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PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN { SummerCon '87 } PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN
^*^ ^*^
PWN Phrack World News PWN
^*^ Issue XIV/2 ^*^
PWN PWN
^*^ "SummerCon Strikes" ^*^
PWN PWN
^*^ Created, Written, and Edited ^*^
PWN by Knight Lightning PWN
^*^ ^*^
PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN { SummerCon '87 } PWN ^*^ PWN ^*^ PWN
Welcome to Phrack World News Issue XIV/2. This issue features the exclusive
coverage of SummerCon '87, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri during the
weekend of June 19-21, 1987. Before we get to the bulk of the issue I'd like
to make a note that most of the people who originally claimed that they would
attend did not show up, but this didn't stop us from having a great time. -KL
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PreCon'87; Tuc Sunday, June 14, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It all started Sunday with the arrival of Tuc from New York. He checked in at
the Executive International Best Western and then later went to visit the
Volkswagon Car exhibit that was currently appearing in St. Louis at the
National Museum Of Transportation.
Taran King and Knight Lightning went to meet Tuc at the hotel unaware that he
had not yet returned from his visit. In the meantime they contacted several
other associates to learn more about other guest's plans of arrival.
Sometime later, Tuc returned to the hotel and fell for a trick pulled by
Knight Lightning and opened the door to his room. From here, PreCon'87 began
and before too long Forest Ranger joined KL and TK. After some more
greetings, Tuc unveiled some of his surprises including a few of his business
cards.
The gathering broke up for a few hours and then regrouped (with the addition
of Cheap Shades) back at the hotel. From there, Forest Ranger led the rest of
us on a trek into Illinois (where they sell alcohol on Sundays). We finally
reached a place called "Fast Eddie's," which served not only as a liquor
store, but as a bar and whorehouse as well. Tuc and FR made their purchase
and the party left for the hotel.
Things remained pretty calm for a while, as we contented ourselves with the
consumption of alcoholic beverages. However, as the night lingered on, we
became restless and loud. It wasn't long until lawn furniture started to
disappear from the hotel's pool patio and this is when we received our first
call from the hotel desk. Soon afterwards, we decided that is was time to eat
and so we sent out for pizza.
Now, although we tried to keep the noise level down, apparently there were
still complaints about us. About 27 minutes after we ordered the pizza, we
received a visit from FR's sister-in-law who brought us a warning. "Get the
hell out of here, the police are on their way!" That's all we needed to hear.
Beer cans were grabbed and we were running for the door, when the hotel
manager and security arrived. We explained that we were leaving and ran down
the hallway. All of the sudden, the Domino's Pizza deliver man shows up. FR
yelled, "Yo, Domino's dude. If you want to get paid, come down here!" There
was no reaction. "Hey, you can deliver it to us here now or to jail, and then
you won't get a tip." He finally got the point.
We grabbed the pizza and headed for a field north of Lambert Field (St. Louis
International Airport). The place was known as the PVA (Private Viewing
Area), but FR informed us that it was really a PFA (Private Fucking Area) as
we noticed when we arrived. However, we were content with eating our pizza
and drinking what was left of the beer. The hotel tried to get Tuc to pay for
the room next door to his because the occupant complained that he didn't get
any sleep. Tuc refused and checked out of the Best Western.
______________________________________________________________________________
PreCon'87; The Omni International Hotel Thursday, June 18, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This event was hardly as eventful as the previous one, but at least I can fill
in a few blank days. Monday, June 15, 1987, we all saw the movie "The Witches
of Eastwick" and visited North West Plaza. Tuesday, June 16, 1987, I don't
know about because I wasn't there. Wednesday, June 17, 1987, KL, TK, and Tuc
visited Union Station (a luxurious shopping mall) and Tuc picked up souvenirs
for friends back home.
On Thursday we had several guests arrive. Dan The Operator (a real geek)
arrived the earliest and Lucifer 666 and Synthetic Slug arrived a little later
(together). Excluding Cheap Shades at the time, we all converged at Taran's
house where the excited crowd wanted to see Metal Shop Private. Sadly though,
a disassembled shell was all that remained. It wasn't long before we became
bored and left for the hotel. L666 and SS got a room and we killed the rest
of the afternoon at North West Plaza. Afterwards we began to party it up in
the room while watching TV.
Some hours later, we received a call from Bill From RNOC, who was traveling
with Ninja NYC. They were at The Omni International Hotel, downtown and
adjoining to Union Station. The Omni is one the most expensive hotels in the
city and we were all anxious to see it. KL, TK, Dan The Operator, and Tuc
left to go visit Bill and Ninja.
After some misadventures in downtown St. Louis, we arrived at The Omni, which
was a pretty secure building. The elevators required a room key to be
operated. It seems kinda silly though when you consider that the stairs
didn't. So up we went to the third floor where Bill and Ninja were actually
staying.
The rooms at The Omni aren't a whole lot bigger than at Best Western, but they
are quite a bit nicer. They have a TV and a phone in the bathroom. The main
TV is remote control and gives you a billing readout on channel 3. It was
different.
Bill came well prepared for the Con, he had stacks of old and new issues of
2600 Magazine and other propaganda and material. He had several other
interesting items as well including his mysterious notebooks that never left
his sight. However, the most intriguing item that he had with him was his
"bible." "Engineering and Operations in the Bell System" published by AT&T
Bell Laboratories. You can guess what was inside.
So we all talked for a while and then said our goodbyes. The rest of the
evening was for the most part uneventful for us, however, back at Best
Western, Forest Ranger was lighting everything on fire and L666 attempted
(unsuccessfully) to breath fire. I guess he wanted to live up to his name.
SummerCon '87 was about to begin.
______________________________________________________________________________
SummerCon '87; The Beginning Friday Morning, June 19, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was the day we had been waiting for. Dan The Operator had shared a room
with Tuc (and he still hasn't paid his share) and Bill From RNOC and Ninja NYC
got a room at the Best Western. Everyone soon gathered in Bill's room and
decided to order pizza.
So we called Pizza Hut, which was just down the road and Bill was very
surprised to discover that they did not have "BIG Igloo Jugs." After
harassing the lady on the phone for a while, Tuc, TK, KL, Shades, and Dan left
to go pick up the pizza. We didn't know Dan was taping us, but that story
will be told later. We messed around at Pizza Hut for a while and then headed
back to the hotel. On the way we had a drag race with some guy who thought he
had a cool car, we won.
It wasn't much longer until Sir Francis Drake arrived bearing surprises. With
him was Dr. Strangelamb (named for Dr. Stranglove, who wasn't too happy about
it), a small stuffed black sheep that makes a "baa" sound when turned over.
Lucifer 666 had a lot of fun at the Con playing with it. SFD also had several
pictures of Oryan QUEST, his car, and Aiken Drum. As far as QUEST's pictures
go, well lets just say that The Executioner's file in Phrack 13 was totally
correct.
While back at the hotel, we had some problems with the management. They
didn't appreciate our attempts at putting up signs in the lobby for SummerCon
people. We worked something out, but on a nearby payphone was perhaps the
strangest person we encountered the whole weekend. It was some weird lady who
barked and scream and kicked the wall, while on the phone. FR was on the
phone next to her and she screamed the word "COCKSUCKER!" He looked at her
and she said "My son-in-law, what an asshole." FR's response was, "Uh yeah, I
think I know some people like that."
We relaxed for a while back in Bill's room (We couldn't stand to stay in
L666's room because of the lingering smell of Synthetic Slug's shoes). As we
became bored, things started to be taken apart. Like the TV, phone, and the
internal speaker system in the room. Throughout all of this, Dan The Operator
had been taping us, but again that will be explained later.
______________________________________________________________________________
SummerCon '87; Lets Party! Friday Afternoon-Evening, June 19, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lex Luthor and The Leftist arrived at St. Louis Center and called for further
directions. After a long and tiring ordeal, they finally learned how to reach
us. Unfortunately it was rush hour and it would take them some time. We
killed an hour and before long they joined us at Best Western.
After introductions were made, Tuc called Lex out into the hall, and then they
in turn called me, Taran King, and Bill From RNOC as well. The topic of
discussion was Dan The Operator who had hinted earlier that he was going to
get a picture of Lex Luthor, without his knowledge. Less than 3 minutes
later, Ninja NYC followed by Dan The Operator (tape recorder on) sneaked out
the window and tried to reenter the hallway undetected. Ninja had no way of
knowing what we were discussing and thus allowed Dan to come with. Suddenly
we all started to run towards Dan with the intention of beating the hell out
of him. However, he sneaked back into the room through the window.
Once the excitement was over we headed out to dinner. It was mostly
uneventful, except for the conversations on the way. I don't know what went
on in Tuc's car, but in mine we discussed Dan. We split into two groups, one
went to Imo's (a pizza joint) and the rest of us (Bill From RNOC, Ninja NYC,
Lex Luthor, Tuc, The Leftist, and myself) went to a regular sit-down
restaurant. We discussed all sorts of different things both phreak and
non-phreak related, but again the main topic was Dan.
Soon we were joined by the others and we left to go back to Best Western where
we found The Disk Jockey, LOKI, and Control C. These guys came extremely well
prepared. They rented a station wagon somewhere in Michigan and filed it with
a cooler (you can guess what was inside that), tons of magazines, manuals,
electrical equipment, a mobile phone transmitter/receiver, and Control C's IBM
PC, hard disk drive, and modem.
After which, Phantom Phreaker, Doom Prophet, Data Line, Forest Ranger, Bit
Master, and another friend of FR's showed up. SummerCon '87 had begun. It
was just a big party from then on, with the regular hotel party actions. Data
Line had brought lots of TeleComputist back issues to the TeleComputist room
and was distributing them around.
At different times during the night, the elevators were jammed and several
people at the Con decided to go up on the roof. However, many of them also
decided to search for the hotel's PBX system. Somewhere along the way,
Control C, The Leftist, Lucifer 666, Cheap Shades, and I found ourselves
locked inside the staircase of the main building.
The doors only opened from the outside, except at the bottom. Unfortunately
opening the door at the bottom would result in sounding the fire alarm in the
building. This was bad news because that was the last thing we needed. Even
if it wasn't our fault there would be complications. So the five of us split
up and each took a door to bang on. The hotel was mostly empty in these
areas, but I knew that there were people on floor ten. So Lucifer 666 and I
ran up ten flights of stairs and pounded on the door until we finally got a
response, several in fact and many of the people weren't happy (it was after
11 PM). Before too long we had rounded up the rest of our crew and made it
back to the rooms just in time to say good-bye to Phantom Phreaker and Doom
Prophet who were leaving for home (they would return for the Con tomorrow).
Several more hours of partying commenced, as well as hourly pizza deliveries.
Everyone was having a great time, however as the night dragged on, the concern
regarding Dan The Operator and his camera (and other things) grew. He had
been found already talking to John Maxfield once that night on the payphones
and had been caught asking questions about several of the people at the Con.
It wasn't long before the word "TeleTrial" began to be chanted by most of the
Con-goers.
The interested parties gathered in the TeleComputist room and the
interrogation began. Dan The Operator's explanations of events that evening
had been proven false as they contradicted each other. The next step was to
search his belongings. Forest Ranger led the prosecution and started through
Dan's notebooks. In it was information about several of the people at the con
and Taran King's and Forest Ranger's addresses (Dan had been to both their
homes where he could have found the addresses). There were also phone numbers
belonging to people that several Con-goers called. Obviously Dan had been
keeping his eyes and ears open in order to gather information.
Dan became worried when FR wanted to search his suitcase and they stepped
outside for a moment. For some reason Dan was worried about us seeing his
dirty underwear. Now why would he become so frantic about dirty underwear
unless there was something especially dirty about it. You can come to your
own conclusions about this one. Anyway, Dan brought all sorts of electrical
equipment with him, including welding equipment and light switches and things.
The most hilarious item that he brought was Garfield the cat, a stuffed animal
that he slept with.
The camera, tape recorder, film, and tapes were confiscated for later
examining and being that is was around 4 AM, everyone decided to get some
sleep.
______________________________________________________________________________
SummerCon '87; Conference Time Saturday, June 20, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taran King, Cheap Shades, and I arrived back at Best Western around 12 AM.
Most of the other Con people were either still asleep or out for breakfast.
By 12:45 almost everyone was back and we proceeded to the "Kitty Hawk Room."
Some of the clothing worn at the Con reflected the person's interests.
Bill From RNOC - Computer Hacker (pic)
Lex Luthor - VAX/VMS Rules!
Tuc - UNIX Bozo
The Con started off rather slow as no one really knew how to get it started.
Finally Lex Luthor decided to discuss the current rumors about the BBS
decline. From there the topics included;
Bulletin Boards
Busts (Texas, Virginia, New York)
Fiber Optics
Automatic Number Identification (ANI)
REMOBS
Laws
Handles
Groups
Broadway Hacker
Methods of blowing 2600 Hertz
SCCS
4TELs
800 CLID
Later, Bill From RNOC told some stories about his exploits and proceeded to
draw diagrams of whatever came to mind. Phantom Phreaker and Doom Prophet
were upset that no one wanted to discuss CAMA.
In the meantime, I noticed that Dan The Operator had disappeared. Forest
Ranger and I investigated only to discover that the tapes had disappeared as
well. We caught up with Dan later and discovered that the tapes were now in
Control C's rented station wagon. LOKI let me in and I took the cassette I
had been looking for and a roll of film. The tape had all of my SummerCon
article memos on it and this article is partially the result. We didn't know
about side B, but more on that later.
After the Con, Taran King, Control C, Lucifer 666, Bill From RNOC, and I
headed out to my house where we had some serious copying to do. Control C
brought his computer and we began to copy Metal Shop Private on to his hard
disk drive. While this was going on, Lucifer was receiving a copy of my very
own PWN software to aid him when he takes over with issue XVI. I left the
cassette and film at my house, its a pity I didn't play it right away because
this article would have had a very different end.
Anyway, we finished up and then headed to Chesterfield Mall, a nearby shopping
center. From there we proceeded to the local CO and recovered some
interesting artifacts. Our next stop was to pick up some hardware that we
needed and then more trashing. We returned to Best Western and learned that
Lex Luthor and The Leftist had left due to Leftist's tight schedule.
The rest of the afternoon was mostly uneventful. Lots of rain and not much to
do. As night approached, the party part of the Con began to restart. Several
of us got bored with this and decided to explore parts of the hotel. We found
a Navy wedding reception and decided to take in the food. The management
didn't approve and we were bounced. So then we decided to take a look at the
telephone wiring boxes in the hallways of the buildings. The problem was that
to open them you had to rip out part of the wall. Nevertheless, things have a
way of happening and the residents of several wings of the hotel found
themselves without phone service.
The management didn't like what was happening at all and called the police to
investigate. They spotted several of us running around the hotel and it was a
mad dash back to the rooms for cover. LOKI was spotted going through an open
window into Lucifer 666's room and the police decided to investigate it more
closely. After an hour of panic and excitement, things cooled down and most
of the people in Lucifer 666's room either went to sleep or were playing with
Control C's computer and logging on to Metal Shop Private.
We were bored and so Ninja NYC, Bill From RNOC, Taran King, Tuc, and I decided
to go throw ice on Dan The Operator. We ran down the hall and banged on
L666's door. Suddenly one of the hotel managers appeared and threatened us
that if we didn't go to our rooms and keep quiet he would call the police. We
left the hall and went to the back parking lot. Ninja started a wheel rolling
towards the building and we all knew what the result would be <CRASH!>.
Before it hit we ran at full speed around to the front of the hotel where we
were greeted by a hefty officer of the Bridgeton Police Department. He was
sort of leaning on his car facing us. It was so eerie because it almost
seemed as though he knew we were coming and was waiting for us. We slowed
down considerably until he said, "Run to me boys." No one really reacted
until he said it again, "C'mon run to me boys." Ten seconds later he was
joined by the asshole manager that had yelled at us not more than 60 seconds
ago. "How old are you!?" he asked checking for curfew violations. Our
replies varied from 17 to 21. "Where are you from!?" Bill and Tuc replied
New York, the rest of us kept quiet. "Lets see some room keys!" We showed
him two keys and then he looked at the asshole manager and said, "They belong
here." "Why are you outside, what are you doing!" Taran replied, "Going to
get something to eat, is that okay mister!?"
Our car was parked next to his and we took off for a while. He tried to
follow us, but we quickly left his jurisdiction. While we were out we found
the home of Bigfoot (the truck). We messed around there for a while and then
returned to Best Western and walked around some of the vacant floors of the
hotel.
The only other interesting activity we did that evening was a 3 AM trip to a
24 hour food store. Bill From RNOC, Taran King, Tuc, Sir Francis Drake, and I
went to a Super Schnucks and messed around there. It was huge and we almost
lost SFD. After making a few purchases, we went back to the home of Bigfoot
and Taran decided to play bumper car with some of the super huge tires in the
parking lot. We returned to the hotel for the last time and found Ninja NYC
on the phone with L666's current girlfriend. We harassed her for a while and
then I fell asleep. Taran and a few others made a few other trips around town
and woke me up at about 6 AM Sunday morning.
______________________________________________________________________________
SummerCon '87; Good-bye & Good Luck! Sunday, June 21, 1987
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forest Ranger dropped by early to take Bill From RNOC and Ninja NYC to the
train station, Taran King went along for the ride. It would be over 24 hours
before they got home. Tuc took Dan The Operator to the airport around 7 AM
and at about 8 AM Cheap Shades and I dropped off Sir Francis Drake who was on
his way to Boston. I took Cheap Shades home and then went back to my house to
crash out.
Forest Ranger went back to Best Western to find everyone in Bill's room. Bill
and Ninja never checked out because of an excessively large phone bill that
they didn't want to pay, so everyone took advantage of this situation and
started to to order room service. Sometime later a bellboy appeared to
collect the money due for the room service and everyone left leaving Forest
Ranger behind. "Hey, I'll be right back, I left my wallet in my car, hold on
a sec, okay?" FR never returned and everyone went home except for Tuc who was
at another hotel (He took a room at Ben Franklin because he wasn't welcome at
Best Western after what happened the Sunday previous).
Around 10 AM, I decided that I didn't feel like sleeping and started playing
the tape only to find several unauthorized recordings. Dan had been taping us
all throughout the Con, but the interesting parts came later. There was part
of an Alliance teleconference on the tape where Dan tried to act like he was
some real important person (what a joke!) and a botched up social engineering
job. The BIG shocker hit when I flipped the tape over to discover 45 minutes
of a conversation with John Maxfield aka Cable Pair of BoardScan. I won't go
into details about the conversations right now, but the scary part is that the
tape ends before the phone call does. In other words we don't know exactly
how much information was passed, but we do know that it has been an ongoing
thing, perhaps for months. An actual overview and possible transcript of these
conversations will appear in PWN XV.
I was in shock. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! It especially hurt
when information was passed about people that I actually knew and had met. If
only I had played that tape the night before, this would be a different story
entirely. I didn't know exactly what to do. I had stopped calling out, but I
was willing to pay for a few calls to spread the news. The only problem was
that the majority of the people I wanted to contact were still en route home
or unreachable. I finally was able to reach Tuc who was still in St. Louis.
He dropped by and I played him the tape. Since then, Taran King and Forest
Ranger have also heard most of the tape and preliminary investigations have
begun.
We have discovered some information linking Dan The Operator to the FBI, but
more on that next issue.
______________________________________________________________________________
PWN SummerCon '87 Quicknotes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SummerCon Promotional Posters were created by Lucifer 666. They featured many
trademarks of well known telecommunications companies as well as different
plans and schematics for boxes and other equipment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Southern Baptists were in town during the week for some National
convention of their own.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnny Rotten was supposed to appear at SummerCon '87 and called to confirm
his plans on Friday Evening, June 19, 1987. He never appeared.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The full guest list of SummerCon '87 includes;
Bill From RNOC / Bit Master / Cheap Shades / Control C / Dan The Operator
Data Line / Doom Prophet / Forest Ranger / Knight Lightning / Lex Luthor
LOKI / Lucifer 666 / Ninja NYC / Phantom Phreaker / Sir Francis Drake
Synthetic Slug / Taran King / The Disk Jockey / The Leftist / Tuc
In closing, SummerCon '87 was a fantastic success and anyone who missed it,
missed out! See you next year at SummerCon '88. Plans are already being
made!
:Knight Lightning
______________________________________________________________________________