabble and give him an open line.

"Yeah, I need

damn. "

Disconnected.

John hangs up.

The hackers are all watching, but not watching, on this drizzly not-quite-spring afternoon. It would be lame to pay too much attention. On the other hand, John's stunt is the most interesting thing that has happened today.

John has been hanging with Eli and Mark electronically ever since the raids. But mostly, he hangs with Julio, who looks enough like Eli to be his little brother. He has black hair cut to a fade, intelligent brown eyes, an eager, teach me attitude.

He wants to know as much as Mark and the others. Julio's a good dude, a little young, but he has a nice swagger, a Bronx-tough way of talking when he needs to. He doesn't let anyone push him around. Julio's a little cowed by Mark, though. Most people shrivel under Mark's technical cross-examinations. Julio doesn't shrivel. But sometimes he keeps his distance.

There's also a serious core group of hackers who come to the 2600 meetings with hopes of being anointed by MOD.

They want to be accepted, but for some reason or another (maybe the MOD boys can smell how bad they want in, and that odor is repellent) the wannabes stay on the fringes. They don't know enough. Or they act like they know too much.

Whatever. The wannabes offer Mark and Eli tidbits of information. They boast about their own exploits. They tag along to Around the Clock, a diner in Greenwich Village where the hackers go to eat after the meeting breaks up. But they won't get into MOD. Ever.

Alfredo DeLaFe suffers that fate.

There's one of him in every single classroom in America. He's the boy who's smart and eager, who wants to be accepted but can't help being a little bit of a know-it-all at just the wrong moment. Has to trumpet the fact that he knows the capital of Mozambique. Of course, the teacher likes him, and sure can't figure out why the other kids pick on him. There's the problem right there.

Alfredo was cherubic, and that's never helped. He was only fifteen, and that sure didn't help, either. He had black ringlets, which probably endeared him to his aunts, but definitely did not broadcast a cool image. He tried to imitate the way the others dressed, in heavy hiking boots and black T-shirts, but just when he thought he'd pulled it off, someone noticed the gold ring on his right pinky.

Alfredo used to run his own electronic bulletin board from the second-floor walkup where he lived, half a block from Central Park. Ten blocks south, and he'd have a tony address. As it was, even up in the mid-Nineties, he was not far from a really cool two-story McDonald's on Columbus Avenue. A space age McDonald's, with kind of a Star Trek theme. That was one thing in his favor, as far as the MOD boys were concerned. That was a reason to visit him. You had to eat.