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2600 Magazine - Volume 1, Number 4
2600 April, 1984
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SYSEftRO
VOLUME onf. number four
WHOSE STRIKE WAS THAT ANYWAY?
â Contract miles were breaking down between American
Telephone and Telegraph and ihe three major unions of
their employees. Asa result, workers walked off their jobs at
midnight on August 7th. The AT&T strike was on!
We all remember the phone strike of '83. It caused us to
bold on directory assistance for several minutes. It gave us
many unique error messages. It made it virtually impossible
to make any operator-assisted calls from all around the
country. For the first time in a long while, the voices at
AT&T were not answering the phone.
As we all know, a strike is an organized work stoppage by
the employees in order to compel the employer to meet some
demand. If the workers go on strike, it stands to reason that
the company should suffer, if, for example, the union of
Cabbage- PatchÂź producers was to strike, then none would
be made, the factories would quickly be emptied, and
consumers would rant and rave. If the local Cabbage*
PatchÂź conglomerate had anticipated a strike, they could
step up production. Till several hundred warehouses with
millions of the surrogate orphans and, when the strike
occurred, they could sell the surplus. The workers would
lose their bargaining power in this case, unless the Cahhagc-
PatchÂź truckersâ union also struck, or perhaps people stopped
adopting the cretins, however unlikely that might seem.
This analogy leads us back to last summer when 675,000
telephone employees went on strike. A walk-out of this
magnitude should have devastated any company, AT&T,
though, is the exception to the rule. What AT&T really
depends on are phones, wires, switching systems,
computers, electricity, some optical fibers, satellites,
microwave towers, and other nifty 2 1 si century things that
are all designed to run without the interference of human
decision. The people are really just there to remove illegal
third party phone calls from your bill, to make sure that
your handwritten check matches the computer-read phone
bill, or to tell you that the machine you are at cannot return
your dime and that you will get a check for 10c in the mail,
91% of all calls made today don't use any operator assistance
at all. And most of the other 3% could have been dialed
without the assistance of a human. More and more
âservicesâ of your phone company are becoming tompletefy
automated. With ESS. customers can dial overseas direct.
Android information is popping up left and right. AT&T, a
leader in technology, doesn't need their workers all that much.
Glen E. Watts, president of the Communications
Workers of America, saidTJn 1 950, for example* total labor
costs amounted to about 45% of the telephone dollar while
in 1980 they amounted only to 29%.." John Patrick Phillips
(author of Ma flW/'i MUiiom) says that the company
encourages or even âmaneuvers'" a strike. According to him,
Ma Bell reaps huge rewards, from a strike Phillips, a
disgruntled ex-employee, who at times compares the phone
company to fascism, would have presented AT&T's
organized scheme last August like this:
675,000 workers strike for ahoul 3 weeks. 3 weeks out of a
year amounts to 5,K% of it workerâs salary, IcTssaya phone
worker made at the lime o! the strike a modest S250pcr week
(operators made S37J. while systems technicians, the hesi
paid workers, made S535).
At this lime AT&T provided substandard service to the
people for the same prices. The 3%. loss in phone usage due
to lack of operators was probably easily made up by people
making an extra effort to dial direct and by the fact that
some of the calls were being handled by scabbing
supervisory icu:I employees. And so, the company nets pure
profit: 3 week strike x ÂŁ250/ week x 675,000 workers =
ÂŁ506.250,0001
Phillips also notes that because managers and supervisors
were doing the dirty work of the phone company, these
people could not work on new projects. This means that
several hundred million dollars would not be invested in
expenditures on new projects because there is no one to do
the work. So AT&T would get interest on this money
during the strike and even for some time after it was settled
until work had resumed. This yields several million more
dollars in profit for AT&T.
AT&T probably made out directly wilh over half a billion
dollars from the strike. At the same time companies like New
York Telephone sought to delay a $160 million rate increase so
it could ask for another increase to reflect new contracts.
As part of the settlement 21 days later, lop craft workers
got a 5.5% increase for the first year of their 3 year contract
and 1, 5%. for each of the next two years. They also got a S3 1
million training fund (ÂŁ46 per employee) to help them deal
with new technology and remain employable humans. Allof
these âgains" are subsidized by the half a billion dollars
gaining lots of interest which AT&T did not have to pay to
their employees, AT&T at first offered a ridiculous 3.5%,
increase for the first year and no increase for the next two,
but after losing 5.8% of their salary by striking, workers got
a 5.5% increase above the cost of living which is probably
entirely subsidized by the strike itself and by rate increases.
If s certainly a nifty deal for Ma Bell. Ttieir workers blow
off steam and pay for their own raises, and stockholders
don't have to worry one bit.
The strike had its effect on the consumer As we all know,
many were dialing, touchtoningÂź, or redialing their calls
almost like usual and others were severely inconvenienced
by a few managers and supervisors working as longdistance
or directory assistance operators often for many hours of
overtime, New installations came to a standstill and many
were backlogged for several months. Any emergency repairs
had to be handled by supervisory personnel. But after all
this, the same fat phone bill came to peopleâs homes the next
month, without any delay.
In actuality, users cannot complain to or boycott the
phone company as they could the Cabbage- PatchÂź
manufacturers, in our earlier iiccnario. They cannot make
AT&T or their local company do anything because each
customer is as unimportant as each employee. We. as
customers, arc all dependent on the phone. We have at least
one in each home. We are hilled it we use it or not, and arc
billed more to have it shut olT lor a month or two. We arc
all so dependent oil the lines that run into our homes and on
the one and a half million payphones that absorb our money
that the Complaints of any one nr even thousands ol us are quite
useless. AH of fhis utility (note the meaning of this word) was
until recently controlled almost exclusively by itttc com pain,
so in I he name of human spirit, roll oil with the divestiture.
1
THE TROUBLE WITH TELEMAIL
GTE is practically inviting intrusions, and odds arc theyâll get plenty
Lust month, two of our reporters took a trip to National
Public Radio studios in New Vork to reveal a very
interesting development. It seems that Telcmail, the
ilectronic mail service of GTE Telenet was .uiWjust as easy
to access as it was last year, prior to the October raids on
computer owners who had allegedly broken into the system.
What had happened was thfc: a directory containing
names of users on the Tel email system was obtained by Our
reportersâ this list can be obtained from virtually any
account on the system and, when printed out, is a couple of
: nches thick, They decided to go through this list and see if
Lhere were any accounts that still had the imaginative default
password of "A" assigned to them, h had generally been
: bought, by both the public and press, that this incredibly
"oolish blunder had been corrected after the raids â in fact >
new software ii'iu installed which forced a user to change
hetr password from the default when they Logged on. All
new passwords had to be between 6 and 8 characters in
ength. But, in a system with many thousands of customers,
he reporters reasoned lhat surely there must be a few who
3 ad nât yet Logged on since the policy was implemented.
They decided to start their search with user names that
rcgan with "B 11 . They'd enter Telenet through an 800
lumber, type MAIL, and enter usernames beginningwith B
hat were listed in their directory. For each username, they'd
inter âA** as the password, and if it didn't work, they'd go on
:o the next one.
The first account they tried was named B. ALEXANDER,
Hiey entered "A" as the password, and lo and behold* they
â vere in! On the very first attempt! Robert Alexander of
BUREC hadn't logged in since last summer. The âinvaders"
vere told by the system to change the password and they
:omplied. Then they decided to have a look around.
While there was no mail to speak of in Mr. Alexander^
jox, they were able to access bulletin boards that this
account was allowed to look at, (Bulletin boards oh
Tel email are simply long-term storage message bases where
nessages of general interest to a particular group of people
ire posted.) All kinds of internal metnoes from the
department of the Interior were displayed.
In other words, the same old story. Nothing had really
hanged Nearly half a year after seizing computers from
:oast to coast, the Telemail system was just as vulnerable to
>uislders as it was before. Were the folks at GTE really
rite rested in securing their system in the first place? Or did
hey just want to put the Icar of the lord into hackers?
At first, when this story was breaking, GTE tried to deny
hat such a break-in was even possible. It had to bean inside
ob, they claimed, because nothing is wrong with our system.
rhen L when it finally started to become clear that this hreak-
n did occur and that it was because of the default passwords
hrtce again, GTE took the expected step of blaming the
ustomers. âWe re not responsible for maimaining the
ecurily of the accounts," they said, "That's up to the
ubscriber," in this case, the Department of the Interior.
So. our two reporters came up with a plan. What i! il
ladnT been an outside agency's mailbox, hut one belonging
t> GTE themselves? Who could they blame Then?
They went to the letter âIT* this time and searched for
ccoums that were affiliated with GTE, The lirsi one was
XCORCORAN and. once again,. they got right in. And
>enisc Corcoran of GTE hud access to literally hundreds
nd hundreds of bulletin boards with names like
âAYROI.L, GOVT.AKFAI K,S, and ,f ARAN.
Or ton of all this, il look GTE nesirlv u week lo close
access to these accounts, even alter they were exposed on
nal ion wide radio.
What our reporters proved here is that Telemail ts cither
unable or unwilling lo protect its customers. Unable? That
hardly seems likely. After ail, mosi computer bulletin
boards run by high school kids are able to protect their users*
accounts from outsiders. Why can't one of the largest and
most expensive electronic mail systems do the same?
Apparently, what we have here is a company that has grown
too big too soon, and is now unable to overcome the inertia
that its size has created.
How to Really Have Fun
Once a hacker manages to get into a Telemail account,
he's really set. By typing Dl R " at command mode, he can
get a Listing of everyone that the account is allowed to sec - -
their username, full name, company and division, and user
number. He can see any user if he figures out their full
username or user number. Typing DIR USERNAME or
DIR USER NUMBER will give all of the above
information about that person, if he exists.
From the huge list that DIR "generates {which takes a
couple of hours to print at 300 baud), a hacker can scan for
passwords that are defaults, first names, Jast names,
usernames, or company names. Some GTE test accounts,
for instance, used to have a password of GEENOGTE-
Teicmail allows three logon attempts per access. Telenet
allows four accesses per call. So each call to Telenet will
yield 12 logon attempts to Telemaii, Judging from the huge
amount of users on the system, finding an easy password
doesn't take all that long.
There are all kinds of neat features within Telemail
accounts that seem to be exclusively beneficial to hackers, If
the account has access to the SET command, the user can
teil the system not to print a welcome banner on logon. The
information that's printed on the welcome banner tells the
user when his last access was. If a hacker arranges for that
information not to be printed, the real user won't find out
that his account was being used at 3 in the morning. And
odds are that he wonât really notice the absence of the
messageâ if he does, he'll probably blame it on Telemail
Then thenfs the UNREAD command. This actually
allows a person to read through someone else J s undelivered
maik and put it back when theyâre finished without anyone
knowing that it's been read (unless a message was sent with a
return receipt, which is rare). Telcmail, it seems, practically
bends over backwards to accomodate hackers
Whal's so great about having a Telemail account? Why
should a hacker spend all this time getting one? It's another
means of free (or cheap) communications. All one has to
do is call Telenet, enter Telcmail, and read or send messages
that can be uttlinriwii in length. He can share one account
with someone else (which is the least risky way to work
things) or communicate with another usurped account that s
allowed lo send to and receive from his account. This is
naturally a bit more risky since if one account is reclaimed,
both may end up being taken down. Transmission ol
messages on Telemail is instant and there's never a busy
signal. More importantly (hough, iciemati seems to he
beckoning I he hackers (o come back home,
(Shtwitv after this artu-le nv/.v tfis/mteheih nr nvioW
Wtif'ii thuf Teteinaif iUfJtniget' use'**' A. its a ifefttiih . Whether
this j_* trite <it ttff. whether they 're mti\ using a tfefiiitff uf "ii .
or whether if fry' ft' using tfefmffis fwriutf. f.v something that
harpers s\ ill tm iioutn finti out soon-- ftroft it fine tf y*nt
fiiuf i*ui tin i 'thing. i
Bell Credit Card Abuse Soars
Hu^ge phone bills hr being sent to innocent people all over
the country. So huge, in Tact, that they can't be sent in
envelopes â they come in boxes. In the past month and a
half, this scene has begun to proliferate.
As predicted on these pages in February, the AT&T death
s tar ca rds are creating al I kinds of pro blems . All that anyone
has to do is glance at one of them to obtain a valid AT&T
code. And thatâs exactly what people are doing. Some of
these folks are, in fact, so organized that the codes are used
for practically 24 hours a day. with new calls starting as
often as 3 times a minute from all different parts of the
country. Itâs rapidly becoming one of the easiest ways to
make free phone call*, and best of all, it's through an old
friend; Ma Belli
While AT&T has put itself in a rather vulnerable position
they are not completely without' defense. Any time that a
credit card call is placed, the number that the call is being
placed from is recorded and sent to the customer. Most
phreaks know enough not to do. this kind of thing from their
home or Local payphone.
Meanwhile, there is a major crackdown underway in Las
Vegas concerning unauthorized use of MCL Sprint, and
ITT (AT&T ii rumoured to also be involved here). It seems
that hundreds of people in that gambling town were passing
codes around. The FBI claims that the persons involved arc
not phone phreaks, but that phieakers and hackers may
have been hired to do the actual code-finding.
Electronics Create Portable Prisons
Hit Ntn- Trtrk Time-
Cesario Romero, a 23-year-old New Mexico truck driver,
recently served a 30 day sentence for disobeying a police
officer. He never had to leave his home.
Romero was confined at home by a plastic box the size of
a cigarette package that was strapped to h» ankle. This
device emin radio signals which would have informed the
authorities if Romm strayed more than 150 fwt from his
telephone. The anklet emits a radio signal every 30 to WJ
seconds which is picked up. by a small receiver connected to
the telephone outlet in the wearer's home. The receiver
relays the signal to â computer that is monitored by the
authorities. The printouts indicate each time the wearer
exceeds the J$0-foo| limit and each time he tries to remove
the anklet or unplug the receiver.
District Attorney Steven Schiff of the Second Judicial
District said, â"For someone like a first -time shoplifter, it
could be used as a mild punishment, requiring the person to
stay home nights and weekends for * specified time."
The U.S. Justice Department has ex pressed an interest in
this monitoring system.
4I4âs Plead Guilty
11k flSHKHllJ Pnu
Two young mert, both members of the 414 computer
enthusiasts group, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor
charges on March 16.
Gerald Wondra of West Allis, Wl and Timothy D.
Winslow of Milwaukee, both 21, broke into large computers
in the U.S. and Canada Iasi June, simply to prove that they
could do it. The two agreed to plead guilty to two counts
each of making harassing telephone calls, which is the most
they can be charged with, since the government has no law
against computer crimes. Each count carries a maximum
penalty of six months in jail and a ÂŁ500 fine.
The computer involved were located at: Security Pacific
National Bank in Los Angeles, Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in New York, Canada Cement LaFarge Inc.
in Vancouver, BC, and Citadel Industries, a New Jersey
corporation.
Teller Machine Crime Coming
The Ldi Aftycln lira
The Justice Department says that automated teller
machines and other means of electronic financial
transactions are âpotentially fertile for criminal abuse. 71
Techniques for robbing the systems already have cropped
up and are expected to increase. They range from the
dynamiting of an automatic teller device to the withdrawal
of funds by a cardholder who then claims no knowledge of
the transaction. Because of an absence of sophisticated
verification procedures in today's automated teller systems,
such as fingerprints or voicepriuts, the door is wide open to
unscrupulous cardholders committing fraud from their very
own accounts. (Some machines, though, take a picture of
the person as soon as he takes the cash.)
Even though bank officials may be skeptical of a
cardholder's disclaiming any knowledge of a withdrawal
that had been made from his or her account, federal law
makes it difficult for the officials to reject such a claim. If a
bogus loss is reported within two business days, the law
makes the cardholder responsible for only the first ÂŁ50,
Free Information in Trouble
â he Acuuiieed
According to company spokesman Pic Wagner, AT&T 1 is
probably going to propose a 50-cent fee for long distance
information calls instead of the 75-cent fee it proposed last
fall. Consumers currently don't pay anything for long
distance or overseas directory assistance.
A Word on Wiretapping
Lung Idaikd Mfwnliv
A recent article by Lenny Siegel, director of the Pacific
Studies Center in Mountain View, CA, dealt with the
subject of wiretapping.
In this article, Siegel says, "Present law outlaws 'aural'
(voice) wiretapping, the monitoring of telephone conver-
sations, without judicial approval, but L nonaural h surveil-
lance is legal. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies can
and do record telephone dial ingin formation -who's cal ling
whom â and digital data transmissions --messages between
computers and other electronic devices. In fact, the General
Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, warns
that existing legislation may .permit listening in on the
growing percentage of voice transmissions that have been
converted to digital pulses within the telephone network."
A TRUE SAGA OF TELECONFERENCING
âYcjih. bul hdiili'wn a lrt.
learn l« l» ftWfiful." . , .. kuill
âI know." I irk-d to ail cs pet kneed. âBuapnga eonfe-reniX 1 ffom ha hOOfr,
Electric Mimui
"(j lhJ . 1 «-iJi I had a hos. David said. âI hid sh it now. I bump oil
Information in Wiâąnw(l iinil Ert !tn emply WA IS lint 1 h) play with, I
keypunch n few mu Infrequency operator lone*, and la da' 11 five* me a
eonlerenLe. But l cunt in that Anyway, since Iâm on ESS."
"David." [ r^nonded. âI knowthb; sounds ulupid. but Iflon I utuleRtand
a word of what you j ust said. Okay. this is what ] k now from (he con feren ee:
ft iih a blue box vou make tones of certain pitches. sfllhul Ihcphonethm^
you're nn operator. Thai way you fan make long distance calla- for free or
%[^r; a cnnferenre.ââ
â'Very good,"
âBul what's ESS?'
âAnyway," David said, âitâs easier and s*Fer to uw an esltflilcf (O call
long distance than id box."
âfliii iiViei'.v I repealed.
'â Okay i here ue go. The famous Smith beefing for beginning phreak*.
Fasten your seal belli, ladies and gentlemen...â
"i resent he-Lng called a beginner,â I said.
â'In the history of our great phone system. Mb Bell has undergone many
changes, En her Youth, she was made up or so-called siep-by-tiep systems.
Theie were tovelv and easv to tiftiimvinL, bul noisy and slow. Alio,
2600 Herut disconnects a step system, so you can't hox cfl of one. Mosi of
â hese were switched bv hand bv small-town operators. Then someone came
up with crossbar switching, and Ma Bell made HtHc clicking noises alLday
long as she switched almost automatically.
âBui. horror of horrors, Ma Bell finally got old, She grew senile and
paranoid. Jn order not to forget things, she wrote them down. Every limta
Lillie customer called a number he shouldnât have known, she wrote up a
[rouble card on him and filed it neatly away. This system wus noiseless and
easy. Soon Ma came up with better security measure!, longer customer
records, and tighter filing cabinets.. Sht buried - light-fiber Qhifi h Mid
everyone knows you can't splice two light-fiber cabin iDpther. She
changed her own phone numbers regularly, and com puieriztd everything,
Each change came about slowly, bui the final product wai ESS- So i he
main phono systems are Step.- crossbar, and ESS.â
ââwhich one am I onT' 1 asked.
â i don't know. Some people tan tell by listening to the nng or the busy
signal, but 1 cant." he ad m itted. "Tryoucati get calf waiting. youVe on ES5-
TalL Customer Service and askâ
We talked on conferences almost every night for two weeks Napoleon
Bonaparte act them up. and wc talked to the Hacker, Cracker. Tom Kte'ij.
and Mas Wilke.
I learned a lew things, from conferences, and a lot from David. He told me
about the Michigan loops. Apparently, if E called a certain number, some
stranger would pick up the other end and we could talk. How stupid. Then
David explained that the 01 her person was calling a phone FUl mber too. and
we'd get connected somehow: A loop around here was -424-MOD and
424-9901, If 1 called one end and someone else called the ocher, we'd be
connected. This was useful if wfdidnt want to giw out our phone numbers.
In Detroit, lets of peopleâ not only phreak? â know about loop! If you call
up one end of a Detroit loop, someone else is likely to call within five
minutes,
ââYou. never know who you'll get,â David said. "Hacker and 1 call and
wait, and sometimes homosexuals get on and say. 'Looking for guys?â or
giris get on and say, âGuts* what color underwear t have on? But you abo
get other peopleâ car salesmen, teenagers, and college students â Iota of
college students.â
He gave me some Michigan loop numbers and I started calling them
through extenders. I talked to a lot of weird people and a lot of normal
people. 1 also called some pay phffllts in Berkeley and Carnegie-Mellon.
and talked co whoever answered.
The Phreak was my idol He was (he idol of most of ihe phreak* I knew.
Low agreed that he was i he best phreak and hacker (okay, little did we
know then)L He was only fourteen years old. and lived in 1 Bouton.
One day I called up a Michigan loop and heard a k>t of static and clicking.
3 abo heard some people talking â mainly (WO hoys. One of I hem had an
uitmiuikibk Boston accent. Et was Steve the Phreak.
"Hey Phreak." | said. This is Electric Moon!"
âHi Electric,â he said. Then he asked his friend, âShould we keep herT
â 'Yeah, what the heckf said the anonymous phreak. A beep signalled the
departure of the Phreak.
"Where'd Steve go T J asked.
â'Off t o look for more leaps, the idiul/'fciirf ihe hoy. Tlâs loo Loud in here
already.' 1
âWhat's your frame?' I asked.
âI'm Ivanhoe. Iâm a Steve LOO. hut you ear call me George.â
"What?"
âTo differentiate between me and Ph rC-lik.â"
I'H just call you Ivan hoe/ 1 I said. âWhercTe you lotiuedT
"I'm in California. I'm seventeen. And youâT
âI'm in Ohio. I'm sixteen. Cat I me Electric.â I suddenly realized I was
yelling above the din of the Inops, The Phreak kept putting, on more and
more. The loops themselves made clicks and stink, hot (he people on I hem
mod e it i fven worse. '1 hey could nât hea r u* a nd I hey cou Id nât hcsi r t he people
on the other loops, so they Inudlv chatted away.
Every time Ivanhoe or I heard ike Phreak huep hvij or olF. we sc reamed at
him to step adding Imps, hui he pretended nut t» notice, and continued al a
rate of six Or so a minute.
Finally 3 couldn't take the noisic, I yelled a loop nuinbcMo Ivnnhoe, and
we ducked out.
He still has a Long way to go. though- He has lo
'* â"H^'you^drd him on A mown. i bought Heâs a riol. hut I'd never do
what he does lâ
"What docs he d I asked.
âHell have to show vuu,â Jvanboe said. , .
Click 3 "Emergency break from Ci.l. .loc. Witt you accept r asked the
OP "No/ we said in unison, 1 smiled, imagining the shocked operator. She
probably thought his mother w*s dying-
âNoT she asked uncertainly.
'âąNO 1 " wc yelled, and laughed as she clicked oil again.
-Well," IvanhPt said- 'That muot be Phreak. He probably want! mtlD
call him' I'll tell him to stun another conference. '
"Okay,â I said- 1 hungupthc phone and walked into I he kitchen. I set my
notebook and pencil on the kitchen drslt and took a cold apple from the
refrigerator. Th* phone rang as I crunched the first bite.
âHello?'
â âHi. Anyone yen want to add?â asked the Phreak.
âSure. Add Trader Vic."
"Okay â he said. I heard a beep, sLknce. the people talking.
âQtliel down, everyone!â lvarthocsaid. 'The Phreak is gomgtoshow off.
but what he's going to do is pretty dangerous,"
Beep-beep! Beep- beep-! The Phreak had brought Trader Vie on.
"Hey dudes, whit's going on?" he asked.
âShhr we taid. , ,. . , , ,
âYou wnt hang up cm them once they're a conference. sum Ivannof
â l |f someone auipecte what weâre doing, we'M have to hang up thr whole
conference,â â . â .
The Phreak beeped off. He was back m a rmnutc. talking ofTiciously.
âYe*, 1 have a Flash Override call for Location four-zero-two-niner," he
said calmly.
âFlaih Override ' Who it thb. sub?" aikecf a deep Southern accent.
This is General Watt " The Phreak had to make the guy believe he was a
Joint Chief of Staff.
A no»l tenor c>me on the li ne, hen Idcd by an amaztng overture ol click!
beeps, and tones.
+ âGenera L. for whom are you placing this call?
âFor Ronald Reagan/â said the Phreak. I felt like I had been stabbed-
Whit an idiot! But I couldn't hang up, because t he operator would hear the
bet pi i Listened Instead. . . . ,
"Ronald Reagan?" asked the voice diibelkvringly. âSir. wnil n the writ
on this sill? . . , .
âIâm at the White House right now." said the Phrok mol y- 1 knew hewas
suiting for time is he flipped through stolen Aut-ovon mm us-Ls, âSergeant.
I havt the code right here. Pm at location C-OM-four-iia-iwo-D, piscina a
Flash Override for Timberwotf to location four-zcro-iwo-niner. The
operation code is icro-Eiver-zcro-niner."
âThat is conrceU" the operator said, and I could have hugged ihe Phreak.
'âPltMe hold, sir, and I'LL put your Call through â
Peep! Beep!,..kCMhunk. .
âAndrews Air Foret Base.â said a woman. ââ General Hodge is out right
now- ShDutd I sound hi! beeptr? .
Silence. What now'.' Two people spoke at once. Trader Vic broke through
L&udl >' ......
. âYEab, like, thliis a conference call, and we just. like, wanted to see how
you «rt doing, you knmv?*
âEscuse me?* aiked the startled woman.
âI'm sorry,â I interrupted quietly. The time had come to try utd salvage
thia thing- âIâm the White House internal operator, and we teem to have
given the wrong location identifier. Thank you very much,"
The General's secretary clicked off and our nasal operator picked on.
âWhat seems to be the problem. Genera L?â he »kcd.
"Iâm sorry/ 1 Evanhoe said. 'The President decided not to make the cuLL
after all. Thank you. though. â
âYes sir, thank you.â the operator said, and clicked off. We arid our
breaths until wc heard the final beep- beep.
âVic, you idiot!â I cried-
H Wbat?â he asked. âI thought it was pretty funny!â
âFunny, my fool," Evanhoe staid angrily. â llial wp* a stupid thing to say.
And Steve, why didnât you answer?" .
âMy mom called me and I had to go takeout the (rAsh."soid the I break.
âPhreak, you're crazy." I said.
â '] know,â he said in his deepest Boston accent. âBut you all love ti.
A week later, t he Software Pirate eulled me a nd said the Ph peak bad been
caught. I called Ivanhoe, who told me that Si eve was visited that morning
by thnw FBI and two Bell Security agents len other people were afe»
caught. The FBI woke all the hoy-K up ul 6 AM *n they wouldn't have u
chance to warn friend*.
A* soon an school was over, the Phreak called Ivunhoc and told him all
thb. He wailed an hour until iL was 4:tXJin Utah, titld eulled the Software
Pirate, who called m L â.
The news sprciid among plirCukii iilld pirates- so that unyoiiL 1 - snvolvyj
knew about It by dinneriimc on the past t Tutsi.
Late that night, the While Knight scl up wh,K
uOfrfcrcnce. Ivunhoe. David, Demon EJidJi b . and
(hey would he cuught.
We lulled the Cruckcf and Jtskird him Jo talk.
ft-e thought was the Iasi
lie Cracker all expected
âHello?' asked u ituicl. low v^ke.
âHi." | named- âThank (IlhJ weâre out nii ihai mess."
âYc;Lh. He'll probably have- it up lor a fc\h' days hclore they figure it mil."
hiirtlluit NJiid.
âH/t i* F'i t\' Iâą I
"Why nni?' he^aiel dryly. âI'nijusl sitting litre wailing lor the KKI. 1 hJLve
iiotliiiig heltcr to do."
I hey gut him | he nest mormng.
fthr Uftrttw iw'rituvrs joi iff tht* vfijj'i- fmvi- ufi hi ' ivi -u*
i fftr' r j- 1
4
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