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File: WHO IS CHESHIRE CATALYST?
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= The Intruder =
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= [A biography of Cheshire Catalyst -- Technology Illustrated (Oct/Nov 1982)] =
- by Douglas Colligan -
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- Awesome Photography by John Goodman -
= (too bad we couldn't reproduce it!) =
- [Word Processed by BIOC Agent 003] -
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Whether it's the phone system or a computer network, there's always a way to
slip in for free.
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Cheshire first started going astray after an incident during his senior year
at an upstate New York high school in the late sixties. The school has a small
IBM computer, one that he heard could make pictures of his hero, Snoopy. He
asked to use it and was told no, it was only for the advanced math students.
"And that," he says, "was the first IBM 'big lie' I ever saw through." The
suggestion that computers were only for eggheads was more than enough to whet
his curiosity. So he got friendly with the teacher in charge of the computer
and eventually became fluent in several computer languages. Today he works for
a large Manhattan firm where he teaches his fellow employees how to use word
processors and perform other computer-related chores.
In his off hours, Cheshire (short for Cheshire Catalyst) uses computers in a
slightly different way. Once he takes off what he calls his real-world
disguise (his tie), he settles down in front of his Apple II keyboard and
starts "phreaking" -- ambling through the circuits of his archenemy, the phone
company, exploring its electronic geography, and slipping in and out of
computer networks. As the name suggests, computer networks are computer-to-
computer communications systems that run over the same lines people use to make
phone calls. With a simple attachment for the phone receiver and the right
code numbers, a computer user can hook into a network. If people clever
enough and persistent enough want to get into a network, they can just keep
sending different number combinations over the phone to the network until they
hit the right code, or password. Today just about everyone, from national
banks, to the Defense Department, uses computer networks to transact business.
Cheshire, of course, is not his real name. It's not even his real
pseudonym. The reason for the secrecy is that Cheshire is a member of the
underground movement, a nationwide assortment of people devoted to satisfying
their sense of adventure with the best that Apple and IBM and the phone system
have to offer. Not everything they do is, strictly speaking, legal.
The history of this movement goes back to the days of the phone phreaks, as
they called themselves, whose hobby was to make as many phone calls for as
little money as possible. Their secret weapon was the blue box, which got its
name from the fact that the first one discovered by the phone company happened
to be packaged in a blue-painted box. A blue box is an ingenious package of
electronics that lets users trick the phone company's tone-activated long-
distance system into letting them make a long-distance call for the price of
a local one. For the 20 years or so that the blue boxes have been around,
there has been a continuing cat-and-mouse game between the phone phreaks and
the Bell System. For every new method the Bell System has devised to detect
the boxes, the phreaks have come up with a better box.
Cheshire's initiation into the phone phreaking came when he decided to see
if he could somehow get onto the Telex system (a network of specially equipped
keyboard machines used for sending messages over telephone lines). His one
problem was that the area where he lived was served by an independent phone
company that didn't have the kind of equipment it took to handle Telex
messages. So Cheshire figured out how to get his home computer to do the work
of that equipment. Before long he was sending phantom messages to Telex
machines all over the world. Messages like: "Good grief! I seem to have
reached Adelaide, Australia. This is just a computer hacker in the United
States out for a good time."
Cheshire shares his virtuosity with other phone phreaks and computer hackers
(a hacker is a person who has an almost addictive fascination for playing
around with computers) six times a year in a modest little publicaton called
the TAP newsletter. It's the only tangible manifestation of a secretive group
calling itself the Technology Assistance Program. The newsletter is to phone
phreaks what The Wall Street Journal is to stockbrokers. Each four-page issue
is an odd amalgam of articles: how to make and use lock picks; how to log onto
computer networks like Telenet without paying; how to turn number-14 brass
washers into phone slugs; and, during the hostage crisis in Iran, what the
phone number of the American Embassy in Tehran was, so that anyone who felt
like telling the captors off could give them a ring.
The newsletter illustrates how sophisticated the craft of being any kind of
phreak has become. There are not only blue boxes, but red boxes, purple boxes,
black boxes, beige boxes, white boxes, brown boxes, yellow boxes, green boxes,
a colorless mutes. Some, like purple boxes, are combination units, in this
case a blue box, which tricks the phone company's equipment into letting the
user make a long-distance call for free, and a red box, which does an excellent
imitation of the sound of a coin being deposited in a pay phone. A black box
makes the phone company think the call was not answered even as the
conversation is going on. And so on.
The by-lines under the newsletter's articles are as colorful as the boxes:
The Professor, The Wizard, Dr. Atomic, Alexander Mundy (the lead character in
the old "It Takes a Thief" television series), and Jim Phelps (of "Mission
Impossible" fame: "Good morning, Mr. Phelps..."), to name a few. Cheshire
himself acts as an unofficial press liaison for TAP, if only because he's one
of the few members who will consent to be interviewed about it.
Each Friday after work, a small band of TAP people gathers together to
exchange gossip, discuss new developments in the world of computers and phone
phreaking, or hash over the contents of their next newsletter. Meetings are
usually attended by Tom Edison, the newsletter's editor, Cheshire, and several
others. Like Cheshire, all have technical backgrounds. VAX-man is a computer
programmer; The Librarian, a systems analyst; another regular, who wouldn't
even give a pseudonym, has a middle-management job with a defense contracter.
All TAP members are adamant about the public's right to know the kind of
technical information their newlsletter publishes. "We're just an information
service for people," says The Librarian.
"And a lot of the information is public knowledge," adds Cheshire. "We're
just sharing the forbidden knowledge that the Bell System doesn't want you to
know."
Like what? Well, like the toll-free 800 numbers, for example. Some phone
phreaks have figured out how to use the 800 numbers to get transferred onto
other, unpublicized toll-free lines to make free calls all over the country.
The idea that phone phreaks belong to the people is one with a venerable
past. Measured against other underground publications, TAP is positively
geriatric. It was started in 1971, on May Day, in fact, by Mr. Couterculture
himself, Abbier Hoffman, and a phone phreak who called himself Al Bell. Since
it was an outgrowth of the Youth International Party, or Yippies, it was
originally called YIPL, for Youth Internationl Pary Line. A few years later
there was a political schism in the ranks between the phone phreaks and the
Yippies. The former, who were more interested in blue boxing Ma Bell than in
pushing politics, took charge of the periodical and relaunched it under the
name of TAP. Cheshire happened onto TAP in the late 1970's. His contributions
to the newsletter, he says, have been in tune with what he calls "the light
side of the hack."
"It's true that by just hacking around you can probably find the loophole
that can get you in a computer or network. You have to have luck, time, and
knowledge. Still, there's one thing you're certain of: You can break in.
It's only a computer."
Light-side hackers will find a loophole in the computer or computer
network's security and, as Cheshire puts it, "play around inside." He does it
with his goofy Telex messages or in some instances by tracking down government
snoops and doing his best to embarrass them. He once noted that a mysterious
computer in Quantico, Virginia, would occasionally tap into a local informal
comptuer network called B-Boards, short for bulletin boards. The person would
read the computer mail but whould never send or receive any messages. Noting
that the FBI has a computer-crime training school in Quantico, Cheshire sent
the eavesdropper a message detailing the TAP newsletter's semisubversive
offerings a suggesting that he or she subscribe.
During a lunch break once, a friend of Cheshire's wandered into a computer
network called ARPANET, started up by the Defense Department back in 1969.
After a little noodling around, Cheshire's friend found himself reading
displays from a computer at a Norwegian seismic station that monitors Soviet
nuclear testing. Being anti-phone company doesn't mean being anti-American,
and Cheshire and his friends were disturbed by the ease with which the top-
secret computer could be tapped into. As a result, they decided to set up a
special phone-phreak conference two years ago. They sold tickets in advance
($5 a person) by running ads in their newlsletter, rented a conference room at
the Gramercy Inn in Washington, D.C., and attracted an audience of about 100.
Among other things, Cheshire told those who attended about his friend's romp
through the Norwegian computer. Did anyone in the government pay attention?
"Well, we did notice a couple of guys out there in the audience wearing sports
coats who turned a shade of light green when they heard," he says.
Dark-side hackers, by contrast, often tap into other people's computers to
alter or destory (crash) their programs. Some West Coast hackers manages to
break into the computers of the phone company and selectively reclassify
service on their phones, giving themselves free service options like call
forwarding. Some dark-siders go a step further. Exploiting the inevitable
program loopholes, skilled hackers have been known to coax complete lists of
users' passwords out of computer time-sharing systems. They can even command
the computer to keep them abreast of future password changes. Such lists, when
the users include banks and large businesses, can be sold for thousands of
dollars on the black market.
When it comes to anything that has a whiff of dark-siding, Cheshire is a
spectator. He doesn't blue box, and he scrupulously pays his phone bill on
time to keep the heat off TAP. Although, in private he is a kind of high-tech
merry prankster, in public he walks the straight and narrow. Even so, there
are those who know about his activities. "Officially," he says, over lunch
at a midtown restaurant near his office, "my boss doesn't know what I do in my
spare time." Unofficially, his employer does know. "That's why I was hired,"
he says. "I knew the Telex network inside out because I came in the back
door." It was a skill his company knew would come in handy when there wasn't
time for the more traditional ways of getting onto the Telex network.
Basically, Cheshire is more Kilroy than Jesse James. What has him hooked is
the amusement of it all. "I'm just playing around," he says. Computer crime?
"I'm not out to steal megabucks. I know I could if I wanted to," he adds, "but
knowing I could is good enough for me."
"Even the phone company doesn't arouse all that much hospitility from him.
In fact, the one act of censorship done by TAP was carried out with the phone
company's welfare in mind. Someone has sent TAP plans for a hydrogen bomb.
For the first time, TAP decided a story was too hot to touch. Why? "Among
other things, anyone using that technology is going to take out the phone
network. And that's not what we're into," he says.
"There's a real love-hate relationship between us and the phone company. We
don't particularly appreciate the bureaucracy that runs it, but we love the
network itself," he says, "lingering the word love. "The network is the
greatest thing to come along in the world."
"Our lunch ends, and Cheshire flags the waiter to ask where the pay phone
is. I watch him as he makes a call. He puts in a dime, just like eveyone
else. <>
[Courtesy of Sherwood Forest ][ -- (914) 359-1517]