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==Phrack Classic==
Volume Three, Issue 32, File #2 of 12
==Phrack Classic Spotlight==
Knight Lightning
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Personal
~~~~~~~
Handle: Knight Lightning
Call him: Craig Neidorf
Past handles: None
Handle origin: Cross between character "Lightning Lad" from DC Comics'
Legion of Superheros and Michael Knight from the NBC
television series "Knight Rider".
Date of Birth: I doubt you're sending me a birthday card so skip it.
Age at current date: 21 years old
Height: 5'10" or so (give or take an inch)
Weight: 135-140 lbs.
Eye color: Brown
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Computers: Apple IIc (Do you believe this?)
Co-Sysop of: Metal Shop Private, The Brewery, Quick Shop/Metal Shop
AE, Whackoland, The Dark Tower, Digital ITS (yay!),
Stronghold East and probably a few more I've forgotten
about.
Net address: C483307@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU (Yes, they actually gave
C483307@UMCVMB.BITNET me my account back!)
knight@well.sf.ca.us
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For several years I had been a die hard fan of video games, both arcade
and home versions. It was really the Atari 2600 video game Adventure that led
me into the world of computers and hacking. As many people might know there
was a secret locked within this game concerning a "magic" dot. It was not
mentioned in any instruction manuals for the game, but if you could find it and
bring it to the right place in the game, you could enter a room that didn't
officially exist. In this room was a message flashing in gold and black. It
said "Created by Warren Robinet". From that point on I experimented with every
Atari cartridge I had. I tried screwing around with the connections, the
components on the system itself, and I attempted bizarre tactics within the
games, just to see what might happen. During that period of time I found
several more secretly implanted messages and developed new ways of playing the
games. Atari played on this idea quite a bit when they created a four game
saga called Swordquest, but by then the fun was taken out of it because you
knew already that something was waiting to be found. Eventually I upgraded to
ColecoVision, but before too long this bored me as well. It is sort of
interesting to see the new surge of home videogames of Nintendo, NEC, and Sega.
It makes me wonder if this cycle is permanent.
I was first introduced to the world of computers by a friend who had a
Commodore 64. He showed me what bulletin boards were and then took me on a
tour of the ARPAnet. Later that year, my long-time and best friend, known to
most of you as Taran King obtained the use of his father's IBM PC. Together we
explored various bulletin boards in the St. Louis area, always looking for new
places to visit.
In August of 1983 I received an Apple IIc as a birthday gift from my
parents. It was real basic -- no monitor (I had a black and white television
for that), no extra disk drive, no printer, no joystick, and no modem. Those
items I would have to earn. So instead of playing with faraway computer
systems, I was introduced to programming and a community of people who
considered themselves to be software pirates. These people seemed to be able
to get software before the companies even began to sell it. However, I was
content to play games like Ultima III and Wizardry and hack the game itself by
altering character values. This enabled me to move my characters through
different places, some of which I never might have realized existed. Later, I
was able to redesign the game itself to create an endless world of new
possibilities for intellectual stimulation.
Finally in March of 1984, my parents purchased me a modem. It was a sad
little piece of plastic made by Volksmodem, 300 baud and battery operated, but
it worked and now Knight Lightning was ready to take to the wires. By this
time I already knew a lot about the bulletin board community through Taran
King. Even so, it was relatively odd how fast I became co-sysop of the
ancestor to Metal Shop known as The Dark Tower. TDT was operated by a "hacker"
with the truly unoriginal name of David Lightman. Before I knew it, I was in
remote command of his system with full power over user validation and BBS
maintenance. Although the system went down after about six months, it did
attract a few out of state users and it was here that my notoriety began. It
was almost funny, but even as early as then Taran King, Forest Ranger, and I
became known as the top hacker/phreakers in the St. Louis area. To this day I
still don't understand why.
By July of 1985 most of the hacker bulletin boards in St. Louis had
disappeared, but The Dark Tower program lived again when Taran King created
Metal Shop: The Dark Tower Phase II. He took the name from a popular
afternoon rock'n roll program (KSHE FM radio) that centered on heavy metal.
Both of us had visited systems around the country and we were able to
effectively advertise MS. At one point we had over 500 registered users so we
switched to a general password system for security reasons and eventually in
January of 1986 the board became Metal Shop Private and we cut 4/5ths of the
users.
During the late Spring and early Summer of 1985 Taran King and I created
the 2600 Club. It was just a group name to stick behind our handles since
everybody was doing it, but it only took use a few months to realize just
how ignorant hacker groups really are. However, the 2600 Club had one
great legacy -- it gave birth to Phrack. If you go back and look, you'll
notice that the first issue of Phrack was a product of the 2600 Club. The idea
for doing Phrack came from Forest Ranger. Taran King provided the arena and
would be the editor and I came up with the name.
When I used to call bulletin boards like the Twilight Zone (sysoped by The
Marauder) I would data capture the message bases and save them in text files.
The messages from the hacking subboard would be saved in a file called HACKMESS
(which stood for hack messages), the messages from the phone phreak subboard
were saved as PHREAKMESS, but when there was a subboard where both these types
of messages appeared together, I simply merged the two names and came up with
PHRACKMESS. Since the newsletter would contain information on both topics and
more, I felt the name Phrack was applicable. So where did the "Inc." come
from? Actually it came from another DC Comics series called Infinity Inc.
Kind of silly now since we never intended to actually incorporate. The first
issue of Phrack was distributed on November 17, 1985.
In Phrack issue 2 I began the ongoing series of Phrack World News. I
followed every story I could and it was fun. The first issue was sort of lame,
but eventually I learned that PWN was the most popular segment of Phrack. The
greatest thing about PWN was that it was an original concept for a hacker
newsletter -- lots of people had tried to write "how-to files, but no one had
ever tried news before. Who was getting busted? What did they do? How can I
make sure it doesn't happen to me? Lots of the stories were exaggerated or in
the case of Oryan QUEST, fabricated (by QUEST himself).
Outside of Phrack World News I wrote files about Videoconferencing,
Private Branch eXchanges, and a few others here and there. Prior to Phrack
I had released a huge glossary of telecommunications terms and files about the
divestiture of AT&T and its aftermath. Taran King and I also wrote a joke file
about "Real Phreaks" that was echoed by a continuation of that file in the
Phrack parody issue number 13 that was released on April 1, 1987.
Throughout my years I have met many people who call themselves hackers
and/or phone phreaks:
Android Pope - I wonder how married life is treating him.
Aristotle - Sporty! He is the former editor of the New TAP.
Bad Subscript - Right hand man to Control C and an expert at disco dancing
in high speed Camaros.
Bill from RNOC - How have your phone bills been? High? Have they been!?
He is also known as "the most dangerous man in New York."
Beer Wolf - Former sysop of the (Metal Shop) Brewery.
Blue Buccaneer - Lost track of him over the years.
Cat Man - How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?
Cheap Shades - Now a Computer Science graduate of University of
Missouri-Rolla. Former sysop of Metal Shop AE and
QuickShop.
Control C - A man with serious problems right now. Hope you get those
videotapes and best of luck!
Crimson Death - The one in 618 NPA. Very un-original name, but definitely
one of a kind.
Cryptic Fist - Kinda warm for that leather jacket, isn't it? (90 degrees)
Cutthroat - So what McDonalds do *you* work at?
Dan The Operator - An informant for John Maxfield (SummerCon '87).
Data Line - Now a government agent, but hardly a hacker tracker.
David Lightman - The sysop of The Dark Tower in 314 NPA.
The Dictator - Not-so secret agent of Gail Thackeray, the assistant
Arizona state attorney behind Operation Sun-Devil.
In a past life, Dale was the creator of Candid Camera.
What a surprise that was this summer.
Disk Jockey - I thought he was a great guy until he started to backstab
me on Lunitic Labs while I was under indictment.
Doc Holiday (901) - The original!
Dr. Cypher - Knowledgeable person who remains local.
Dr. Forbin - Last seen at SummerCon '89.
Dr. Ripco - Well haven't met him yet, but in a couple of weeks.
Doom Prophet - A friend who seems to have disappeared.
Epsilon - Must have lost my number I guess.
Emmanuel Goldstein - Also known as Eric Corley, the editor of 2600 Magazine.
Erik Bloodaxe - He is a wildcard... totally unpredictable... hacks by the
seat of his pants. Still active, but he'd better not have
a squirt gun next to his bed or he may be sorry.{SS}
Forest Ranger - The man who introduced me to the hacker elite way back
when. Former editor of TeleComputist Newsletter.
Gary Seven - Don't remember much about him. Met him with Lex in Fla.
Hatchet Molly - You know him as Computer Underground Digest's Gordon
Meyer. He used a hacker alias to better enable him to
write his famous thesis.
Jester Sluggo - A mystery man who is still a legend in the Zantigo
restroom and a better than average drunk driver.
Kleptic Wizard - Was he BJ or the Bear?
Lex Luthor - One time great legend of LOD, now secret BellSouth
Security (at least until I hear otherwise).
The Leftist - I wonder what he was going to say about me at my trial.
He gave me a nod the day they dropped the charges against
me. The US Attorney's office tells me that he was going
to claim he learned all he knew about hacking from reading
Phrack.
Loki - Lost track of him over the years.
Lucifer 666 - Lights, Camera, Action!
The Mad Hacker - Sysop of The Private Connection in 219 NPA.
Mad Hatter - Still don't know what to make of him, but I wonder if he
still thinks table salt and baking soda are cocaine.
The Mentor - Author of GURPS CyberPunk and former sysop of The Phoenix
Project bulletin board.
The Noid - Important enough for Southwestern Bell to question me
about him so important enough to be mentioned here.
Par - Hans.
Phantom Phreaker - A friend.
Phil Phree - Sort of spaced out character and right hand man to The
Ur-vile.
Phrozen Ghost - Lost track of him.
Predat0r - Anarchistic editor of the New TAP.
The Prophet - Didn't actually "meet" him, but I did see him and hear him
speak... as a witness for the prosecution at my trial. I
don't hold a grudge. His testimony helped clear me.
Rabbit - Franz.
The Renegade - Thinks he is part of the Illuminati.
Reverend Enge - Not that religious.
Sir Francis Drake - A great guy with an odd taste in jewelry. The editor of
the now defunct WORM. Duck!
Sir William - Never did hear the whole story of his problems with the
University of Michigan computing staff.
Surfer Bob - Lost track of him, but he enjoyed a tan at SummerCon'88.
Synthetic Slug - Surfs up!
Taran King - My best friend of over 11 years.
TWCB Inc. - Two brothers who attempted to resurrect TAP, but failed.
Tuc - Hey! He's TUC!
The Ur-Vile - Don't know how I feel about him. He needs a real handle.
Some of the memorable bulletin boards I was on include:
Alliance - By Phantom Phreaker
Brainstorm Elite - Where I met Phantom Phreaker and recruited him to Metal
Shop Private.
Broadway Show - By Broadway Hacker. Changed its name to The Radio
Station.
Catch-22 - By Silver Spy. Only 22 users on this system.
Chamas - By Terra (Chaos Computer Club) in Germany.
Dark Tower - By David Lightman 314
Digital ITS - By Oryan QUEST. BBS Commands were in Spanish.
DUNE - Secret system imbedded on the Dartmouth University
mainframe operated remotely by Apollo Phoebus.
Flying Circus - By Monty Python
FreeWorld II - By Major Havoc
Hell Phrozen Over - By the original Crimson Death. Inspiration for the
first Phrack Pro-Phile.
Intergalactic Dismantling, Inc. - By Aiken Drum
Lost City of Atlantis - By The Lineman
Lunatic Labs UnLtd. - By The Mad Alchemist. Great system!
Matrix - By Dr. Stangelove
Metal Shop AE - By Cheap Shades when he lived in St. Louis, Missouri.
Metal Shop Brewery - By Beer Wolf who now denies that it ever happened.
Metal Shop Private - Greatest bulletin board of all time.
MetroMedia - By Dr. Doom. System became Danger Zone Private.
NetSys - By Terminus. NetSys is now in possession of US Secret
Service and Terminus' life is in a shambles. They set
him up and shut him down. You know him as Len Rose.
Pearly Gates - First real out of state bulletin board that I called.
It had a secret section of the board for all of the
really good information. It was operated by Simon
Templar.
Phoenix Project - By The Mentor. Great center of learning.
Phreak Klass 2600 - By The Egyptian Lover. Preceded The Phoenix Project as
a great center of learning.
Pipeline - Another early bbs I visited.
Pirate-80 - A codes board run by Scan Man that has been up for
almost 10 years. This system was NOT a target in
Operation Sun-Devil. Odd?
Private Connection - By The Mad Hacker
Private Sector - Legendary system.
QuickShop - By Cheap Shades when he lived in Rolla, Missouri.
RACS III - By Tuc
Radio Station - See The Broadway Show.
Ripco - By Dr. Ripco - Shut down in Operation Sun-Devil, but
its back up now.
Septic Tank - By The Safecracker. Second generation of The Twilight
Zone.
ShadowSpawn - By Psychic Warlord. Great debate about the use of
handles and real name/telephone/etc. "We're Not
*ELITE*, We're Just Cool As Hell!" Taran King thought
they were elite in the negative sense of the word.
Great system though.
Speed Demon Elite - By The Radical Rocker and home base to MetaliBashers,
Inc.
Stronghold East Elite - The "real" sysop was Slave Driver, but the board was
run from the home of The Equalizer.
Twilight Zone - By The Marauder. Great system for knowledge from my
early days.
Zyolog - By Byte Rider in Hawaii.
There are probably a few others that I have forgotten to mention. My
greatest computer learning experiences came from people like Bill From RNOC,
RNOC, Phantom Phreaker, Forest Ranger, and the authors of the multitude of
Phrack files and other technical journals.
In general I see computers as the communications medium of the 21st
Century so I devoted a lot of time to mastering their use. I do not advocate
the illegal breaking in to computer systems, but there are certain types of
information that I feel should be available to everyone equally and not just
the rich or the well connected.
Through my experiences on the Internet, I have had legitimate access to
IBM VM/CMS, Unix, and VAX/VMS systems. For the most part I am content with my
VM/CMS account, but will accept invitations from system managers to join their
systems as well.
With Forest Ranger and Taran King, I organized and attended SummerCon '87,
SummerCon '88, and SummerCon '89. I did not attend SummerCon '90 since I was
in Chicago at the time. I helped in organizing and attended PartyCon '87 and
most recently I appeared and spoke at the 13th Annual National Computer
Security Conference in Washington D.C.
I had been a part of TeleComputist Newsletter, which inadvertently led to
my first real media appearance (Detroit Free Press) and prior to that I was
helping TWCB Inc. to create a NEW TAP. However, when I learned that they were
just pulling a fraud, I exposed them. For 5 years I devoted myself to Phrack
with absolutely no compensation save knowledge and experiences gained.
===============================================================================
Interests: Racquetball (varsity team in high school and a bookshelf full
of trophies), Telecommunications, Computers, Music (classic
rock and pop music... NO RAP!), Fraternity life (well at least
up until the trustees suspended me for being indicted), Women
(sexy and smart over just good looks any day), Driving at warp
speed on the interstate.
Craig's Favorite Things
-----------------------
Women: I've got it, but don't flaunt it.
Cars: Ford Mustang, Eagle Talon, Nissan 300 ZX, and Porsche *911* Carrera!
Foods: No Curry in a hurry-Blecch! American, Italian, Mexican, and Chinese!
Music: Genesis, Rush, Yes, Chicago, Eagles, Def Leppard, The Police, Styx...
Leisure: Sleeping, working out, racquetball, writing, computing.
Alcohol: Bacardi, Smirnoff, Jack Daniels, Pat O'Briens, Hard Rock Cafe.
Most Memorable Experiences
--------------------------
All of the SummerCons, having an assistant U.S. Attorney lie to my face and
tell me I wasn't in trouble five days after he went to the grand jury to have
me indicted, football game with Sluggo in the Zantigo parking lot, road trip to
Chicago for PartyCon '87, my time in a St. Louis Federal holding facility
after I turned myself over to the U.S. Federal Marshalls (E911 Incident),
Taran King and Cheap Shades out of jail when they were caught trashing,
summer Alliance teleconferences with the PhoneLine Phantoms, the first time I
heard Frank & The Funny Phone Call, watching Control C bother some girl
in the airport and then seeing Erik Bloodaxe fall in love with her.
Some Other People To Mention
----------------------------
Sheldon Zenner - The greatest attorney practicing today. He turned
everything around and saved my future from a legal system
gone awry. Thanks also to Kliebard, Dunlop, Berkowitz,
and Kaufman.
John Perry Barlow - Lyricist for the Grateful Dead and amazing writer, John
also participated a great deal in generating publicity
about my case and helped found the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
Dr. Dorothy Denning - A lady who not only helped with my defense, but invited
me to the 13th Annual National Computer Security
Conference and is a good friend.
Peter Denning - Senior editor of the Communications of the ACM and an
interesting fellow in his own right.
Scott Ellentuch - Mentioned earlier as Tuc, Scott is the president of the
Telecom Computer Security Group and a close friend. Tuc
assisted the defense team by locating the Bellcore public
catalog and the 911 documents found within. Thanks Tuc!
Terry Gross - Attorney with Rabinowitz & Boundin in New York City who
was hired by the EFF to work on court motions dealing
with the First Amendment.
Mike Godwin - Don't know Mike very well yet, but he was very outspoken
in Computer Underground Digest while I was under
indictment and now he is in-house counsel to the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Katie Hafner - Author of a book coming soon about Pengo, Kevin Mitnick,
and Robert Morris, Jr. I met Katie at the NCSConference.
Steve Jackson - Founder of Steve Jackson Games. I haven't yet had the
pleasure of meeting Steve, but we may be running into
each other in the near future.
Mitch Kapor - Industry wizard and creator of the Lotus 1-2-3 program,
Mitch is a founding member of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation that provided legal assistance in my case. I
hope to meet him face-to-face in the near future.
Gordon Meyer - Gordon has been a tremendous help with Phrack and a
friend throughout my entire trial ordeal.
John Nagle - Inventor who gave technical assistance to my defense team
and located some very important public documents.
Marc Rotenberg - Director of the Computer Professionals For Social
Responsibility in Washington D.C. CPSR is an
organization lobbying Congress for reforms in the
Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and other legislation. I hope
to be working with him in the future.
Jim Thomas - Creator and editor of Computer Underground Digest, he
brought the details and evidence in my trial to the
public eye which helped me gain support.
Steve Wozniak - Never had any contact with him, but since he had a hand
in EFF, I thought I would mention him. Incidentally I'm
ready to upgrade computers if someone has a Macintosh on
hand.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
David Lightman - The one in 214. See Oryan QUEST.
Magic Hasan - Totally freaked out when I contacted him this semester. It
was like he thought I had the plague or something.
Olorin The White - He couldn't seem to understand that I did not want to join
his group.
Oryan QUEST - A hacker who made up news for PWN just to boost his
reputation. Unleash with full force on this!
Sally Ride - Also known as Space Cadet, SR co-wrote one of the most
interesting PWN articles ever printed.
===============================================================================
Private Jokes
~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are far too many to go through and most of them have been previously
written by Taran King in a Phrack Prophile that appeared in issue 20 of Phrack.
My private jokes shall remain private between those involved or at least until
I publish a book covering the topic.
===============================================================================
Phrack is a part of my life that is now over. I hope that Phrack Classic
which appears to be a second generation Phrack will learn from its predecessor
and not allow any articles that advocate the illegal entry into computer
systems. On the other hand, I hope they will continue to bring interesting
information and news to light every issue.
For the record, I am not the editor of Phrack Classic. In fact I am not
even a part of their staff. I would ask that no one send me any articles for
that publication because they will not be forwarded. I take no responsibility
for the actions taken by Phrack Classic, but I have faith that they shall stay
on the path of honesty and integrity.
I also have a few words to say about some other issues. My case and
prosecution had absolutely nothing to do with Operation Sun-Devil, with a
possible exception being the secret video-taping done by the United States
Secret Service at the Ramada Inn-Westport (Maryland Heights, Missouri) during
July 22-24, 1988 (i.e., SummerCon '88). Operation Sun-Devil was an attempt to
crack down on credit card and calling card abusers and NOT hackers. Yes, there
are some hackers that abuse these items, but the mere abuse of such does not
make someone a hacker and it is about time that mainstream reporters,
government agents, and prosecutors began to understand the difference.
I feel that the abuse of "cards" is very immature and should be met with
stern punishment. I myself have been the victim of credit card fraud and I can
tell you that it is not pleasant to open your bill and see expensive charges
from QVC Home Shopping Network. For the younger readers, it may take them a
few years to understand this... perhaps when they have credit cards and bills
of their own to deal with.
As you may guess there is MUCH MORE to my story especially concerning the
last 10 issues of Phrack, the Internet, and the E911 incident, but now is not
the time or the place to tell it. Sometime in the future I hope to assemble
the tales of all my adventures in the computer underground and publish them in
a real book.
Finally, Hackers are *NOT* criminals! Quoting from the brochure for this
year's Hackers Conference in Saratoga, California, a Hacker is "someone who
enjoys pushing the envelope, bypassing limits, discovering knowledge, inventing
solutions, <and> adventuring into uncharted areas."
:Craig Neidorf
===============================================================================
...And now for the regularly taken poll from all interviewees.
Of the general population of phreaks you have met, would you consider most
phreaks, if any, to be computer geeks?
"I would not consider most of the hackers or phone phreaks I have met to
be computer geeks, however over the years I have run into people whose goal in
life is to pirate every piece of software in existence and of those people I
feel that a strong percentage are 'geeks'."
Thanks for your time, Craig. "No problem."
Crimson Death
_______________________________________________________________________________